modify logo and menu emulationstation

[davidesm]

[quote=82190]Try running just the omxplayer -o hdmi –layer 10000 /home/pi/splash_screen_video.mp4 command from either the console/terminal or through SSH.
This will hopefully give a more specific error message. I think it is likely that there is a small difference between the location you are pointing to in the script and the actual filename and location. (maybe an extra “.” or space that you missed)
[/quote]
Yeah, this is weird.

Typing it in the command line it plays fine. Still won’t play on start up.

A splashscreen shot: http://i.imgur.com/3QYg7qP.jpg
What I typed in terminal: http://i.imgur.com/I6rWaQ2.jpg
Video works from terminal: http://i.imgur.com/Nn7Zg03.jpg

Going to start with a fresh sd card and try again from scratch.

[whoismezero]

[quote=82200]Yeah, this is weird.
Typing it in the command line it plays fine. Still won’t play on start up.
A splashscreen shot: http://i.imgur.com/3QYg7qP.jpg What I typed in terminal: http://i.imgur.com/I6rWaQ2.jpg Video works from terminal: http://i.imgur.com/Nn7Zg03.jpg
Going to start with a fresh sd card and try again from scratch.
[/quote]

Could you post a shot of the error message? (if you haven’t already started fresh)

[davidesm]

[quote=82202]Could you post a shot of the error message? (if you haven’t already started fresh)
[/quote]
I tried one more thing since I was going to start from scratch anyways. Tried make file executable sudo chmod a+x /etc/init.d/asplashscreen activate sudo insserv /etc/init.d/asplashscreen as listed on another tutorial.

The video still doesn’t work, but now I have two messages. The original and a second.

Original: http://i.imgur.com/8b4qkeG.jpg?1
New: http://i.imgur.com/ZDmYjzA.jpg?1

[grassmunk]

This is a whole lot of effort to change the splash screen.

It’s just an SVG file contained in this file: splash_svg.cpp. You can use multiple programs to export SVG as a CPP file (I believe, I’m not going to walk you thought doing this part). Then just replace the contents of this file with your output.

You can always just disable the splash screen by making changes starting at line 233 in Window.cpp and either commenting those lines out or deleting the text.

Then just recompile EmulationStation with your custom changes.

Note: I do not condone this activity in anyway and I believe the splash screen (in EmulationStation) should remain intact, but I can understand the desire to create your own custom image or to remove it altogether (having had to do that for a DosBox project recently I found it to be a pain in the ass).

[smokinpuppy]

I got whoismezero’s omxplayer method to work, I only had to set the width and height of the video to 640 x 360 respectively. Unfortunatlly the sound wasn’t working at first, but it’s working now after I installed the latest version of omxplayer from here: https://github.com/popcornmix/omxplayer

I have another question, I can’t seam to find anything about it online, but does anyone know how I can play a video instead of “DIM” or “Blank Screen” in the screensaver?

Thanks in advance,

Robert

[nilsbyte]

[quote=83516]I have another question, I can’t seam to find anything about it online, but does anyone know how I can play a video instead of “DIM” or “Blank Screen” in the screensaver?
[/quote]

You can’t. The screensaver modes are built into EmulationStation, you’ll have to code a way by yourself to do make it play movies. At the moment we are not planning to add this feature. If more people demand this feature, we will eventually think about it.

[smokinpuppy]

[quote=83525]
You can’t. The screensaver modes are built into EmulationStation, you’ll have to code a way by yourself to do make it play movies. At the moment we are not planning to add this feature. If more people demand this feature, we will eventually think about it.
[/quote]

Thanks for your reply nilsbyte, That would be a great feature to add. For the time being, I’m wondering if you think the following will do the trick:

In GuiMenu.cpp under the screensaver behavior section:
ADD:
screensavers.push_back("video");

In Window.cpp under the Window::onSleep() function:
CHANGE:

unsigned char opacity = Settings::getInstance()->getString("ScreenSaverBehavior") == "dim" ? 0xA0 : 0xFF;
Renderer::drawRect(0, 0, Renderer::getScreenWidth(), Renderer::getScreenHeight(), 0x00000000 | opacity);

TO:

unsigned char opacity = Settings::getInstance()->getString("ScreenSaverBehavior") == "dim" ? 0xA0 : 0xFF;
	if(Settings::getInstance()->getString("ScreenSaverBehavior") == "video"){
		system("omxplayer -o hdmi --layer 10000 --loop /home/pi/video.mp4");
	} else {
		Renderer::drawRect(0, 0, Renderer::getScreenWidth(), Renderer::getScreenHeight(), 0x00000000 | opacity);
	}

Then recompile & install

Thanks in advance,

Robert

[Keigan]

Hey,

I’ve made an intro video for my pie and when it boots up I get this weird green and dotted lines at the bottom. I’ll try and take a photo next time I think of it, but when running the video through oxplayer it works fine, it’s only during the boot sequence that these weird markings come up.

Has anyone else had this issue when making a video intro?

[chito]

You know what i would like…

a slide show… like when a game is loading you get a slideshow of companies and technologies involved with making the game and then the games actual splash screen until the game is ready like this

like a screen saying “raspberry pi” with logo then it transitions to a screen saying “RetroPie” then maybe something like “Powered by: Emulation station” and then the splash screen for your custom machine and it stays on that until it finishes loading.

for now its all on one screen (view attached image)…. and then the emulations station splashscreen again.

[Keigan]

Well that would be easy to do. Just make a 30 second or so video of the intro and voila.

[chito]

A video would be heaps inefficient (hdd space and memory), not easy to change and way more work. but if its the only way then ill give it a go.

with these splash screens and videos what resolution/aspect ratio should they be created at?

[Keigan]

Depends on the resolution of your screen. My main screen resolution is 1920 x 1200 but, my secondary is 1920 x 1080 so I end up making 2 themes based off those sizes.

Well a simple video of that nature could be quite small, but I’m sure there is a line of code someone could figure out that would allow it to fade in and out of a few different screens, that would actually be sweet. Even a code to adjust the length the splash screen would be up would be nice as well.

[whoismezero]

[quote=84779]A video would be heaps inefficient (hdd space and memory), not easy to change and way more work. but if its the only way then ill give it a go.
[/quote]

Using a video would definitely be more work as well as time consuming.

You can change the default behavior of stock retropie splashscreen script by modifying the ‘asplashcreen’ script in init.d

Modify this line:
/usr/bin/fbi -T 2 -once -t 30 -noverbose -a -l /etc/splashscreen.list &
to
/usr/bin/fbi -T 2 -once -t 4 -noverbose -a /home/pi/splashscreens/* &

With this you will also need to create a folder called “splashscreens” (using the ‘mkdir’ command) in /home/pi to save all of the splashscreens in.

The splashscreens will be displayed in alphabetical order, and each picture for 4 seconds.

[Keigan]

I’m assuming -t xx I can alter to make xx the amount of time in seconds I want the screen to show for?

[nilsbyte]

[quote=84739]You know what i would like…

a slide show… like when a game is loading you get a slideshow of companies and technologies involved with making the game and then the games actual splash screen until the game is ready like this

<span class=”embed-youtube” style=”text-align:center; display: block;”>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogGHDX2IYsk?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent&w=618&h=378%5D</span&gt;

like a screen saying “raspberry pi” with logo then it transitions to a screen saying “RetroPie” then maybe something like “Powered by: Emulation station” and then the splash screen for your custom machine and it stays on that until it finishes loading.

for now its all on one screen (view attached image)…. and then the emulations station splashscreen again.
[/quote]

This makes absolutely no sense as the games are usually ready instantly. Most of the people even want to get rid of the logo intros you are are suggesting (in regular windows games). I don’t get why everybody in here wants to slow down boot/loading process with a damn video. I am leaving this discussion now.

To all people

Feature requests regarding EmulationStation go here: https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/issues

Me and Aloshi will evaluate every issue posted there.

I personally think RetroPie is the worst case for emulating retro consoles, it’s power is too low to achieve accurate emulation, it’s a pain to setup and it has many issues. Better go with a HTPC, Windows 8 and EmulationStation.

[Keigan]

I believe that this discussion started as altering the original “Emulation Station” splash screen, and to bypass it someone came up with the video idea.

I’m just curious as far as altering menu and such so I can make it that much more customizable, I love the program, just wish every aspect was themable. I personally have no problem with the ES logo showing up.

That said as far as the retropie being crappy, yeah it may not be the most ideal system for emulation, but $40 Pi vs $200 HTPC & Win 8 for something that to me runs NES/SNES pretty well, and saves me lugging around my NES/SNES consoles and 100+ games where I go, it’s pretty sweet.

[chito]

I think nilsbyte got a little upset. I think i need to clarify that im taking about when you first power on the retropie. I dont think its unreasonable to want to hide all the ugly boot sequence that comes up when you power on the retropie. Im not talking about when you load a game that would be stupid. Hiding all that console text is good User Experience Design and give your machine a more polished look.

[smokinpuppy]

If anyone is interested, I got the screensaver video to work. I forked the original ES git and added this to GuiMenu.cpp:
screensavers.push_back("video"); // Line 104 in the screensaver menu section
I also added changed the following in Window.cpp:
Under Window::input(), Change this:

if(mSleeping)
	{
		// wake up
		mTimeSinceLastInput = 0;
		mSleeping = false;
		onWake();
		return;
	}

to this:

if(mSleeping)
	{
		// wake up
		mTimeSinceLastInput = 0;
		mSleeping = false;
		onWake();
		system("sudo pkill -9 -f \"/usr/bin/omxplayer\""); // Kill video playback
		return;
	}

Under Window::onSleep(), change this:

Renderer::setMatrix(Eigen::Affine3f::Identity());
	unsigned char opacity = Settings::getInstance()->getString("ScreenSaverBehavior") == "dim" ? 0xA0 : 0xFF;
	Renderer::drawRect(0, 0, Renderer::getScreenWidth(), Renderer::getScreenHeight(), 0x00000000 | opacity);
	}

to this:

Renderer::setMatrix(Eigen::Affine3f::Identity());
	unsigned char opacity = Settings::getInstance()->getString("ScreenSaverBehavior") == "dim" ? 0xA0 : 0xFF;
	if(Settings::getInstance()->getString("ScreenSaverBehavior") == "video"){
		system("playvid");
	} else {
		Renderer::drawRect(0, 0, Renderer::getScreenWidth(), Renderer::getScreenHeight(), 0x00000000 | opacity);
	}

Then install from “SOURCE” either using my fork for EmulationStaion (https://github.com/smokinpuppy/EmulationStation/) or my fork for RetroPie-Setup (https://github.com/smokinpuppy/RetroPie-Setup/) which already uses my fork of EmulationStation.

Finally, for this to work, you need to make a bash script and place it in /usr/bin like so:
sudo nano /usr/bin/playvid

#! /bin/bash

# Play Video
omxplayer --vol -3000 -o hdmi --layer 10000 --loop /home/pi/screensaver.mp4 &

# Exit
exit 0

‘
Ctrl-X, Y, Enter
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/playvid

I did have to set disable overscan for my setup to work as the video is 1080p

sudo nano /boot/config.txt 
set disable_overscan=1

And that’s it,
PS, I found that using the original RetroPie SD Image and then compiling by replacing the RetroPie-Setup folder with my fork of it then installing from source (option 2) using ./retropie_setup.sh and only selecting EmulationStation to be the best/easiest way.

PSS, If anyone knows of an easy way to have omxplayer loop seamlessly, that would be greatly appreciated.

[nilsbyte]

[quote=84824]I think nilsbyte got a little upset. I think i need to clarify that im taking about when you first power on the retropie. I dont think its unreasonable to want to hide all the ugly boot sequence that comes up when you power on the retropie. Im not talking about when you load a game that would be stupid. Hiding all that console text is good User Experience Design and give your machine a more polished look. [/quote]

There is actually a better way than overlaying a video over the console output, i have experimented quite a bit with ‘plymouth’, the tool which is used by big linux distribtions such as Red Hat or Debian. plymouth has the benefit that it only lasts until the boot is complete. A video overlay has a fixed duration and will be finished even if the Pi takes longer to boot someday. I have created a nice loading animation and forwarded it to petrockblog, but it looks like he did not care about it. What a shame.

[chito]

That sounds very promising. I remember reading that the devs like the terminal messages since its helps with debugging. Not sure they are interested in making anything like this official but also said go nuts for ur own machine.

I do think that the retropie needs sometype of variable switch that changes the retropie from development mode to a production mode that looks clean, polished and awesome!

It would be great the efforts of experiments get used officially. If not do u mind sharing on here if u dont hear back?

[Anonymous]

That’s a bummer. It sounds like exactly what I’ve been looking to implement on my end. I don’t mind the ES loading screen info. Hard work deserves some recognition. Those of us building cabinets and standalone systems really have little need for the startup loading text once everything is in order.

[threepwood]

I am one of these cabinet builders ;)

Well, I got the Splashvideo working, and blacked out all the background boot text and logo of the raspberry. But it works only WITHOUT the –layer command

The –layer command somehow does not work. Doesn’t matter which number I use (1, 3, 10000) omxplayer always shows a black screen and no audio, until the es splashscreen pops up, when I use the –layer command.

Syntax is correct, just like provided in this thread.

Any suggestions? ES screen cuts the last seconds of my custom made video :/

[threepwood]

Ok, I have fixed it

First I updated omxplayer

Then I did what is mentioned in the below linked forum, I’ve changed the name of asplashscreen in nasplashscreen (sleep command did not work)

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=97693

Than I added this line for the omxplayer, to have full screen video:

omxplayer –layer 10000 -b –win “0 0 1280 1024” –no-keys /home/pi/media/intro.mp4

I have a 4:3 monitor, and my custom made intro plays long enough that the ES loading screen only is shown a few seconds. Now I’m really happy :)

Or like we in germany say “Alles aus einem Guss!”

[Author]

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