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ThirdScreen Plugin for Platform Video Marquees, 3+ Screen Support, and more 5.0.12

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About This File


This plugin adds enhanced Marquee capabilities plus support for unlimited screens.

- Enhanced Marquee Capabilities:

  • Adds support for Platform Video Marquees, Playlist Video Marquees, and Platform Category Video Marquees.
  • Adds support for Marquee Startup Videos.
  • Adds support for animated gif files.
  • Fixes marquee shift issue for TeknoParrot games.
  • Marquee(s) will work in LaunchBox, not just in BigBox.
  • Adds optional blur-fill background effect when media is not stretched to fit the entire screen (as of v2.0.10).

- Support for a 3rd screen or unlimited additional screens each displaying their own priority based list of media.

- Each screen has access to ALL media that has been imported to LaunchBox (all images, all videos, plus rotating 3D box models!)

- Graphical user interface for setting up screens. Your theme files do not get modified.

- Ability to stretch or not stretch based on the media type being shown on each screen.

- Screens are tracked by GPU port stable IDs, so nothing will ever break due to Windows re-ordering display  numbers.

 

Demo Videos:

 

 

 

Installation:

  1. *** Before installing, please make sure you are using the latest version of LaunchBox. Version 13.0 or higher is required. ***
  2. Download ThirdScreen.zip to your PC. Right click on the zip file and extract all files.
  3. Close LaunchBox/BigBox and copy the Plugins and ThirdParty folders to your LaunchBox directory.

 

Adding a new screen:

1. If you are setting up your main Marquee screen, you'll first need to disable the Marquee in BigBox settings in order to transfer control of it over to ThirdScreen.  Open BigBox. Hit escape to go to BigBox settings. Go to Options->General->Marquee Screen and set it to "None".

 BB_marquee_none..thumb.PNG.8e6865c4288cdd3e8aec1da9add3b500.PNG

2. Select ThirdScreen Settings either from the Tools dropdown in LaunchBox or the settings screen in BigBox.

SettingsOpen.thumb.PNG.645997aa8f09dbd2435e53602ad198eb.PNG

3. In the ThirdScreen Settings app choose "Add Screen" in the upper left.

AddScreen.PNG.bc847cc233f71edf0953edba4bd0ab82.PNG

4. Give this screen a name. If this is your main marquee, make sure "Start with typical marquee media" is checked - this will start you off with the typical expected media for a main marque (e.g. marquee videos, marquee images, banner images, clear logos, etc...). Then hit Continue.

AddScreen2.PNG.662cbe91c358443d2d5a8b4408f42444.PNG

5. Click "Identify Displays" and take note of the name displayed on the desired display. Then choose
the corresponding display name from the "Choose Display" drop down menu.

image.thumb.png.8b9a0f60741d9eb34c2608bc85310162.png

 

 

Choosing which media shows on each screen:

1. Select a screen from your list of existing screens.

SelectScreen.PNG.8387c15be3dca9d2125434fbe3a1c4e6.PNG

2. Add desired media to both the game and platform views for this screen. (Tip: You can hover over most drop down boxes and controls to get a more detailed description of what each one does).

TSCP_Screenshot.thumb.PNG.bc2898f5b54bf36d096bedb87b3e8252.PNG

3. Adjust the priority of each media item up or down (items higher on the list have higher priority). ThirdScreen will search the selected game or platform's media starting from the top of the list and working its way down until it finds something to display.

TSCP_Screenshot_UPDOWN.thumb.png.e4553dd1d4b1073f0392fff45d701043.png

4. For each media item in your views you can choose whether or not to stretch fill the screen. If set to No, then the item will be uniformly stretched (aspect ratio will be preserved). If set  to Yes, the media will be stretched to fill the entire screen (aspect ratio will not be preserved).  (Your choice will depend on the type of media and the screen dimensions. For example, Marquee videos/images will look best stretch filled on a bar type display but not on a 16:9 aspect ratio display. Video snaps will look best stretch filled on a 16:9 aspect ratio display, but not on a bar type display.)

TSCP_Screenshot_Stretch.thumb.png.48a9a49a9052dddf5983bc740d38eb2d.png

 

 

Adding startup videos or images for each screen:

 

1. Select a screen from your list of existing screens.

SelectScreen.PNG.8387c15be3dca9d2125434fbe3a1c4e6.PNG

2. Click "Startup Video Folder" to open the startup folder for this screen. Copy any media you want to be displayed at startup for this screen into this folder. Video files and static images are supported. If there is more than one item in the folder, ThirdScreen will choose one of them randomly to display at startup.

Startup2.thumb.PNG.4d8d699fd9ee336adf717bc37d7e5b0c.PNG

 

 

Adding Platform Marquee Videos, Playlist Marquee Videos, and Platform Category Marquee Videos:

1. In LaunchBox select Tools->"Manage Platform/Playlist Video Marquees"

image.thumb.png.cde723be040b883a0407576c4243a9a3.png

2. From here you can add and manage video marquee files for Platforms, Playlists, and Platform Categories. Once added, they will be available for display using the ThirdScreen Plugin.

Screenshot3.thumb.PNG.35ddec18add135a4f92df74297d29d02.PNG

 

 

FAQs:

Q. How many screens are supported?

  A. As many as you want. The only limit is the number of hdmi or display ports on your PC.

Q. Can I use this Plugin if I only have a single marquee screen?

  A. Yes, if you don't have a third screen you can still use this for your main marquee. That will get you the added benefits of platform marquee videos, animated gif support, marquee startup videos, etc.

Q. If I choose to display 3D box models, how can I rotate them?

  A. The 3D box models will be self-rotating. They will continuously spin while being displayed (no need for any user input).

Q. In Game View, what's the difference between "Add Game's Parent Platform Media" and "Add Current Platform/Playlist Media"? Which one should I choose?

  A. It just depends on your preference when viewing Playlists. When scrolling games in a platform wheel, it will not make any difference which of the two dropdown lists you chose from. When scrolling games in a playlist wheel choose "Add Game's Parent Platform Media" if you want the media to change depending on the type of game (for example, the playlist might be a mix of NES, Wii, and Arcade games). Choose "Add Current Platform/Playlist Media" if you instead want to always display the Playlist's media (for example the marquee or theme video from your Favorites playlist).

Q. Will my Theme xaml files get modified?

  A. No, the plugin never touches your theme files. You are free to switch and add new themes whenever you want.

Q. How can I delete/modify media in LaunchBox if it is currently being displayed by ThirdScreen?

  A. You might sometimes run into a situation where you want to delete or modify a game's media files, but LaunchBox gives you an error because the media is in use. No problem, just temporarily disable ThirdScreen when in LaunchBox. Open the ThirdScreen settings app, click the gear icon in the upper right, and choose "Disabled when in LaunchBox".

Q. Why doesn't Platform view work for my marquee(s) when in LaunchBox?

  A. This has been fixed with version 2.0.6 of this plugin as long as you are on LaunchBox version 13.1-beta-6 or higher..

 

Troubleshooting Steps:

1. Make sure you are using the latest version of this plugin.

2. If this is your main marquee screen, please first double-check that you have disabled your marquee in BigBox settings. The ThirdScreen plugin will not attempt to use your marquee display if BigBox is using it.

3. If some image or video you've added isn't showing up when you expect it to, double-check that it is categorized correctly in LaunchBox. It's very easy to add media in LaunchBox and then forget to change its image or video type (I do that all the time).

4. If you are having an issue, please enable logging for both the ThirdScreen plugin and LaunchBox/BigBox, and then send me the log files after you try the thing that isn't working. The log files will be in the LaunchBox/Logs folder. To enable logging do the following:

  • For ThirdScreen: Tools->ThirdScreen Settings, click the gear icon in the upper right and choose "Debug Log File Enabled".
  • For LaunchBox/BigBox: Tools->Options->General->Debugging, check "Enable Debug Logs".

5. If LaunhBox/BigBox will not start at all after installing the dll files, make sure you are on version 13.0 or higher of LaunchBox and also try disabling any Pen or TouchScreen devices listed in Device Manager (there is currently a known conflict with the Windows Pen driver which is affecting some users)(Edit: This has been resolved in v2.0.13) 

6. If animated gif files aren't displaying for you, try running LaunchBox/BigBox with admin privileges. (Edit: This has been resolved in v2.0.11) 

7. If you are having issues with the ThirdScreen settings app reporting an incorrect resolution and/or your marquees being incorrectly sized, clipped, or off-center then it is most likely caused by dpi scaling. ThirdScreen v2.0.14 and higher should fix most scaling issues in both Win10 and Win11. 

8. This plugin tries to fix any marquee-shift issues when a game changes the main screen resolution. As of version 4.0.0 you can select between medium mode, aggressive mode, or disabled. Medium is the default mode and is recommended. If a game changes the screen resolution, medium mode will reposition all marquees to their correct locations. Aggressive mode also hides the BigBox window to ensure it does not end up covering one of the marquee screens. While aggressive mode works perfectly on mine and many other setups, some people have reported that it can interfere with game loading or exiting (including BigBox remaining hidden after exiting a game). If you run into those types of issues you should set the option back to medium mode or disabled. In LaunchBox, go to Tools->ThirdScreen Settings. Then click the gear icon in upper right and select "Medium Shift Handling".

-------------------------------------

Enjoy, and please follow the file to be notified of updates.

 

 

 

Edited by superrob3000


What's New in Version 5.0.12   See changelog

Released

Some performance improvements.

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  • Unusual Gem 8

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21 minutes ago, izzishor said:

Help? Apparently ThirdScreen identifies my monitors differently than BigBox and as a result I can't have a Marquee because it thinks Marquee is Monitor 3, while monitor 3 is in fact my main CRT main monitor...  and from time to time this error arises on my arcade... anyway to bypass it? I tried looking in the config but it doesn't seem I can do anything about it... 

 

 

Help.png

Windows can get weird sometimes with display numbering. I'll add an option to bypass that check.

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1 hour ago, superrob3000 said:

Windows can get weird sometimes with display numbering. I'll add an option to bypass that check.

Damn, I can't thank you enough, I can temporarily fix it by deleting the GPU configuration and connectivity registry entries, but it gets screwed up again eventually.

 

I really wish your plugin would be embedded in launchbox, really can't do without it.

 

Thanks again, and no rush from me, whenever you have the time ❤️

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Hello. Now I'm transferring my arcade machine from Hyperspin to BIGBOX.  I have 2 additional screens in the arcade machine, I use ledblinky, I also have an elgato stream deck through which I also launched games from the hyperspin interface.
This is how the script for launching the game looked like, when i used Hyperspin.
run C:\eds\ledblinky.exe 3 "hotd2" "Sega naomi"
run D:\arcade\rocketlauncher\rocketlauncher.exe "Sega naomi" "hotd2"
the first line of the script drew pictures on additional screens using eds and hypermarquee.
The second line launched the game together with ledblinky (ledblinky was included in rocketlauncher)
In the BIGBOX, I can launch the game via rocketlauncher, I can also send the ledblinky command. It remains to display pictures on additional screens. How to do it using ThirdScreen Plugin? how the script should look like?

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No scripts needed. Just follow the directions on the file description page. There is a GUI to add your additional screens and choose which art you want to display on each one.

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1 hour ago, superrob3000 said:

No scripts needed. Just follow the directions on the file description page. There is a GUI to add your additional screens and choose which art you want to display on each one.

You probably misunderstood me. The plugin works great in bigbox. But I need to be able to run the game with my streamdeсk, it uses scripts. 

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On 10/22/2023 at 11:23 AM, Vitaly17 said:

You probably misunderstood me. The plugin works great in bigbox. But I need to be able to run the game with my streamdeсk, it uses scripts. 

Ah, I see. That won't be possible with thirdscreen. It will only work if you launch the game from launchbox or bigbox.

(Edit 12/17/2023: You can now use my "CLI Launcher" plugin to add stream deck shortcuts that launch games directly through LaunchBox/BigBox instead of RocketLauncher. ThirdScreen marquees and LED Blinky will get updated automatically.)

Edited by superrob3000
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v3.0.0 is now available. @izzishor if you click the gear icon in the upper right, there is now an option to disable the check for a BigBox main screen conflict which was causing you trouble.

Edited by superrob3000
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Tested and works perfectly, both bypasses I have set to on for me, weirder arcade or setup I guess, but this does the job immaculately, thank you again for all the work, the fact that you can choose what artwork to place and on which monitor, amazing ❤️

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@superrob3000 First I wasn't to say thank you for your work, this looks amazing! I've not yet invested in a stretched screen or anything yet, but I intend too sometime soon. I have a few compatibility questions I wanted to ask. 

1) Are there any compatibility issues using this in Windows 7? I've opted out of ever upgrading to 10+ simply for the fear of having to test games, reinstall games or apps, re-write scripts, etc... as the time commitment feels too large, at least for the time being. 

2) I'm still on an old version of LB/BB (9.7). I see your tool says it requires 13+. What doesn't work on versions prior to 13? Its obviously been years since I've upgraded LB/BB, if I do, will any settings need to be reconfigured or anything or is it a seamless upgrade? (Sorry, probably a dumb question its just that I haven't done this in a very long time!)

3) Now having a sense of my older setup, any other gotchas or compatibility concerns you have or would point out?

 

Thanks in advance!

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9 hours ago, bojo5150 said:

@superrob3000 First I wasn't to say thank you for your work, this looks amazing! I've not yet invested in a stretched screen or anything yet, but I intend too sometime soon. I have a few compatibility questions I wanted to ask. 

1) Are there any compatibility issues using this in Windows 7? I've opted out of ever upgrading to 10+ simply for the fear of having to test games, reinstall games or apps, re-write scripts, etc... as the time commitment feels too large, at least for the time being. 

2) I'm still on an old version of LB/BB (9.7). I see your tool says it requires 13+. What doesn't work on versions prior to 13? Its obviously been years since I've upgraded LB/BB, if I do, will any settings need to be reconfigured or anything or is it a seamless upgrade? (Sorry, probably a dumb question its just that I haven't done this in a very long time!)

3) Now having a sense of my older setup, any other gotchas or compatibility concerns you have or would point out?

 

Thanks in advance!

My guess is that it should work fine on windows 7 but I've never tested it. However it will most likely crash at startup if you try to use it with Launchbox 9.7. It relies on some things (like rotating 3d box models for example) that weren't available in Launchbox back then.

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Hello!

Is it possible to get something like what default plus theme is doing 

 

It takes randomly game wallpaper/fanart and displays logo on top of it. In a fade effect?

So far i see , there is only option to display one or the other, not mix of both?

 

Screenshot 2024-02-10 050938.png

Edited by Undertherainbow
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12 minutes ago, Undertherainbow said:

Is it possible to get something like what default plus theme is doing .....

12 minutes ago, Undertherainbow said:

So far i see , there is only option to display one or the other, not mix of both?

 

@Undertherainbow Thanks for the suggestion. You are correct that currently it will display one or the other and not overlay them. When I have time I'll look into it and see if it's something I want to add. The hardest part with adding options like this is usually how to keep the user interface simple (not so much the implementation).

Edited by superrob3000
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8 minutes ago, superrob3000 said:

@Undertherainbow Thanks for the suggestion. You are correct that currently it will display one or the other and not overlay them. When I have time I'll look into it and see if it's something I want to add. The hardest part with adding options like this is usually how to keep the user interface simple (not so much the implementation).

Maybe you could do this by introducing 'mixer'?

example: second part of tool, in which you can do above, select choice "background + X(logo?)" and produce mix of it.

it would be a simple call to both elements from launchbox with lets say style : fade or others? 

its base what themes are already doing

 

Then on main app window just give option to inject that in the list. 

 

Screenshot 2024-02-10 052920.png

Edited by Undertherainbow
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I apologize if I missed this, but is there any way to add a transition effect in between marquees? For example, I think the native marquee support fades out the old while fading in the new. Not a deal breaker, but figured I'd ask!

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5 minutes ago, whg said:

I apologize if I missed this, but is there any way to add a transition effect in between marquees? For example, I think the native marquee support fades out the old while fading in the new. Not a deal breaker, but figured I'd ask!

No, not currently.

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On 3/10/2024 at 6:03 PM, superrob3000 said:

No, not currently.

No worries! I'm wondering - I noticed a strange behavior shortly after installing the plug-in and I want to test uninstalling it to see if the behavior reverts back to original as well. I renamed the Plugins folder to Plugins (old), but the Thirdparty folder appears to overwrote some files, and of course, I didn't attempt to back up the originals beforehand. Do you have an easy way to uninstall so I can test, or can you tell me which files specifically I need to recover? And do you know an easier way of getting the originals rather than re-installing LB?

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31 minutes ago, whg said:

No worries! I'm wondering - I noticed a strange behavior shortly after installing the plug-in and I want to test uninstalling it to see if the behavior reverts back to original as well. I renamed the Plugins folder to Plugins (old), but the Thirdparty folder appears to overwrote some files, and of course, I didn't attempt to back up the originals beforehand. Do you have an easy way to uninstall so I can test, or can you tell me which files specifically I need to recover? And do you know an easier way of getting the originals rather than re-installing LB?

The plugin doesn't overwrite any Launchbox files. All of the files in the release are unique to thirdscreen. So to uninstall just download and unzip the latest release to get the file list and then delete all of those files from your Launchbox folder.

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14 hours ago, superrob3000 said:

The plugin doesn't overwrite any Launchbox files. All of the files in the release are unique to thirdscreen. So to uninstall just download and unzip the latest release to get the file list and then delete all of those files from your Launchbox folder.

Got it - thanks!

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I didn't see it listed anywhere, maybe someone knows. Can this be modified to use the "gamemarqueeview.xaml" file for the marquee. I made custom dynamic marquees with the theme creator and I'd like to continue using those if I can. Really, all I'm looking to do is keep my marquees from shifting any time I launch a game that changes my resolution thats lower than my desktop resolution. I heard this program can do that, but it looks like it just pulls in images from a directory.

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10 minutes ago, flanx said:

I didn't see it listed anywhere, maybe someone knows. Can this be modified to use the "gamemarqueeview.xaml" file for the marquee. I made custom dynamic marquees with the theme creator and I'd like to continue using those if I can. Really, all I'm looking to do is keep my marquees from shifting any time I launch a game that changes my resolution thats lower than my desktop resolution. I heard this program can do that, but it looks like it just pulls in images from a directory.

You can't use the xaml file but the plugin shouldn't have any issues displaying your custom marquee files as long as you have added them as marquees in LaunchBox.

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@flanx also if all you are looking for is a fix for the shifting issue, you could try putting your marquee to the right of your main monitor in display settings.

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Thank you for the prompt response. The issue is my marquees are not actual images. The background I use for them is a saved PNG. but the marquees are dynamically created using a combination of clear logo art, box art and cartridge art. Its so I can have marquees for all games and they all match my category marquees. I attached a video showing this. Currently my marquee display is on the right in display properties, thats the only place it works and I still get the shifting marquees when resolution changes. Its the weirdest thing, when I have my display set to 1080p, I can have the marquee display on the left and it doesn't shift when the resolution changes. But when I change it to 4k, it no longer works when its in any position but the right side of the main monitor. I could keep the monitor in 1080p, but some modern Steam games, like Mortal Kombat 11 and cuphead (to name a couple) use your desktop resolution and cannot change it to 4K unless your desktop resolution is set to 4K. I have a nice gaming machine and a 48in 4K 120hz OLED in my cabinet, so I'd like to take advantage of it if I can, but if I'm stuck at 1080p, then thats the way it has to be so my nice marquees stay visible.

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