Video View For All Themes

Rookervik

@mattrixk I'm with you on updating things. Once I get something working, I hate to update and take the chance of screwing things up. I've had it happen far too many times. So I, also, have no intention of force-updating ES just to get a theme to work... that used to work fine on older versions.

@lilbud If you've done some theming tricks, a single update to the main.xml will apply to all systems. You shouldn't have to update every single system. But for anyone that has written all of the main theming aspects into the theme.xmls, then yeah, updating a theme can be very, very time-consuming.

I can get video previews ready, and even release it as a separate theme. But until RetroPie has a couple of releases under it's belt containing 'video preview-modded ES' as the main image download from the web page, I don't want to make video previews the main download for my themes. I'd hate to break peoples' systems that just wanted the new graphics on their old and trusty RetroPie setups.

Nismo

@Rookervik said in Video View For All Themes:

If you've done some theming tricks, a single update to the main.xml will apply to all systems. You shouldn't have to update every single system. But for anyone that has written all of the main theming aspects into the theme.xmls, then yeah, updating a theme can be very, very time-consuming.

That's my case, because not all systems has the same size of video window and not in the same place... and there are not tricks for that if you do a theme like mine...

hansolo77

@Nismo said in Video View For All Themes:

@hansolo77 I'm sure you doesn't have the correct version of ES for video.

can you hear video sound even if you can't see the video?

Yes, I can see and hear the video. But the aspect ratio is all wrong. I'll post a picture of it..

Actually, nevermind. I re-installed the latest version of ES from source, and then re-install the theme again. Now it's working. The only downside to this video-version of the Carbon theme is the lack of any of the extra details, like number plays and last time played. I guess that's just a limitation of what was included in the theme.

Zigurana

@fieldofcows said in Video View For All Themes:

Another thought. Instead of checking version numbers we could use something like this:
<feature supported="video">
  [configuration if ES supports video]
</feature>

<feature supported="grid">
  [configuration if ES supports grid]
</feature>

If you can point me to the commit that takes care of this on the ES side of things, I'll create the same for the kids-mode fork.
(I need to get back to that one in any case, smoothen out the last wrinkles.)

Nismo

@hansolo77 I didn't touch metadata, the theme is that way out of the box, almost the latest version from github is that theme. And is not a limitation the theme is made that way.

Sorry all for the offtopic.

Rookervik

@Nismo Ah yes I noticed that. You can't use <maxSize> on the videos. So you are forced to set their X and Y size. Making your themes a lot harder in that you have to research the console and figure out the aspect, and set the videos to that size for your theme. It would be much easier to allow maxSize and remove size. That way themers don't have to manually enter an exact size for the video. I really dislike forcing images (or movies) to a certain aspect. I'd rather they were restrained from getting too large but allowed to keep whatever aspect they are in.

mattrixk

@Rookervik said in Video View For All Themes:

I'd rather they were restrained from getting too large but allowed to keep whatever aspect they are in.

Hear hear!

Nismo

@Rookervik I was talking with @fieldofcows about that time ago, sometimes it's useful for some themes to restrict video size and sometimes not, and the function to show the image if no video doesn't respect the aspect, it's a known issue and he was working on that.

fieldofcows

@Nismo said in Video View For All Themes:

@Rookervik I was talking with @fieldofcows about that time ago, sometimes it's useful for some themes to restrict video size and sometimes not, and the function to show the image if no video doesn't respect the aspect, it's a known issue and he was working on that.

Was I? Haha! I can't remember. I've got such a huge list of ES tasks I want to complete and not enough time to work on them! It's a shame I have to work for a living :(

I did have code in there to maintain the aspect ratio but I took it out for the RetroPie PR in order to simplify the review/testing of what was a big change - I tried to keep the change as small as possible. It wouldn't be hard to put this back in.

Nismo

@fieldofcows Yes, don't worry and take your time.

Was here https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/5823/looking-for-testers-for-es-video-preview-on-raspberry-pi/36

I remeber to speak about the maxsize on videos but i can't find the post.

mattrixk

@fieldofcows said in Video View For All Themes:

Another thought. Instead of checking version numbers we could use something like this:
<feature supported="video">
  [configuration if ES supports video]
</feature>

<feature supported="grid">
  [configuration if ES supports grid]
</feature>

Has anyone started working on this? I think it would be a great way to future proof the themes so we can build for the cool new stuff while still making the themes work on older versions of RetroPie.

HurricaneFan

Any word on if NBBA theme will get video support?

jdrassa

@fieldofcows said in Video View For All Themes:

Another thought. Instead of checking version numbers we could use something like this:
<feature supported="video">
  [configuration if ES supports video]
</feature>

<feature supported="grid">
  [configuration if ES supports grid]
</feature>

I put together an implementation of this while I was working on the carousel theming. I pulled it out into its own branch and submitted a pull request. I also added another filter directly to the view element. It works essentially the same, the idea being that if/when another new view is added it won't have to be wrapped in the feature element.

HurricaneFan

How do I test the pull request for Carbon Video support? I'd love to see this get added to the main branch but am unsure how to get the video support onto my pi.

https://github.com/RetroPie/es-theme-carbon/pull/20

jdrassa

@HurricaneFan Here is a link to my branch where I made the changes for the pull request.

https://github.com/jrassa/es-theme-carbon/tree/video-view

jdrassa

This post is deleted!

jdrassa

@jdrassa said in Video View For All Themes:

@fieldofcows said in Video View For All Themes:
Another thought. Instead of checking version numbers we could use something like this:
<feature supported="video">
  [configuration if ES supports video]
</feature>

<feature supported="grid">
  [configuration if ES supports grid]
</feature>
I put together an implementation of this while I was working on the carousel theming. I pulled it out into its own branch and submitted a pull request. I also added another filter directly to the view element. It works essentially the same, the idea being that if/when another new view is added it won't have to be wrapped in the feature element.

My pull request has been merged. Theme makers should be able to update their themes without worrying about the theme breaking for users who haven't updated EmulationStation.

herb_fargus

@jdrassa I've been a bit out of the loop with all the recent developments. So any new themes that have video support will need to specify it with a tag no?

mattrixk

@jdrassa what about the carousel mod? Normal ES used to break if you had carousel code in the xml. Do you now need to wrap the carousel code in filter tags, or will it work without filter tags?

jdrassa

@herb_fargus themes aren't required to use it. Doing so will ensure that the theme still works for users who haven't upgraded EmulationStation.

@mattrixk that is the exactly what this should prevent. It is not a requirement to use the feature elements, but doing so will prevent the carousel theme element from breaking the theme for users who have not upgraded. @Zigurana will need to update the existing pull request or we will need to submit another so that the feature element recognizes "carousel". Currently, it only supports "video".