Video Preview in EmulationStation

Nismo

@fieldofcows Yes still the same, it's happening since your Issue #7 commit, so maybe you can find what changed there...

The log still no clean exit.

Nismo

@fieldofcows OMG!! I tried all versions beta 1, beta 2, and beta 3 and now no one saves.

Maybe a theme error? if it's saving for you maybe is a problem i have. Sorry so much I need to test this and find what's the problem.

fieldofcows

@Nismo Yes, it's quite possible that the bug is not mine :) That's why I wanted to exclude the video from the theme as it's the most likely to cause an issue.

I've downloaded your theme and I'm transferring my configuration over to Windows to see if I can reproduce this.

Nismo

@fieldofcows Tested with default theme, still doesn't save. Maybe never saved? I'm going crazy.

Yes I remember it saved before because I need to replace all full path with relative paths before I turned off save metadata on exit.

Also I checked that gamelist.xml is not read-only.

Maybe I need to do a clean install :(

fieldofcows

@Nismo Are you sure it's not just taking ages to save the gamelist. I've just set mine up with about 1800 games and it takes minutes to exit. It looks like ES has gone but it's there in the background processing the metadata.

Start ES, exit then look in task manager to see if it is still there taking CPU cycles.

Nismo

@fieldofcows After a lot of hours I've found that is something wrong in my roms folder, that's because doesn't save. I have one folder inside my megadrive's rom folder for unlicensed games. If I removed the folder "unlicensed" inside my roms folder, all works again. Maybe path too long? I don't know, it's supossed to work but not. It's too late here and i'm very tired but almost now you know that was my problem.

Now it saves but still the relative path issue (I use notepad++ and replace relative paths in a second). But if I want to use it portable I need to disable "save metadata on exit" and then it doesn't save ratings and times played, last played, etc. I hope you can fix it soon.

I'm very glad to tell you that now the sound works perfect, even on exit it stop inmediately. For sure was emulationstation didn't clean exit.

Sorry so much for all the headaches.

Omg! it takes to you minutes to exit for saving an xml? I think that something is wrong there. For me it close at the moment. Less than a second, even if I use an slow pendrive USB and i have a lot of games too. (I use the pendrive for testing your builds I usually use a portable 2.5" HDD)

Do you finally try the theme? what do you think? keep in mind that still w.i.p. I don't like that some wheel art is difficult to see on megadrive.

Sorry so so much for all the headaches, thanks for all your tips, support, and take your time for trying to help me. Regards.

Nismo

Updated Oldroom theme to beta 2:

Resized gamelist and logo to see more room and better looking of the theme.
Resized and moved marquee-Wheel art for megadrive theme.
Resized md_image (3d box cartridge) to match 1:1 scales of 3d boxes images downloaded.
Added shadow for 3d box cartridge.
Added empty 3d box cartridge for games without image. This also solves the problem when a game doesn't have image, you still can see the shadow. Whould be better that the 3d boxes images has shadows itself but it doesn't.

Now it's time to add a new system to the theme.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/uzn8re6e5522chl/oldroom_beta_2.zip

Regards.

robertybob

@Nismo Only 80 systems to go 😁

fieldofcows

@robertybob Haha! :D

fieldofcows

@Nismo Fantastic work! I've downloaded this and it looks great although I'm only using mame at the moment.

Here's a treat for you. I've built a new version that gives some flexibility in showing preview images and videos. I quite liked having the preview image when the video is unavailable because I have a lot of actual game snapshots rather than the mixed art you have so I made it configurable.

The <video> tag in the theme now supports these options (in addition to the standard position ones):

<delay>
Delay in seconds between highlighting game and starting video

<default>
Full or relative path to a video file that will be rendered when no game video is available

<showSnapshotNoVideo>
Show the contents of the <image> gamelist tag if no video is available (overridden by <default>)

<showSnapshotDelay>
Show the contents of the <image> gamelist tag during the video startup delay

To show either the game video or the default video if there is no game video:

<video>
  <delay>0.2</delay>
 <default>./art/static1.mp4</default>
 <showSnapshotNoVideo>false</showSnapshotNoVideo>
 <showSnapshotDelay>false</showSnapshotDelay>
</video>

To show the game video if available or the static <image> if no video is available:

<video>
  <delay>0.2</delay>
 <showSnapshotNoVideo>true</showSnapshotNoVideo>
 <showSnapshotDelay>false</showSnapshotDelay>
</video>

To show the game video if available, the default video if unavailable but only start the video after a delay showing the static <image> until the video starts:

<video>
  <delay>2.5</delay>
 <default>./art/static1.mp4</default>
 <showSnapshotNoVideo>false</showSnapshotNoVideo>
 <showSnapshotDelay>true</showSnapshotDelay>
</video>

Download it here: https://github.com/fieldofcows/EmulationStation/releases/tag/v0.1-beta.4

Nismo

@fieldofcows woowww!!! thank you very much!!!

I have done genesis theme (not megadrive), 32x, neo geo, nes and snes (I need to test nes &snes).

I need the relative path fixed on marquees and video tags when saving metadata, please, do your magic..

Nismo

@fieldofcows I'ts working very good!!, but I think you can implement "default" video in a better way.

I'll try to explain myself:

If I delete one video inside the videos folder, the theme doesn't show "static.mp4" on tv, I can delete all my videos and static.mp4 still not showing, but if I edit my gamelist.xml and delete video tag from one game, now "static.mp4" works, so I assume that your code only check if there's a video tag in gamelist.xml for that game.

I think whould be a lot of better if the code also can check the path to the video and check if video exist or not (if it's possible), it's more precise for static.mp4 to work.

All my games has a video tag because i use an script that insert all the video and marquee paths for all games, and after that I only need to use fatmach program to match the videos and marquees with my roms names, so I can have 800 roms and only 600 videos but all 800 games entries on gamelist.xml has video tag.

Anyway you did a great job. I'm very happy with our new emulationstation.

Thank you!!.

robertybob

Should things like Delay and whether a snapshot be shown if no video, be held in the main es_config file?

fieldofcows

@robertybob Good question. What if you want different configurations for different systems though?

fieldofcows

@Nismo I see your point about checking the file system and not just the gamelist. I'll make that change.

Nismo

@fieldofcows Thanks! Good change.

Nismo

@fieldofcows I have notice a little issue introduced in beta 4, nothing important, when you are on gamelist and keep pressing down (press and hold), the gamelist doesn't go down like before, you need to press down for every game. I've tested beta 3 and it's working there.

I want to share more updated oldroom theme tomorrow. And of course keep the ball rolling...

fieldofcows

@Nismo Thanks Nismo. I spotted this one at the weekend and have already committed a fix for it. I've also committed a fix for testing if the video file is there when choosing whether to show the default video.

I tried running it on the Raspberry Pi at the weekend. Although it worked it crashed a number of times while scrolling through the game list. It turns out that one of the libraries used to display the video seems to be a bit buggy regarding scaling the video and causes some memory corruption. I've fixed this issue by rendering the video without scaling and using OpenGL to scale it to the screen. This is most likely far more efficient anyway as long as your videos are not too high resolution. This fix has also been committed.

It now runs beautifully on the rPi. I am using your theme and it looks absolutely fantastic! The rPi3 doesn't seem to have any issue rendering the videos or preview images (I've configured my copy of the theme to show previews). I'll grab a video when I get a chance. I have a couple of issues with the theme but I'll put those in a separate post.

I've also added a couple of extra parameters to the <video> tag which you can safely ignore for now. They are for maintaining the aspect ratio of the video by putting either black bars along the sides or top and bottom, or instead of black bars it can extend the edges of the video. They were already in the code in an experimental state so I've just added tags for them to be configured. The default settings work as before.

enigma7

This looks great. Any instructions on how to build for RPi? Or a precompiled version? I wish this was in the experimental section.

tronkyfran

Awesome work! thinking about themes...could this eventually lead to have animated backgrounds on the system selection screen? On windows with more vram at least...?=