Posts by apanzzon

Quote from apanzzon

Absolutely, I've sent you a PM with a complete theme!

Test results so far:

mp4/aac = no sound
mp4/mp3 = no sound
avi/wav = no sound (mp4 apparently can't use raw PCM)

My ffmpeg-fu doesn't seem to be as strong as I thought.
But main takeaways from this (still haven't found a way to mux/convert mp4/aac to mp4/pcm) is that it might work with a mkv container.
So far, the only format I've been able to play so far via aplay (console) is Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono, which would make the video snaps huge!

Do you think it would be possible to enable the codecs with vlc/libvlc?
[hr]
Some more findings:
The last try was to use an .avi container with PCM 16 Uncompressed Audio, but still no sounds.
Although, I can hear the clicks used within the theme inside Emulationstation, I did notice that the sound settings in emulationstations menu is always set to 0

Also, in es_log.txt I found an error.
VolumeControl::init() - Failed to find mixer elements

I don't know if this is the real issue or not, but I found some interesting read when googling:

On RPI2 with USB sound adapter, ES always reports VolumeControl::init() - Failed to find mixer elements! · Issue #433 · Aloshi/EmulationStation · GitHub

Quote from escalade

Probably because of the --disable-a52 parameter I passed when compiling vlc (there was a reason for this which I can't recall just now). If you convert the audio track to wav/mp3 it should work. Have fun, do some testing and report back If you hook me up with a complete theme I can test, I might be interested to polish it more

Absolutely, I've sent you a PM with a complete theme!

Test results so far:

mp4/aac = no sound
mp4/mp3 = no sound
avi/wav = no sound (mp4 apparently can't use raw PCM)

Quote from escalade

My bad, forgot to clean kodi/ffmpeg which has been linked to vdpau libs which aren't included as I disabled other graphic drivers. I'm rebuilding and uploading again.

EDIT: New build uploaded, tested working.

Hallelujah! It works!

The sound issue was solved by copying aplay.conf.sample and pinning down the correct port.

Although, there's a small issue - there's no sound in the previews. (in my case it's actually a feature, since I've actually compiled video previews with and without sound as there's no way currently (?) to stop the video from looping - making your head go crazy if it's in the background of the living room)

I can still here some "ticking clicks" when previewing games inside of emulationstation, so there's sound both there and in retroarch.

I'm assuming this is a codec issue, wdyt?
Currently, my snaps are using:

Audio
MPEG-4 AAC
Stereo / 48000 Hz / 109 kbps bitrate

Video
H.264
320 x 240
60 frames per second
160 kbps

I'm going to try to convert them with ffmpeg to use just vanilla .wav, and then go to some common format like mp3 and see if it makes a difference and come back.

Thank you *so* much for this!

Quote from escalade

I've uploaded a new build under the "test" folder with ES from RetroPie, go ahead and give it a test run. I've done no testing myself on the new themes and the video functionality, could be that my libvlc package needs adjustment.

The size addition is about 61MB uncompressed, the resulting image exceeds 512MB and would be incompatible with the LE partitioning scheme. I've removed other graphics drivers in the test build keeping only i965 which should be enough for your NUC.

I've added the commit to my "retroes" branch.

Thank you!

I've tried it now, twice. On this particular nuc, (old nuc dc3217iye with HD4000 integrated graphics card), this results in libreelec booting up with the logo, and then only showing a black screen with a cursor. Searching around the internetz, a lot of people seem to have the same issue (i.e here LibreELEC (Krypton) v8.0.0 RELEASE – LibreELEC)

Procedure:
1) Clean install of LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-8.0-devel-20170506.img.gz -
Result: Booting up fine. (I have a sound issue though, no sound via retroarch, but that might be solved by pinning down the correct device, not sure - to be investigated).
Movies play fine with sound though, like expected.

2) Update to test build LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-8.0-devel-20170509.tar
Result: Booting up to a black screen with only a cursor.

I've tried to dig through the logs, but I'm not able to find anything.
Actually, after cleaning ~/.kodi/temp/kodi.log and restart, the log is empty. Seems like kodi doesn't start?

If you could hand me some advice of what logs to use, I might be able to dig further.
I'll try to see if it works on another nuc as well.

Quote from escalade

I reverted it due to the added space required for libvlc, also I think there was an issue compiling libvlc for RPi. What kind of system were you thinking to run it on? I've since rebased so that specific commit is lost, but it's just a matter of changing the url for the emulationstation package to the retropie repo. Is there a specific reason you want the ES from retropie? Pretty much the only difference is the added support for videos in themes.

Main reasons I want the retropie emulationstation is because

1. Video previews . This is just too damn sexy. And after been using Launchbox/Attractmode for a such a long time, it's pain to go back.
I also notice that I'm actually more engaged and willing to invest playing new games, since it's a more exploratory user experience.

2. It's actually has some active development (and the retropie community is huge)

3. The theming community is becoming so creative, using video previews. Just look at this or this or ... this

4. Other neat features like:
- Goto Random Game
- Optimize time saving gamelists (can be a huge timesaver on large rom collections)
- Gamelist filter (filter genre, players, ratings, publisher/developer)

I'm currently running it ontop of multiple machines (and raspberrys), but my main target is x64 (Intel nuc) for which your build is just perfect for. The extra oomphf together with either 240p or 480p video previews is amazing, but it works just as well on a Raspberry Pi.

How much extra space are we talking about btw?
Anyway, I think this would be *the* killer for your build, combining two of open source most popular and beloved projects.

escalade

Hi!

Thank you and great work on this custom build.
The one and only missing thing is now to use the Emulationstation fork from retropie. As I understood it, you actually included it a couple of weeks ago, but reverted it due to some nvidia driver issue? Boy, was I dissapointed when I tried to use the new image, only to realize that it was reverted

As I invested heavy amount of time into customizing video previews (it is *so* worth it), could you please give me some hints of howto add it back (I'm a developer myself, but not into C/C++) I've looked through your Git repository, but seem to be unable to find your specific commits.

Or would it be possible to add it back once more or somehow provide a custom version (i.e /usr/bin/emulationstation-retropie ?) into your build.

Hope to hear some thoughts from you about how it could be solved.

All the best!
Johan