[SOFT] Universal XML Scraper V2 - Easy Scrape with High Quality picture

ghostlywindmill

@AlexMurphy in UXS, I click Configuration -> Launch wizard. This prompts me to select my IS (I select RetroPie), the visual type (I select the three image setup as shown in your screenshot) and then the ROM location. If I choose Raspberry Pi, I receive 'Roms Path for autoconfiguration can't be reached. If I select my PC and perform a scrape, I do successfully get images, but it puts them on my PC in a configuration folder. I run scrapes on PC no problem, the issue is when I select the Pi.

The above mentioned error message is what led me to try the SSH options to try to isolate the problem. I'm just using the latest build from the github site, nothing abnormal I don't think.

AlexMurphy

@ghostlywindmill I feel bad, man. I am trying to help you. BUT the problem seems to be on your end, specific to you. I can't help you with that. Sorry. It works fine for me.

ghostlywindmill

@AlexMurphy no worries, thanks for trying to help. I'll keep fiddling with it and report back if I can get it to work. Or I might just run it on my PC ROM files and move the ikayes/.xml over.

AlexMurphy

@ghostlywindmill I mean it, if SSH is working and you have the path configured then the problem is on your end. It could be an issue with your Firewall, if you use such a thing. If you get it sorted please post the resolution here. Don't forget those that come after you...

hansolo77

Is the server having issues right now or something? I noticed a bunch of my NES roms were missing, and checked and saw they weren't included in the xml because there were no matches. I'm trying to rescrape and build a new xml with the unmatched roms added, but UXS keeps crashing. It does it at different stages of progress, like 10% in, 90% in, 50%, etc. Been trying to do it for the last 2 hours and haven't gotten it to complete yet. Just thought maybe the problem is with the server, because I've been able to scrape 100% this system before with the same settings. The logs just show the progression, but have no indication to a cause of a crash.

ghostlywindmill

@hansolo77

I am having the same issue...cant get a complete scrape done, and the crashing points are random.

hansolo77

I've narrowed down the problem to being related to the 2.2.0.2 version of the scraper. Appears to be some kind of memory leak. Funny thing is, when it crashes, it actually keeps scraper.exe running in your task manager. I had 4 copies of it running earlier. Then I saw @screech mention in another thread about the version .3 coming with new MIX profiles, and that .2 was "really" buggy. So I gave it a try and was able to get a full scrape with 2.2.01. Downgrade to the 2.2.0.1 version and you should be good.

@screech - Can I make an observed suggestion? When you scrape ROMs that aren't in the server's database, and you have it set to "Add missing roms in XML", the gamelist.xml file creates game names that are not helpful at all.. meaning:

<name> (Clone, Beta, Demo, Proto, Trad, Hack, Unl)</name>

I actually get a list with about 30 of these, and because of the parentheses these are at the top of all my lists inside EmulationStation. Can you change this so it creates the name as simply the ROMFILE instead?

AndersHP

I have just tried this scraper for the first time, and I'm having the following issues:

I have 40 games in my FBA folder, but the program only recognizes 32.
It then says that it's scraping all 32 with succes, but only 5-6 of these show up with images in ES.
When scrolling through the remaining games, the system starts to become very slow, essentially crashes.

It seems there's PNG's made for all the recognized 32 games in the downloaded_images folder, though...

screech

Hi guys, the 2.2.0.3 is out with correction :

2.2.0.3
Corrected :

Random Error making UXS crash. (Changing a part of MAIN <-> ENGINE communication system)
Changing color progressbar is now only green (Maybe a raison of random crash)
SSH finally will work (sorry for that)
Apostrophes in filename now works... (Thanks Marblemad)

Added :

ProgressBar when creating the XML File

(And of course correction of the 2.2.0.2 like the missing rom name ;) )

hansolo77

SSH kill of EmulationStation still doesn't work.

screech

I haven't Retropie installed :( can someone give me a kill command to kill ES from SSH ?

I use "killall emulationstation" can someone test it from putty for exemple ?

It works on recalbox no reason it don't works on retropie :(

hansolo77

I just tried something else, and it is working... Apparently if you have it set to create the gamelist.xml locally (on the computer) then it doesn't kill EmulationStation. If you have it create on the pi, then it does. It wasn't even prompting before.

brunocedup

Yesterday I scraped some roms to test and I choice the video download in YES. For some systems, how FBA and Master Systems the videos run very well, but for SNES, for example, the videos don't run well on my Raspberry.

I think that the problem can be the power supply. When I surf at SNES roms, show every time a yellow ray on right top corner TV.

ghostlywindmill

@screech Thanks for the update. I have done some testing and can confirm that SSH now works for me, and I still haven't had another crash either.

Wondering if you (or anyone else) can help me figure out what i'm doing wrong with my autoconfig path, though--I still can't get it to save images to my Pi, it just says it detected a problem with the autoconfiguration path. I tried resetting it to default but still doesn't work.

Here is a link to what it looks like:
https://ibb.co/bG6ZtF

Right now it's just saving it to my C:\configs folder, which is fine I suppose (can still move it to the Pi manually via FTP) but I'm sure I'm doing something wrong.

Edit: I should say that I have not changed any default settings for rom, imge or XML location; roms are in RetroPie/roms and the gameslist and download_images folders are on my Pi in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation

mattrixk

Hi @screech, I know it was over 2 weeks ago that you gave me advice about scraping NeoGeo, but I finally got around to testing it properly. What I ended up doing was scraping NeoGeo normally, which found ~60 out of ~120 games, then I turned scrape mode to "update xml", left research mode on "crc+filename" and turned off "auto-select your system". Then when I went to scrape, I selected Mame instead of NeoGeo and it found the rest of the games.

A2ra3L

Am I right in thinking that the XML scraper connects to screenscraper.fr on startup? I finally got all my problems sorted out last night and scraped 4 of my systems, then went to bed and when I get up this morning the program is REALLY slow to load and the picture of the system I choose to scrape isn't showing on the bottom of the window, it takes a long time to test the server and then won't scrape.

I can ping the site using cmd and that works perfect, but when I try to go there in a web browser like chrome it takes along time to load if it loads at all. I'm not sure if it's my connection or the site but I was more worried about the XML scraper itself. Obviously it has trouble scraping because of the slow connection, but would that make it slow to start as well or is that a program issue?

RedDog

I tried to use this scraper tonight with a 4-Mix and 3 threads configured to work with no connection to the Pi3 (ie local folders only) and it took over two hours to do 100 games. At first, it was pretty fast, but after a few minutes it just slowed to a painful crawl.

I noticed in the logs that it was waiting a lot.

Also, there were a number of times where the game's Wheel Image wasn't applied and others where all I received was a corrupt image despite assets being available on the scraper site. I assume the application just timed out. I am in Florida.

Anyone have any suggestions or could it indeed just be the distance?

RedDog

@RedDog said in [SOFT] Universal XML Scraper V2 - Easy Scrape with High Quality picture:

I tried to use this scraper tonight with a 4-Mix and 3 threads configured to work with no connection to the Pi3 (ie local folders only) and it took over two hours to do 100 games. At first, it was pretty fast, but after a few minutes it just slowed to a painful crawl.

I noticed in the logs that it was waiting a lot.

Also, there were a number of times where the game's Wheel Image wasn't applied and others where all I received was a corrupt image despite assets being available on the scraper site. I assume the application just timed out. I am in Florida.

Anyone have any suggestions or could it indeed just be the distance?

So, after watching the Windows Task Manager during a few scraping sessions, I found that Chrome was stealing a lot more RAM than I realized. After closing that down, the scraping improved, but there are still problems. When starting a session, the imaging is very quick at about one image a second, but after the first 15 or 20, it starts to slow down at an exponential rate. I found that after 10 minutes or so, it was better to cancel the process and start it again.

I also found what I assume is an issue with the scraper. I have my Mix set to the 4 image. If I set it to 'Picture Only' in the General Configuration, the scraper folders will show the program creating the 4-mix image, but then it only brings the background image to the destination folder and not the final 4-mix image.

Another issue I notices is that occassionally, the thread number in the General Configuration will change from my setting (3) to 1 or empty. When empty, it appears to act as if it were a 1.

Also, does anyone know why final images might be missing Wheel images if one exists on the screenscraper.fr site? Maybe an incompatibility with the image or a time out? For example: Gain Ground for megadrive. If you try to scrape a 4-mix, the resulting image will have a Box, a Cartridge, and Screenshot, but no Wheel image...and there is a Wheel image on the site.

hansolo77

Sup @RedDog? :) Fellow GameEx'er? I don't think the mix will create with a wheel image. The 4-mix is a combination of ScreenShot, Box, Cart, and the "marquee" game name at the right. If you have "Wheel" selected as an option, I believe it downloads that as a separate file like "filename-wheel.jpg".

@screech I think your xml generator is still a bit buggy. I'm going to try and scrape again, but I noticed tonight that the scraped gamelist.xml it created for Nintendo FDS created a bunch of unnecessary blank <image/> lines. Please see here:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/84974
Essentially, I fixed the problem I was having by removing those lines from my xml. But it shouldn't have created them in the first place. Can you check into it? :)

RedDog

@hansolo77 said in [SOFT] Universal XML Scraper V2 - Easy Scrape with High Quality picture:

Sup @RedDog? :) Fellow GameEx'er? I don't think the mix will create with a wheel image. The 4-mix is a combination of ScreenShot, Box, Cart, and the "marquee" game name at the right. If you have "Wheel" selected as an option, I believe it downloads that as a separate file like "filename-wheel.jpg".

Hey Han. Yup, it's me. Thanks for the tip on the Marquee.