Need help with video snaps please (SOLVED)

Drdave79

Hi all. Raspberry Pi4, custom image. I'm getting real frustrated with adding video snaps to my emulators and am asking for some help please. I have 65 systems on my build. 7 of those won't play the video snaps because of the missing <video> line in the gamelist.xml.

Here are the details:

I have folders with video snaps in them.
The video files match the rom names.
On several of my emulators, the gamelist.xml file does not have the appropriate <video> line per rom to tell the system which video to play. So I have to add them manually. For systems that have 100 or 200 games, I've spent hours adding each line. For systems that have 500+ games, I'm beyond wits end. Below is an example, Amiga in this case. For this one, I have to add a <video> line that points to the video snap and it'll play just fine.

I've tried both scrapper sources from Retroarch and nothing works. I've tried Skyscraper by Lars Muldjord (with videos turned on) and this doesn't work. The ONLY solution I have to do this process manually. Can anyone please give me that wonderful, magic solution to save me hours and hours of work if there's an automated process that works please, please! Thank you.

	<path>./ABCMondayNightFootball_v1.01_NTSC_1495.lha</path>
	<name>ABC Monday Night Football</name>
	<image>./media/images/ABCMondayNightFootball_v1.01_NTSC_1495.png</image>
	<rating />
	<desc>game desc</desc>
	<releasedate>19910101T000000</releasedate>
	<developer>Monarch Development</developer>
	<publisher>MVP Software</publisher>
	<genre>Sports / Football, Sports</genre>
	<players>2</players>

sleve_mcdichael

@drdave79 I'm not sure of an easy way to just "insert" the <video> lines to an existing gamelist. Maybe something with xmlstarlet?

Can you elaborate on what didn't work with Skyscraper? It works well for me though I'll admit I mostly only have the more mainstream platforms on my system. Note that it's a two-step process:

1: scrape from chosen source(s) and save to internal cache.

2: build gamelist from cached data.

Sometimes people get their settings mixed up and end up looking at the wrong gamelist.xml file; they can either be in ~/.emulationstation/gamelists or in the roms dir where the rom files are.

You already have the video files, named appropriately. That's a good start. What I would do in that situation (with Skyscraper):

1: Scrape box art/metadata from chosen platform(s) (videos: off)

2: Move video snaps to ~/.skyscraper/import/[platform]/videos

3: Scrape from "import (local)" (videos: on)

4: Build the gamelists (videos: on)

At the end of this, you're going to have three copies of every video; this will use up significant unnecessary space. To fix:

Step 3a (or, any time before you build the gamelist in step 4): set your ~/.skyscraper/config.ini to use symlink="true" (symlinks cached video files to downloaded_media instead of copying them when building gamelists. Eliminates one set of duplicates.)

Step 5: after you scrape them, delete the snaps from import. They were already copied to cache when you imported them, so these are now also duplicates. (The filenames in the cache are changed to some hash string based on the rom file so they will be unmanageable, but you have them all backed up to your PC anyway, right? Or you can always find them via their symlinks if you really need to.)

dmmarti

@drdave79 See if this program will help you.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/272851

I just uploaded a zip file for the program again. It seems to come and go - but hopefully this download link will remain for awhile.

Using it, you can easily add in the <video> lines into your existing gamelist.xml files.

Drdave79

@dmmarti wow, this is amazing! This is exactly what I've been looking for. That being said, I found a solution. Once I erased my existing gamelist.xml file and re-ran Skyscraper, it worked as intended.

Thank you both for your responses. I hope that tool gets pinned somewhere because it's value goes far.

sleve_mcdichael

@drdave79

Once I erased my existing gamelist.xml file and re-ran Skyscraper, it worked as intended.

Skyscraper overwrites existing gamelist entries, unless you tell it to skip them. I presume you wouldn't do that, since you were specifically wanting to update those entries. I still wonder if, something like:

Skyscraper was updating the gamelist in ~/.emulationstation/gamelists/{system}/gamelist.xml,
you were looking at one in ~/RetroPie/roms/{system}/gamelist.xml,
EmulationStation was also looking for a gamelist at the primary location in ~/RetroPie/roms/{system}/gamelist.xml, and found it,
nothing was changing because you and ES were both looking in one place, while Skyscraper was updating somewhere else,
you deleted the one in roms,
you ran Skyscraper again (updating the one in ~/.emulationstation that was already updated from before, so nothing actually happened, here), and finally,
EmulationStation, not finding a gamelist in the primary location in roms, falls back to the secondary location in ~/.emulationstation where the updated version has been sitting all along, and found it...

...that or, maybe you're running it with the command-line flag or have config.ini set to "skip existing" which does not update any existing entries, only adding new ones? These are the only situations I can think of where running Skyscraper in build mode once wouldn't add your video snaps, but deleting a gamelist and running it a second time, would.

Drdave79

@sleve_mcdichael You bring up some interesting scenarios, and I appreciate your insight into this (I forgot to thank you earlier).

Skyscraper seems to save the gamelist file in the rom folder, so not sure about that other location. I can see how there might be conflicts. But when I deleted the gamelist file in the roms folder and reran it, it created a new gameslist file in the roms folder. It certainly wasn't overwriting the file in the roms folder though, or I wouldn't have had the problem in the first place.

I wasn't running it from the command line. I exited ES and ran it from the retropie setup. But I didn't have any skip feature turned on. Rom names to Source Name, Remove Brackets enabled and use rom folders enabled.

sleve_mcdichael

@drdave79 well glad it's working for you now, any case.