New Comic Book Theme!
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@ortsac you have to have the videos in our gamelist.xml for each system. The videos can go in several places including within the roms folder itself. Your gamelist just needs to provide the correct path.
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@TMNTturtlguy As a try out I placed two videos and edit the gamelist.xml. In this case for psx as an example:
<video>/home/pi/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/psx/Bushido Blade 2 (USA)-video.mp4</video>
and another one:
<video>/home/pi/.emulationstation/downloaded_images/psx/Tekken 3 (USA)-video.mp4</video>
The Bushido Blade was showing the video preview in the large black box but very erratic, meaning very distorted, and not recognizable. Sometimes you could see the scene but mostly pixels and static. The sound seems to be OK. Do I need to change any configuration on the pi to get the video right?
The Tekken 3 did not show any video preview at all, but only the scraped art image appears on both the large black box and the small gray box. In the gamelist, between Bushido Blade and Tekken, there are other games that do not have video preview. Perhaps this caused the Theme to default to a none video item for the rest of the list. Bushido Blade happens to be the first one on the list and Tekken is somewhere the 8th on the list.
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@ortsac said in New Comic Book Theme!:
The Bushido Blade was showing the video preview in the large black box but very erratic, meaning very distorted, and not recognizable. Sometimes you could see the scene but mostly pixels and static. The sound seems to be OK. Do I need to change any configuration on the pi to get the video right?
Did you watch the video before putting it into retropie? How does it play? How large is the video file, if it is a large file size you will need to compress using a program such as handbrake.
The Tekken 3 did not show any video preview at all,
again, does the video play properly outside of retropie? I would rename the video to remove any spaces: Tekken3(USA)-vidoe.mp4 and make sure that you have it exactly the same. Again compress the video.In the gamelist, between Bushido Blade and Tekken, there are other games that do not have video preview. Perhaps this caused the Theme to default to a none video item for the rest of the list.
Correct, Once you have videos in the list, if a rom does not have a video, it will default to the image. This is set that way in the theme and is performing properly. The other options i had are to leave it blank, or to insert a default video, but I find those annoying and prefer just a large image. Unfortunately due to the restrictions of what we can do in the theme, i have 2 options, a standard generic image, or just let the scraped art duplicate. I went with the duplication as i find it to be an acceptable alternative.
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@ortsac I would recommend lowering the resolution of your videos to anything equal or lower to 480x360 at 30fps.
VLC on the Pi doesn't handle a lot more. There's a version with OMX Player, that's hardware accelerated, that would likely perform better for you, but you'd need to install it manually.
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@TMNTturtlguy Yes I've watch the video in Windows 10 PC which has far better hardware environment (CPU, GPU, and RAM) that the RPi3 and so it plays well on the PC. The size of the video file is 5.5MB which is probably too big for the RPi to handle. What's the ideal size for the video file to be? I guess back to learning mode for me, need to learn "handbrake" to reduce the size.
@pjtf Any recommendation for an application to lower resolution? And I guess lowering the resolution would likewise reduce the file size....
Thanks for all the help!!! This is a very good community to learn and I am learning a lot. Hopefully, I could return the favor on someone else....
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@TMNTturtlguy Success!!! Used handshake as suggested and was able to reduce the resolution to 480X360@30fps (was originally 640X480@30fps), thereby reducing the size of the file itself to 3.5MB. Now that I know the process, I will do likewise with the rest the games in the gamelist.
Again, your help is much appreciated!!! Comic Book theme rocks!!!
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@ortsac Awesome!
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16:9 Updated! See the official post here link to post
Fixes detailed view and also corrects github file issues, details in main post.
Edit:
4:3 Updated! See the official post here link to postThanks
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COMIC BOOK THEME NOW ON ES THEMES MENU!
Thank you everyone for your kind words and support. Both the 16:9 and 4:3 Versions of the theme are available for download from the retropie menu! I will be removing the links from the other pages and all updates moving forward will be through the official retropie menu script.
Make sure to update your retropie-setup script to be able to see and download the themes.
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@TMNTturtlguy said in New Comic Book Theme!:
Make sure to update your retropie-setup script to be able to see and download the themes.
Sorry I just need to ask, How exactly can I do this without messing up the current build? I am such a noob...
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Hi, @TMNTturtlguy.
Now that the theme comics 16/9 and 4/3 are finished, think you make an identical theme but just with scrap images instead of videos.
That way we could integrate it into RECALBOX.thank you in advance
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@ortsac Since i don't know the details of your build and what if any customization you have done, i can't answer you with 100% surety, but updating your startup script should not negatively effect your setup. It should have no effect on your roms or emulators. If you are running an alternate Emulationstation Build, you may have to reinstall that, but that is only if you are running a build such as the screensaver build or the kidsmode build. If you are running the standard ES, updating the startup script will not affect you. The only other thing i can think of is the es_systems.cfg file. If you have edited this, it will be overwritten unless you made of copy of it in home/pi/.emulationstation. Seeing that you are stating you are a NOOB! you probably haven't done this yet either.
Follow the directions in the docs link to docs. You only need to select Update Retropie Setup Script.
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@MikOzzZ Hello @MikOzzZ, i see that you just joined the community, welcome! I suggest that you take a look back through the posts to see some history on the theme. The theme already has a detailed view that does not use video preview, only images. Due to the limitations of themeing for ES on retropie, i can only have 1 meta data (scraped) image per view in the detailed view and this is how i have it set up. There are instructions posted in this thread on how to manually remove all references for the video view if you would like.
I do not know much about RECALLBOX and do not plan on using that system. Feel free to make modifications to the theme to run on your system, however I do not have plans to create a RECALLBOX version and i do not have plans to release another version without video, and the current theme works for users in retropie without video. Thank you
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I haven't tested yet on Recalbox ;) But I think it will work nearly out of the box...
Just using the detailed view ;)
(And maybe rename some system to match Recalbox/Retropie name, but I'm pretty sur there isn't difference ;) ) -
I suspect the only factor in using the theme in Recalbox is what emulationstation version it has. If I recall correctly from another user who tried it during development, it didn't have the WSOD fix with better texture management in memory, so that's likely a showstopper as the theme is somewhat memory heavy.
But it can be worth a shot. -
@TMNTturtlguy Super thank you for your response, so I test the theme on recalbox and it passes without worries.
Is there a solution to scrapping the images in place of the square of the videos with xml scraper @screech
As below:
0_1495472443263_54cfcc0e-498a-4402-982e-3e3b5e63b9a1-1490681082123-photo-mar-28-12-52-03-am-resized.jpg -
Just scrape as usual ;)
It will replace the screenshot with the scraped picture. -
@screech said in New Comic Book Theme!:
Just scrape as usual ;)
It will replace the screenshot with the scraped picture.J'ai scrapper comme d'habitude mais il a simplement mis les images dans le petit carré de droite et non à la place du gros carré video
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@MikOzzZ yes, per @screech if you only have image files, then images will show up in the large black box by default, you do not need to do anything differently.
I also noticed in the screen shot that the controller is appearing in the top right corner. Did you make the change to switch from the Comic Rip characters to the controller? If you did, nice work! If you didn't, this means you have an old copy of the theme and you should download the updated version from retropie menu. Hope it all works well for you.
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