Video Preview in EmulationStation

fieldofcows

@robertybob Hi, yes - I've been a bit busy with work and family stuff :) I've just finished setting up a Windows 10 VM from scratch and configured it for Windows builds of ES. If anyone is interested I'll start a new topic on how to do this and build my fork.

What is the next step? The video preview is working and in my github fork. I have it installed on my rPI with about 800 videos. I can build binaries for Windows, rPI and Linux if anyone is interested. What I may work on next is modifying the ES screensaver to pick and play a random video instead of just dimming the screen. Any requests for other similar changes?

I'm quite keen to keep working on ES now I've started but wish there was a common repository for everyone to work in. Does anybody have any idea what the way forward is for this? Herdinger's fork?

Nismo

@fieldofcows I whould like to try the windows binary build.

And yes whould be nice if you have enought time to start a new topic on how to do this and build your fork.

The screensaver is a good idea.

Herdinger's fork is good because he implemented some good things and it's more updated, with the advantage that he said that keep in mind his code for cross compiling without headhaches.

Can emulationstation locate the videofiles with the same name than a rom and add it to gamelist automatically? for example place videos on :
home\emulationstation.emulationstation\downloaded_videos\snes

Or did you add those 800 videos one by one????

I don't know if it's very difficult but i whould like the strings in a sepparate xml file for translation in other languages, so emulationstation easy to use for the kids. Almost all the strings are in "gui" folders in the source code, and not so much strings to translate.

Also i whould like (if it's possible) to get the music in menus fixed, till now only scrollsound is working, but no system sound or select sound, back sound, etc.

And one more thing, the scrapper "the archive" isn't working, could be changed for better one like www.screenscraper.fr?

Yeah, I know, too much wishes... I'm waiting for the windows build.

Thanks for your work.

robertybob

@fieldofcows Do you think your build would be compatible with the grid-view one being worked on by @jacobfk20 ? Because I think his one is updated more frequently than any other (Herdinger's was last updated in JULY!) and also it would be a great combination (being able to choose between a video preview or a grid of artwork).

I'm happy to test a Windows build :) I'm on Win 7.

Edit on the topic of requests, this would be a big one of mine - the option to disable the Emulationstation splashscreen!
https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/commit/2dffd09f3a6074991f6c2ed290f8b226e20ded1b
..at least that's what I think it is.

fieldofcows

@Nismo @robertybob Right - I've built a Windows version and tested it on my system and it works fine. You can give it a go if you want. Download it from here:

https://github.com/fieldofcows/EmulationStation/releases/tag/v0.1-beta.1

A few things to note:

It's getting a bit late so I haven't tested it on a non-dev system so it is possible I've missed a DLL or two out. Let me know what happens when you run it
The unzipped directory contains the exe, all DLLs and a plugins subdirectory. The plugins directory contains VLC plugins that must be in a subdirectory from where emulationstation.exe lives (like it is when you unzip it).
I've included a sample configuration directory. You'll need to move it in the right place for it to work, as per usual.
Please don't try this on a configured system - it might destroy your gamelists.xml, etc. It's for testing only!

The videos and marquees should support relative pathnames from the ROMs directory (see the sample theme that I've included) however this doesn't seem to work properly on Windows at the moment so you need full paths. Relative paths work on Linux and raspberry pi. I'll try to fix this soon.

I generated my game list by writing a custom scraper from the Coin Ops distribution. I didn't have to set it all up by hand :D

Nismo

@robertybob Herdinger's fork already have the option to disable emulationstation splashscreen.

Apart from that jacobfk20's fork can't work in windows, like he said here:

"This version of ES will not run on Windows, but it will run on ANY linux distro. I could make it run on Windows but will have to omit some features."

Source: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3121/emulationstation-mod/8

That's because i said to use herdinger's fork, because we all (windows, linux) can benefit from the code updates. If he can implement grid view in his code whould be good, but if not we still can receive more updates.

Regards.

Nismo

@fieldofcows OMG!! thank you very much, whould be nice to have relative path because i use it portable, but no problem, i'll test.

Can you share your scrapper?

Thank you, thank you.

Edit: seems that relative path is working at first boot but when you exit emulationstation it overwrites the gamelist.xml with the absolute path for videos and marquees.

Videos still sound even if you start game but only for about 5 or 10 seconds.

Seems like if you go back to systems the video sound doesn't stop.

It's too late here, i'll test better tomorrow.

Thanks.

Zigurana

@fieldofcows : I've prepared a nice topic for you to share your build-strategy for Linux and Windows : here

Nismo

@fieldofcows I've found whats wrong with relative paths for marquees and video. You need to disable option "save metadata on exit" (enabled by default) in "other settings" menu to keep relative paths untouched. So that's the option that overwrite the relative paths.

In other hand now i can redefine more buttons than before on "input config" but now i can't use L shoulder and R shoulder to go fast up and down on the gamelist, simply doesn't do nothing.

About the video, it may stop when you lauch a game but still playing 10 or 15 seconds after the game is launched (I can hear the sound).

If you are in gamelist with video, and then go back to another system without videos, video's sound of the last system still playing until you join a game, and when you leave the game, video's sound come back, so whould be good to make the code only play video when game is focused on gamelist or stop when you change system.

It works ok when you are inside a system that some games have videos and other games not, works like expected, if you focus another game in the list without video, the video's sound stop, but doesn't happen if you change system. Maybe is because the other system doesn't have any videos and doesn't use video view and use detailed view, i need to test this later.

I'm working in a simple video theme to contribute a bit with this project, i hope to finish soon.

Keep the good work. Regards.

fieldofcows

@Nismo Great - thanks for testing this. I'm pleased you managed to get it to work. Just to stress again (for anyone else that is willing to try it), it is very much a work-in-progress at the moment and I haven't performed any testing beyond making sure the videos work and the theme looks ok so feedback like this is really helpful.

I'll take a look at the issues you have reported ASAP.

Nismo

@fieldofcows I have finally tested the themes and yes, if the systems use video view it works well, the problem with the sound when you change system it's only if the other system doesn't use video view (basic view or detailed view), but between systems using video view it works as expected (except for the 10 seconds sound when you launch a game XD).

One more thing, in video view, if the game doesn't have video it doesn't display the image (md_image), so whould be nice to add some checks like this:

emulationstation check gamelist.xml
if no video string
then use image and read place from md_image from theme.

I hope not so difficult to implement...

enderandrew

I would absolutely love to see a version of ES with both the GridView and this video preview.

Where do the video previews come from? Are they animated gifs from a scraper service?

Nismo

@enderandrew Not animated gifs, real video files inside a folder. There are a lot of places around the web where you can obtain it.

Regards.

enderandrew

@Nismo How much storage does it take for actual video files for all the roms? Video has the advantage of sound but I wonder if animated gifs would be more efficient.

fieldofcows

I have about 3800 videos and they take about 14Gb in H.264 mkv format.

enderandrew

@fieldofcows said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

I have about 3800 videos and they take about 14Gb in H.264 mkv format.

I've seen several warnings that I shouldn't use a SD card over 32 GB with a Pi or in a RetroPi project, so additional 14 GB of storage seems like a lot for this feature.

I presume you're using something more like a 128 GB card. So I presume that must work for you.

CourierSS

@enderandrew

For over 32 GB, the difference is that you'll have to format the SD cards from exFAT to FAT32 so they'll be compatible with RetroPie. In terms of which SD cards actually work well with the Raspberry Pi, you can check out Embedded Linux Wiki - RPi SD cards.

fieldofcows

I haven't setup a card with all the videos on it. I think my current test setup has 850 or so on a 32Gb card. You should be able to use any video format or size that VLC supports as long as the rPI has the CPU grunt to decode it. I would have thought it possible to process the videos down to a much smaller size.

Nismo

@enderandrew Depends on quality of video, resolution, bit rate...

For example, I have:

1130 mame videos - 986mb
495 nes videos - 337mb

But i have converted the videos myself with high quality (slow) parameters to reduce disk space without loosing too much quality.

enderandrew

@Nismo said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

@enderandrew Depends on quality of video, resolution, bit rate...

For example, I have:

1130 mame videos - 986mb
495 nes videos - 337mb

But i have converted the videos myself with high quality (slow) parameters to reduce disk space without loosing too much quality.

Would I be able to find video previews for most of the common systems?

And I know you can't link or share ROMS, BIOS or anything copyrighted, but if you've already taken the time to compress your videos, could you share them on a Google Drive or something like that?

fieldofcows

@Nismo Thanks again for testing the video feature.

I'll take a look at the following issues and get a new version built:

Video continuing to play when launching a game or going back to system list (I've already fixed this one)
Shoulder buttons not working - I can't see how the changes I made would have broken this but I'll have a look
Specify default image, or maybe default video if video does not exist for a game

I should have some time over the next couple of days to get these sorted.