Pixel Theme

backstander

Is video preview enabled in the most recent version of Pixel-metadata?

I don't think it is.

Also, where do you put the video files?

Easy way to add video and marquees tags in your gamelist for video support
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/6589/easy-way-to-add-video-and-marquees-tags-in-your-gamelist-for-video-support

just_jeepin

@backstander I don't have windows so I can't run the code. I'll have to add by hand if I can figure out the code to add.

It's a shame it's not as simple as changing "game_title-image.jpg" to "game_title-video.mp4".

Nismo

@just_jeepin If you change "game_title-image.jpg" to "game_title-video.mp4", you loose possibility of displaying videos and images at same time for boxart or anything else.

It's not so difficult to put a few folders with only the gamelists, inside a USB pendrive along with the script (USB pen, SD card , mobile phone, etc), and going to a friend's home or somebody of your family and do it there, it can take only a few seconds to do the job.

I'm sure you meet somebody with windows . Remember that the script only works in windows 7 or higher.

It is very little work compared to the one done by @fieldofcows to make videos possible. Just right click and "run with poewershell" and in less than a second you have your new gamelist, you don't need the roms, you don't need the videos, you only need the gamelist along with the script.

So you can go to somebody's home and do it in less than 1 min.

Good luck.

sergioad

@Rookervik could I fork pixel with my modifications and upload it to GitHub? I would name it pixel-sound pixel-arcade or arcade-pixel and I would mention your awesome work in my readme what do you think?

If you say no I will not mention the posibility to fork it in my life

Ronniebiggs

@just_jeepin said in Pixel Theme:

@backstander I don't have windows so I can't run the code. I'll have to add by hand if I can figure out the code to add.

It's a shame it's not as simple as changing "game_title-image.jpg" to "game_title-video.mp4".

I made an account just for this:

I used WinSCP to access my PI over my home network.

I edited every gamelist.xml with notepad++ directly en used a find and replace with "Wrap around" and search mode "Regular expression" enabled

Find: <image>./boxart/(.*).png</image>
Replace: <image>./boxart/\1.png</image>\n\t\t<video>./snap/\1.mp4</video>

Adjust above to fit your needs! (subfolder for boxart, file extensions etc.)

Nismo

@Ronniebiggs If you replace images for videos will broken your gamelist for all game images. If one theme make use of image, you will see the video, but not boxarts.

Ronniebiggs

@Nismo
I understand, but I added an extra line with video information instead.
For missing videos a blank screen is shown however.

Rookervik

Adding Video Previews, Day 1.

2 hours spent. Videos won't play over the background. Even using nismo's xml as a reference.

Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

Nismo

@Rookervik where can I download what you have done? I can take a look and fix it.

mattrixk

@Rookervik said in Pixel Theme:

Videos won't play over the background. Even using nismo's xml as a reference.

I had the same problem. Your background image needs to be <image name="background">. It has to be called background and can't have the extra="true" in it. That is the only element that will sit below the video.

Rookervik

@mattrixk Yeah, it was. For some reason doesn't work in this theme. If I can't get it going I'll share it with @Nismo once I'm finished and give him a nice thank-you section in the readme.

And the pixel theme has 2 backgrounds that display below the video. And it works. But this one it won't work. It's odd. I still don't feel that video previews is ready for the big time.

Nismo

@Rookervik upload your theme in some place for download, i'll glad to help you. Video preview it's working perfect for everybody, just don't forget any "extra" tagged images will be on top of video.

mattrixk

@Rookervik I'm willing to take a look as well if you want a second pair of eyes on it.

Rookervik

@Nismo Yeah, except any more images will only display if you put extra=true.

Extra=false doesn't show the image, removing the extra tag causes the theme to crash. And I can't use 2 background tags.

Not sure why pixel video allows 2 images to go below the video. Background and overlay. Overlay is marked extra, yet does not render in front of the video.

jdrassa

@Rookervik the overlay image looks like it is mostly transparent. It likely is rendered on top of the video, but the video is still visible due to the transparency.

Rookervik

@jdrassa Ah, that makes sense. So the pixel 2 theme is not compatible with video previews, as it takes 2 backgrounds. Shame. Looks like video previews needs some more work. Previews need to appear in order of layering.

mattrixk

@Rookervik Being able to set the z-index of every element is one the 2 main things I really want to see in ES (the other being proper tagging, filtering and sorting).

Rookervik

@mattrixk Many things already abide by the order you place them in the XML. Having Videos not go above things is a problem.

As far as I know, you're still forced to set a finite size for videos. They still can't be displayed maxSize (keeping aspect). Changing from Widescreen to Standard will squish the videos on the screen.

mattrixk

@Rookervik Pretty much all of what you say is true. You can control the z-index of any extra="true" content by it's placement in the XML, but I'd also like to be able to control the metadata elements the same way (like being able to place the gamelist in front of the "md_image").

<maxSize> on videos would be great, but unfortunately we're currently stuck with <size>. I also don't like that "md_video" and "md_image" take the same size. It works fine if you have screenshots in the <image> tag, but if you have box art then they stretch to the video ratio, which looks bad for portrait boxes.

jdrassa

@Rookervik This discussion inspired me to dig into the code and see what I could do to fix some of these problems. I have a working implementation to add maxSize to videos. I need to clean it up and would like to run it by @fieldofcows before submitting a PR.

As for ordering, @mattrixk is correct. Currently only the "extra" content is ordered based on the order in which it is defined in the theme xml. The order of everything else is hardcoded.

I think my next project will be to put together a z-index implementation to solve the ordering problem. I looked at this previously and the biggest issue was that the "extras" are treated as if they are a single element which complicates the ability to place elements such as video between them.