Looking for testers for ES Video Preview on Raspberry Pi

pjft

@fieldofcows What video formats have you tried on your end? Could you try with a mp4 file, like one of the ones I linked to earlier? Just to confirm that it's not a video format thing?

MWGemini

@pjft I've got the <video> tags in my gamelist file, but for some reason the OldRoom theme doesn't display them.
At any rate, with a little fiddling of switching themes around, I've got my videos playing again.

@fieldofcows I repeated the tests I posted earlier, and with the case open and fan off, my temps are actually a bit lower than they were previously while idling on the carousel view, although the ambient temps are a little lower now.

I pulled the fan and closed up the case and let the videos continue to cycle. Currently, the highest temps I've seen are in the low 50s. In other words, the temperature change using the new code is barely noticeable from when the Pi is just idling and not playing a video. I have not seen any graphical glitches of any kind for the videos (videos are playing better now than they were before). Edit: max temps after 10+ minutes of video playing are with fan off and closed case are now hitting about 60.

I did notice some corrupted text characters in the menus while switching themes around (an issue I saw during v2 of the WSOD fix, I think). Also, the screensaver does not disable the video anymore. For stress-testing purposes, that's okay, as I can leave the video running indefinitely, but just wanted to mention it. So, a few bugs to work out perhaps, but the broad strokes of this fix definitely appear to be a solid fix.

If you have other tests you'd like me to run, just let me know.

pjft

@MWGemini Wow. Those are great news then! Thanks for the report. Looking very much forward to trying this out then.

MWGemini

@pjft @fieldofcows Video has been cycling for close to 30 minutes now, with fan off and case closed. Temps are currently about 64.5, which is down 1 degree from a few minutes ago. It may have stabilized at these temps, but I will continue to monitor and will update if they increase.

Edit: after about 40 minutes, it's now around 67°C. Probably still climbing, but it's very slow. Definitely a HUGE improvement.

pjft

@MWGemini confirming: 640x480@60fps? No artifacts?

Well done @fieldofcows !

I suppose next steps, while you're at it, is to test out one of the videos @Nismo put together earlier. If they work well now, then that's good news for his video packs. I expect they would work well, but worth checking.

Thank you very much for testing this out. It might be worth sharing this build with the other folks who were talking about overheating in other threads here.

Nismo

@pjft I agree, please test my pack and if not working well, i can downscale the videos, but i stopped all my re-encoding until I see I don't wasting my time...

MWGemini

@pjft 50 minutes and counting on the 19xx video mentioned above (640x480, 59fps). No artifacts currently, but I also stepped away for a bit so haven't been watching every frame. Temps currently in the high 60s (67-69).

@Nismo I'd be happy to test your pack if you can link me to it and provide instructions for how to get it installed.

pjft

@MWGemini thanks. I believe there's no point in keeping them running for longer, though. The temperature send to have plateaued, and they're at decent enough ranges that I would not worry about overheating. Well done.

As for the pack, just download it, choose a video and then you can replace (rename) to one of the videos you're currently already using. Make a backup copy of the original though. It's probably easier than setting up the full video library.

Nismo

@MWGemini I uploaded a megadrive-genesis pack of videos for testing a few posts ago... here is the link:

https://mega.nz/#!h9lEERaY!Kk6AdgQXSp2FKXJDBbujHGPFNRPtYnaZuir8HznWCrw

MWGemini

@pjft @fieldofcows I've let it go another 30 minutes with the screensaver active but the video still playing (so ~60 minutes with the screensaver off, and another 30 with the screensaver on). Temps are now hovering just around 60°C with fan off and case closed. No graphical glitches to report, other than the font issues I saw earlier.

@Nismo my apologies. Lots of text in this thread, and lots of active threads. It's getting harder for me to remember everything being said. I'm pulling down your pack now and will try to get it running and tested sometime in the next few hours.

MWGemini

@fieldofcows I've also noticed that when quitting EmulationStation now, text typed in the terminal does not show up, but commands are still executed. I did a little searching and found that executing the "reset" command fixes this. I'm guessing that omxplayer isn't releasing something that the terminal needs for text display.

@Nismo I downloaded your pack, but I'm still having trouble getting videos to play consistently. I did have a thought, though. All of my ROMs are grouped in folders by the game name. Perhaps that's causing problems? Here's a snip from my gamelist:

      <game id="3371" source="theGamesDB.net">
          <path>./3 Ninjas Kick Back/3 Ninjas Kick Back (U) [!].gen</path>
          <name>3 Ninjas Kick Back (U) [!]</name>
          <desc>3 Ninjas Kick Back follows 3 young ninja  brothers.</desc>
          <video>/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/downloaded_images/megadrive/3 Ninjas Kick Back (USA).mp4</video>
		  <image>~/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/megadrive/3 Ninjas Kick Back (U) [!]-image.jpg</image>
          <rating>0.4</rating>
          <releasedate>19940601T000000</releasedate>
          <developer>Malibu Interactive</developer>
          <publisher>Sony Imagesoft</publisher>
          <genre>Action</genre>
          <players>2</players>
      </game>

Also, strangely (still trying to figure out a pattern here), some of my Arcade games (the only system not grouped by folder, and where I was previously testing my videos) no longer play after moving the OldRoom's MAME theme into my Arcade theme. BUT, some videos that didn't play before now do. I've verified that all videos are still on the drive and are not corrupted, but I have no clue what's causing this strange behavior.

pjft

@MWGemini

Do you really have your video in

/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/downloaded_images/megadrive/3 Ninjas Kick Back (USA).mp4

?

Why do you have it there, if you don't mind me asking? Deliberate?

That looks like a configuration template folder.

fieldofcows

Thanks @MWGemini for all this testing your doing.

Just to be on the safe side, I'll reiterate that the build I have provided is just a proof of concept at the moment. Basically, I got the code to a state where I could prove that it would play videos in place of the current view and then built it for people to try. There are going to be bugs.

The ones I know about from my testing and now your results:

The video is always on top. Nothing at present can be rendered over the video. This includes marquees in pixel video theme and the scanlines in oldroom
The video is rendered on top of GUI menus
Video continues to play when screensaver cuts in
Terminal stops echoing output when ES is exited after playing a video (I get this too)

Work that I know needs to be done if we agree this is the way forward:

Fix the issues above :)
Add an option in es_settings.cfg to configure the player and arguments (this will allow tweaking of options without recompiling and also allow, for example, mplayer on linux)
Add an option, maybe via the GUI to select software vs overlay rendering. The software rendering allows overlays on top of the video and fading in and out so gives a better visual performance. It also works on platforms other than the RPi

Nismo

@MWGemini said in Looking for testers for ES Video Preview on Raspberry Pi:

      <game id="3371" source="theGamesDB.net">
          <path>./3 Ninjas Kick Back/3 Ninjas Kick Back (U) [!].gen</path>
          <name>3 Ninjas Kick Back (U) [!]</name>
          <desc>3 Ninjas Kick Back follows 3 young ninja  brothers.</desc>
          <video>/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/downloaded_images/megadrive/3 Ninjas Kick Back (USA).mp4</video>
		  <image>~/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/megadrive/3 Ninjas Kick Back (U) [!]-image.jpg</image>
          <rating>0.4</rating>
          <releasedate>19940601T000000</releasedate>
          <developer>Malibu Interactive</developer>
          <publisher>Sony Imagesoft</publisher>
          <genre>Action</genre>
          <players>2</players>
      </game>

Why do you have your videos in that folder?

no longer play after moving the OldRoom's MAME theme into my Arcade theme.

What?, explain this to me please, you moved a folder from one theme to another?

darknior

@fieldofcows Oups i don't see this thread before :p
i have made two test this evening :

const char* args[] = { "--vout=omxil_vout", "--quiet"};
mVLC = libvlc_new(sizeof(args) / sizeof(args[0]), args);

and with "--vout=xcb_x11"

But it don't works fine :p
My Raspberry Pi was always at 70° ... and i always have the green glitch :(

I also try your new beta release :
https://github.com/fieldofcows/EmulationStation/releases

And it works like a dream :)
My proc was at 53°
And the green glitch have disappear :)
Yes the video is rendered on top of GUI menus ... but you will fix it later ;)

Thanks a lot :)

darknior

For Raspberry Pi 3, if you want to see your proc temperature and trying ES :

SSH to "/usr/sbin/"
Make a file "tempcpu"

#!/bin/bash
# Script: tempcpu.sh
# Purpose: Display the ARM CPU and GPU  temperature of Raspberry Pi 2/3 
# -------------------------------------------------------
while true
do
tput reset
cpu=$(</sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp)
echo "$(date) @ $(hostname)"
echo "-------------------------------------------"
echo "GPU => $(/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp)"
echo "CPU => $((cpu/1000))'C"
sleep 2
done

SAVE

Launch it on your PC with SSH and use ES ;)

MWGemini

Why do you have your videos in that folder?

@Nismo Do you recommend placing them somewhere else? If so, where? That's the default location for @sselph 's scraper I believe, and the UXS scraper from @screech as well. I certainly don't mind moving them (and at some point will probably move them to the ROM folders so I can keep the operating system separate from the ROMs).

What?, explain this to me please, you moved a folder from one theme to another?

Yes. I am using a modified version of the tronkyfran theme. I've changed some of the background images, and yesterday I put the files from your MAME folder into my theme's Arcade folder. Basically I replaced the tronkyfran Arcade theme with your MAME theme. It displays fine (and looks great!), but some videos don't play (but some do, so I'm not sure what's causing it). I will spend more time investigating it tomorrow.

Nismo

@MWGemini You can't do that, all the themes requires a main.xml file, and i'm sure tronkyfran theme main.xml it's not the same than mine, so the theme would not work at 100% because the lack of lot of data, or not the same positions for gamelist, textsize, etc. Also some values for videos are there. You break all the theme. And my theme use a folder named art that i'm realizing you didn't copy inside the tronkyfran's theme folder...

Anyway, there is no reason for some videos to play and others doesn't.

I don't recommend to use downloaed_images folder for videos. I use folders inside my rom folders, for example:

/roms/megadrive/videos/sonic.mp4

Then in your gamelist.xml only need this:

<video>./videos/sonic.mp4</video>

The same for marquees.

Also I don't understand why you have a subfolder for each game...

Regards.

fieldofcows

@darknior said in Looking for testers for ES Video Preview on Raspberry Pi:
I'm glad the omxplayer PoC build works for you - it means we're on the right track

@fieldofcows Oups i don't see this thread before :p
i have made two test this evening :
...
But it don't works fine :p

In order for VLC to use acceleration the VLC library needs to be rebuilt rather than installing it from the repository. That would be difficult to do as part of the ES build. I may look into this at some point but using omxplayer seems like a perfect workaround as long as the issues can be sorted. Ultimately the user will be able to choose through configuration which video player to use.

pjft

@fieldofcows hi! I'm back and I've just tried it out. It plateaued at 65 for me, playing the 640x480@60fps vídeo, and fixed any artifacts. Well done! @Nismo tried your videos and it was the same, so if this ends up moving to the main branch, your videos are good in the current format.

A question, if I may: the screen saver did not play a random video, do I need to do something for that to happen, or is it in a different branch?

Cheers!