Video Snaps

thelostsoul

@Gogol Okay, then I recommend you to rename the Seiken Densetsu mp4 file exactly like one of those which are known to work. Replace the working file on your Pi with this video (don't forget to backup). This test should eliminate any user error in gamelist xml edit. If that is not working, then I really don't know whats going on here. I tested your file and it works, it is the exact same file I use on my RetroPie. So, recoding wouldn't make any sense.

So, i see you have 2 gamelist files? Only one at a time is in effect, default is "/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/snes/". So the one in roms/snes shouldn't be in use, unless you changed it (somewhere). Maybe you used a scraper and it created the gamelist xml at this place? Btw, I use scraper to automate these processes, but if you use that, your hand made settings in gamelist xml would be deleted. So be careful. As a sidenote, the mp4 files I have got a part with "-video.mp4" at the end of the filename (the scraper did this). And the xml files must point to that file, otherwise it does not know about the video file.

mitu

@Gogol said in Video Snaps:

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/snes/ and the other in /home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/snes/

If you have a gamelist in the ROMs folder, then the other location is not considered - the ROMs folder has priority.

Gogol

@thelostsoul I backed up my ActRaiser-video.mp4 video snap, and renamed the Seiken Densetsu 3-video.mp4 snap to ActRaiser-video.mp4 and transfered it to my Pi. The video preview does not show anything.

@mitu Thank for clarifying that because I was going back and forth between both gamelists trying to work out which one had priority. This is the entry for Seiken Densetsu 3 in the SNES gamelist.xml placed in the roms folder...

 <game>
	<path>./Seiken Densetsu 3.smc</path>
	<name>Seiken Densetsu 3</name>
	<desc>The Legend of the Holy Sword Continues...
  
	Formerly, when the world was enshrouded in darkness, the Mana Goddess ussed the Mana sword to destroy the 8 Mana beasts that intended to destroy the world, and sealed them into 8 Mana stones. Thus the darkness dissipated, and the world was reborn. The Mana Goddess turned herself into a tree, and went to sleep.

	Many years passed. But then, the 8 seals started to dissolve, and the Mana beasts were free. They now aim to gain power enough to rival the gods. Meanwhile, due to greedy people who want to make the world their own, wars have started to break out...

	The era of peace has come to an end... Mana itself is starting to fade from the world. Even the Mana tree is beginning to die.</desc>
	<image>~/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/snes/Seiken Densetsu 3-image.png</image>
	<video>./images/Seiken Densetsu 3-video.mp4</video>
	<rating>0</rating>
	<releasedate>19950930T000000</releasedate>
	<developer>Squaresoft</developer>
	<publisher>Squaresoft</publisher>
	<genre>Action, Role-Playing</genre>
	<players>2</players>
</game>

I do not know if it is important or not, but if I transfer one of the working video snaps from the Pi to my PC and try to play them, they do not work. Also, I am using the Carbon theme set and my gamelist view style is set to "Video".

mitu

@Gogo The gamelist shows the path of the video file to be <ROMS>/snes/images/Seiken Densetsu 3-video.mp4, but your .rar file has the video as Seiken Densetsu 3.mp4. Can you double check the name and path of the video file and make sure it's correctly named ?

thelostsoul

@Gogol The path
<video>./images/Seiken Densetsu 3-video.mp4</video>
shouldn't it be
<video>~/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/snes/Seiken Densetsu 3-video.mp4</video>
Off course, depending where the video files are stored. When you renamed to ActRaiser-video mp4, did you overwrite the file at the exact same location? Where did you copy the video to? How does the ActRaiser entry looks like?

Gogol

@mitu I added the -video part to the end of the Seiken Densetsu 3 file to match the other video snaps in the images folder, but I also tried without it and both ways do not work.

@thelostsoul This is how the gamelist.xml displays it, even for the other SNES games where the video snaps work, for example Axelay <video>./images/Axelay-video.mp4</video> the video preview works fine in emulationstation.

But to make sure I typed <video>~/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/snes/Seiken Densetsu 3-video.mp4</video> in to the gamelist.xml and saved it, and it did not work, even when applying the same path from the game's metadata.

I want to try one more thing, could you extract the Seiken Densetsu 3 video snap you have on your Pi and upload it here so I can test it on my Pi? If this does not work, then I think I will just try a clean install as there is nothing else I can do.

mitu

@Gogol I see no point in re-installing just because there's a few videos astray. Double check the path and remember that:

paths that start with ~/ are relative to the user's home
paths that start with ./ are relative to the ROMs folder.

You can also switch off/on the OMXplayer (HW accelerated video) just to check that it's not a video file that it doesn't understand.

EDIT: copy a 'good' video that's already playing fine over the path you have for the games in question - does it play ? If not, then it's not the video file, it's the path.

thelostsoul

@Gogol

I want to try one more thing, could you extract the Seiken Densetsu 3 video snap you have on your Pi and upload it here so I can test it on my Pi?

As I said, I tested your file on my Pi and also checked the checksum (md5sum); your file is 100% identical to mine. But I will upload it, so you can test it too: https://ufile.io/fidxwx04

If this does not work, then I think I will just try a clean install as there is nothing else I can do.

I don't think a clean install is needed here. I think there is something going on with the gamelists. Before you decide to delete everything and start from scratch (but make a full backup as an image file), try following: Delete both gamelist xml files, delete all video and image files in ./images and downloaded_images/snes. Then try use a scraper, which will automatically download all video files and create a clean gamelist xml file.

Be careful: If you edit the gamelist xml files by hand and then use a scraper, then the scraper will overwrite your edits.

Gogol

@mitu I tried with OMX on and off and it does not work for both. I also made a copy of the Axelay-video snap which works, and renamed it to Seiken Densetsu 3-video and it plays fine in the emulationstation preview.

@thelostsoul I tried your copy of the Seiken Densetsu 3 video snap in my Pi and it did not work. So I deleted both gamelist.xml files and deleted all SNES video and image files and then scraped again, and as with the first time I scraped it did not find any video snaps for Seiken Densetsu 3, so I manually added it to the gamelist and also the video you provided, still no luck.

I will just do a clean install and if I cannot get the video snaps to show up then I will just put images for those that are missing.

Anyway, I really appreciate @thelostsoul and @mitu for helping, thank you both!

thelostsoul

@Gogol Without having full access to your setup, I really don't know what to say else. That is a bit strange, I still think it is probably just a small error. You should do a full backup as an image file (like CD images, there are plenty of free applications out there), if you really want do a clean install. This way, you can go back to old install anytime and also be able to extract any file out of the image. Before you do that, try to figure out whats wrong.

Can you upload the xml file, which is created last? I would like have a look into it and modify it, so you can test again.

Gogol

@thelostsoul Thanks, I made a fresh install and just put three SNES games on the Pi to make it a bit easier to look at the gamelist.xml file, after using screenscraper it could only scrape two of the games, ActRaiser and ActRaiser 2, Seiken Densetsu 3 does not appear in the xml file...

https://uploadfiles.io/t2jdnxfv

If you could copy your Seiken Densetsu 3 entry from your xml file to mine and send it back so I could test it, that would be great.

thelostsoul

@Gogol Sometimes titles are not found. It depends on the scraper and which source they use and on the rom itself. Some versions of roms are not known to the source. You could try it again with a different version, if you want. In case you do it by editing the xml file manually, you should be carefully. Each time I use a scraper, these entries will be deleted (at least in my case) and I have to add them through copy-paste again. Here is my entry for this game, found by

<game id="2164" source="screenscraper.fr">
          <path>./Seiken Densetsu 3 (J) [T+Eng1.01_NCorlett+LNFT].smc</path>
          <name>Seiken Densetsu 3</name>
          <desc>Seiken Densetsu 3 is set in the same world as the two previous Seiken Densetsu games (the first is Final Fantasy Adventure, and the second is most known as Secret of Mana). The mysterious power of Mana is also the center of all events in Seiken Densetsu 3. Years have passed, and all the destructive powers of Mana have been securely sealed by Mana Swords into eight seeds, all placed in eight different kingdoms. But some people know about those sealed powers, and they don&#39;t want to free them for the sake of humanity, but for their own gain - such as the kingdom of Altena, which is slowly freezing and which can be saved only by the legendary powers.&#xA;&#xA;The game features several plot lines connected to each other by their common background. In the beginning of the game, you are offered to choose a group of three among six different characters of different classes: Duran the Fighter, Angela the Magic User, Lisa the Amazon, Carlie the Cleric, Kevin the Grappler and Hawk the Thief. Each one of them has her/his own background story and dwells in a different land. Gradually, the connections between those different characters become apparent, and the seemingly loose story lines are connected into a whole.&#xA;&#xA;Seiken Densetsu 3, like the previous game of the series, is an action RPG, with real time combat.</desc>
          <image>~/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/snes/Seiken Densetsu 3 (J) [T+Eng1.01_NCorlett+LNFT]-image.jpg</image>
          <rating>0.75</rating>
          <releasedate>19950930T000000</releasedate>
          <developer>Square Enix</developer>
          <publisher>Square Enix</publisher>
          <genre>Role playing games</genre>
          <players>3</players>
          <marquee>~/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/snes/Seiken Densetsu 3 (J) [T+Eng1.01_NCorlett+LNFT]-marquee.png</marquee>
          <video>~/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/snes/Seiken Densetsu 3 (J) [T+Eng1.01_NCorlett+LNFT]-video.mp4</video>
      </game>

You could try to get the exact same patch for the base Japanese rom and patch it yourself and try to scrape again. I think, it must be this one: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/440/. Patching is a matter of a minute. Just open up the application, choose original unpatched Japanese rom and this patch file and the application will output the patched translated game. Because this patch is famous, it is known by most (if not all) scrapers. I use this one: https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/240/

Gogol

@thelostsoul That was a good call on the game titles idea, I went to the screenscraper website and looked at what was listed for Seiken Densetsu 3 and I downloaded the exact same rom and scraped it, the video snap downloaded and works fine, the same with Hellfire and Crest of Wolf (I downloaded Riot Zone, which is the US version and it scraped perfectly).

@thelostsoul and @mitu The only problems I have now are a few PC Engine CD games, where a "hash not found" error occurs when scraping, I presume that the scraper is looking at information inside the ISO/CUE to match what it has on screenscraper's database?

alt text

I have downloaded Rayxanber_2_(NTSC-J)_[DWCD1001] which is listed on screenscraper, however using a MD5 and SHA checksum utility, the hash does not match that on screenscraper's website.

Do I have to keep downloading different versions of the game until I find a matching hash, or is there another way?

thelostsoul

@Gogol I am glad this Seiken Densetsu thing is solved.
For PC Engine CD games, I have or had this problem too and wrote the data by hand manually. I am not sure if I solved this someday, but didn't scrape PC Engine / CD quite for a long time. So sorry on my side, I cannot help at this particular point.

Gogol

@thelostsoul No problem, you have already done more than enough to help me, so thank you once again! :)

mitu

@Gogol said in Video Snaps:

Do I have to keep downloading different versions of the game until I find a matching hash, or is there another way?

Try using Skyscraper to see if it works better for pce-cd. It can also scrape by MD5 and can associate it with a ROM (via the --query option), but it's kind of tedious to do this one by one by comparing the has on the ScreenScraper and adding it manually on the command line.

Gogol

@mitu I had no luck with Skyscraper, it did not find any of the missing PC Engine CD games the normal way.

How do I scrape by MD5 using the --queryoption?

UPDATE: Ok, so three weeks later, being stubborn and refusing to give up, I finally managed to download the missing video snaps for those five PC Engine CD games!

What I did, was to place those five PC Engine CD games into /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pcengine, then I scraped with skyscraper and it managed to find the video snaps for those games. I set the video path to each game from /home/pi/.emulationstation/downloaded_media/pcengine/videos/game name.mp4.

I thought I would just update my last post incase anyone else is having the same problems that I had.