Is there a way to set a path for media files without editing games one by one?
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I am trying for days to solve this issue but i haven't found anything. The scenario is this:
I have all the media files i need. Coming from Hyperspin/Launchbox i got all the videos and images long ago. So i don't need to re-download/scrape all that.
The issue is, Emulationstation won't recognize these files. I don't know where to put them, it seems there is no way to set a path. The only way it seems to work is to edit each and every game INDIVIDUALLY in the gamelist.xml by adding the paths there. For each game. How can this be the only way? I mean, what's the solution if you have, dunno, 20.000 roms or something?
After i couldn't find anything for hours, i decided, what the hell, let's scrap the files. The scrapper does generate the paths in the xmls. But here's another issue. It only does for the media it FINDS. If a video/image doesn't exist in the database, there won't be any path in the xml. So you get like 400 out of 500 videos and then you have to manually read the whole xml, see where the gaps are and ad the paths them one by one. This can take hours/days for a single system.
Since i have all the media files already, i tried to put the videos i have in the scrap folders. I thought the scrapper will see that i have them since they have the correct names and it will generate the paths, but no. It completely ignores their existence. So i can't set a global path there either, again it's just for each game only.
Then i found a way to generate xmls using a program called "gengal". This does have the ability to add an image and video path to all roms in your xml. And then all i have to do is bulk-replace the paths in notepad++, which is easy. However, gengal doesn't add metadata. So that means i get an empty xml with only the paths and nothing else. If i want metadata, i can't use it since scrappers completely overwrite it. I have to choose between xmls with media paths or xmls with metadata!
I don't know what else to do, i can't believe there is no way to set a path like in every single frontend out there. It's like the most basic function. There has to be something i'm missing...
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EmulationStation (at least the RetroPie fork) can search for local art - there's an option in the menu (under 'Other Options' I think). If it finds a
ROMNAME-image.png
/ROMNAME-video.mp4
it will use them for artwork, instead of relying on thegamelist.xml
file entries.Other than that, maybe ARRM can help incorporate media files into the
gamelist.xml
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@mitu I'm using both Retropie and a Windows build. I can't find such option. However, it does seem to work in retropie if i add media in the "images" folder" in the rom path (as long as there is a -image or -video in the filename). This doesn't work in Windows though.
I'll take a look at that ARRM program you linked, thanks.
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@Imgema said in Is there a way to set a path for media files without editing games one by one?:
I'm using both Retropie and a Windows build. I can't find such option. However, it does seem to work in retropie if i add media in the "images" folder" in the rom path (as long as there is a -image or -video in the filename)
I didn't mention any 'images' folder.
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@mitu I know, you didn't mention any path so i was going to ask. But i saw in a crappy prebuild retropie setup (that i use for reference) there was an "images" folder in the roms folder so i added a bunch of media there and it worked. Don't know where the path is written though, it's not in the gamelist or any other xml i know of. I only mentioned it because i saw it working.
Still can't find how to do it myself on my own retropie though. Or if it works at all in Windows.
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Actually, it looks like you were right - EmulationStation looks under the 'images' folder for
ROMNAME-image.png
(orROMNAME-image.jpg
) andROMNAME-video.mp4
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@mitu Yeah it works in Retropie. Tested it on Windows though and it won't work there.
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@Imgema said in Is there a way to set a path for media files without editing games one by one?:
Tested it on Windows though and it won't work there.
Which version do you have on Windows and where did you get it ? If it's the original EmulationStation site, then it doesn't have this feature.
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@mitu Pretty sure i have the jrassa build. It gets updated more often and my exe has a 20-March-2020 date.
I also used caruso's build but i didn't like the way it displays the videos.
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That should work, it's the same as the RetroPie's version. I don't have Windows system to test right now, maybe it's behaving differently on Windows.
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@mitu said in Is there a way to set a path for media files without editing games one by one?:
That should work, it's the same as the RetroPie's version. I don't have Windows system to test right now, maybe it's behaving differently on Windows.
"Well, i made an "images" folder in the rompath and got some images inside with the correct names and a "-image" at the end, basically the same steps as with Retropie and it doesn't work. And even if it did i don't see any way to change the path since i wouldn't want the media to be in the rompath.
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@Imgema Just to be sure, you did enable the corresponding option in the settings ?
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@mitu I'm thankful you asked that because i must be an idiot. The option for local files was there and i never saw it for some stupid reason.
So yeah, it works the same way like Retropie. Now if only there was a way to change the path...
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@mitu I can't find a way for ARRM to help me. It doesn't seem to have an option to load a gamelist i already have so i can edit it. And i can't find how to add paths anyway. It's overcomplicated and way over my head :(
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Ok, i think i found a method to do this.
First of all, i can't avoid not scrapping the media files but i can avoid scrapping videos. So what i do is scrap only the screenshots and boxes, the idea is to scrap 2 files that are less likely to have gaps and have the smallest size (for faster scrapping).
Luckily, there won't be many gaps this way and the scrapping will take only a few minutes. I'm using SkraperUI.
The result in the gamelist file is something like this:
<image>../../../EmuStation/Database/media/gb/images/Adventures of Lolo (Europe).png</image>
<thumbnail>../../../EmuStation/Database/media/gb/videos/Adventures of Lolo (Europe).png</thumbail>This is good because that's what i needed. Two lines that have the gamefile name in them. The bolted parts are the ones that matter. Notice how i set the "thumbnails" to be saved in the videos folder. All i have to do now is use notepad++ and bulk-replace all the <thumbnail> with <video>, ".png</t" with ".mp4</t" (so the .png extension i need from the above line isn't changed) and then </thumbnail> with </video> . This way all my paths are set in the gamelist.
Then i place my videos in the video folder, delete the placeholder images that were downloaded and that's it! I have both all paths and metadata in one gamelist.
Can't believe i had to squeeze my brain to come up with something like this just to set some media paths... But at least so far that's the most efficient way to do it.
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i made a software to do something like this specially working with xml.
it is not public release -
This is quite an old thread, but it does show up in google searches. I thought I'd update it with links to gamelist.xml apps/tools that that I've found, and similar discussion threads. By no means is this an exhaustive list.
ES_XML_Maker - Updated Gamelist XML Creator
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/4471/updated-gamelist-xml-creatorRetroPi Media - gamelist.xml generator
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/23534/retropi-media-gamelist-xml-generatorGengal - Gamelist XML Generator
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/9486/gengal-gamelist-xml-generatorDiscussions:
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