Whatscheiser
-
Posts
59 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Articles
Downloads
Gallery
Blogs
Posts posted by Whatscheiser
-
-
Just to chime in on this... because I'm glad I put two and two together before I relaunched the application and gave auto-import a chance to do its thing.
I was editing one of my platforms and had need to change the file name of an .lnk file. I had LaunchBox open at the time so it prompted me with something like "A change was made in one of your game folders. Would you like LaunchBox to autoupdate ROM changes for you?" Which I'll admit did pique my interest so I clicked "Yes"... and then remembered the new feature and the "opt in" nature of it for existing installs. I checked, and sure enough the Auto-Import feature was enabled through that dialogue.
To me there isn't enough there indicating what a user is opting in to. It asked if I wanted it to monitor existing folders and update changes I make, which actually would be pretty cool. What it doesn't say is that it may also add things I didn't intend or create more game folders for systems I don't actually have. The prompt given to a user that isn't following all of the updates doesn't really paint the entire picture of what they are agreeing to.
Anyway, I didn't have any issues with it. Just wanted to point out how I could see it being an issue for folks who do not want the feature. I get pretty deep into the weeds customizing my libraries. The last thing I want is automation making changes I didn't intend to make.
-
Ah that makes a lot of sense. Thanks again for taking a close look at these issues and uploading the revised script! I'll keep tinkering with it and let you know if I find anything else of interest. I'm looking forward to checking out v2.0 as well!
-
Thanks for letting me know. I still had an issue scraping info for Season 1 of Miami Vice when I was using https://thetvdb.com/series/miami-vice/allseasons/official I didn't get one match which left me scratching my head again...
However, I swapped out and tried using https://thetvdb.com/series/miami-vice/allseasons/dvd and all of the sudden, matched every single episode, brought in poster art and proper gameplay shots as well.
What's odd is that aside from the data for both of these residing at different URLs, so far as I can tell, its all the same data in terms of episode order, title and description. The DVD order even still has the air date information. Another one for the "weird" category.
I appreciate you taking another look into those issues with Modern Marvels. Your script helped me get the bulk of the episodes I have imported at any rate. It's not a deal breaker for me If I have to do some copy/paste work on the final few seasons, but it would be awesome to solve it. I've got plenty of patience for it, I just appreciate you taking the time to work on the script and share it. Like I said before, I'm just happy to be a help if I can be. Just let me know what I can do.
Thanks!
-
1. I'll see what I can do about providing an example. TVDB seems to be having issues of its own tonight. Nothing but a lot of 502 errors on several different browsers. At any rate I didn't really get the error message I spoke of in my previous post any longer. I wish I could be of more use for diagnosing the issue but I don't have much aside from... it worked for 12 or so seasons, and then it didn't. Which I know is not super helpful information. ...What I can say is the scraper runs. I can see it making progress on scanning the 400 plus some odd entries, but it just will not match my episodes regardless of how I name them. I can make the file name a 1:1 match and it just seems to blow right past it.
I feel like a bit of a nerd here but the show I am currently working on is Modern Marvels from the old History Channel. Anyway, I had also used your script to pull info in for Andor, and Band of Brothers with no issue. Both of those were one season series and I wanted to do a larger show so, I tackled my largest one, which is Modern Marvels. Everything pulled good until about the last two episodes of Season 11. For whatever reason it just wouldn't grab them. So I did the shoulder shrug and moved onto season 12... then none of those matched either, same with season 13, 14, and 15. Then I just stopped trying it.
The URL I was entering in every case of error is this one: https://thetvdb.com/series/modern-marvels/allseasons/official
An example episode it wouldn't grab would be anything from the mentioned seasons, but I'll throw out one: S12E51 Coffee
Now I know the ideal convention for naming that you laid out would be "Modern Marvels S12E51 Coffee" I tried that when my normal naming convention stopped working but it didn't make a difference, unfortunately.
To be clear... I did try it with a new series just to make this post. I imported the first season of Miami Vice. Did not match a single episode for the first season (only tried the first season). I really wish I could account for why. All I can really keep saying here is that the script worked great, and then it didn't work. I just can't seem to account for it.
3. S06E05 The Police Car; S06E06 Plastics - two examples from the URL I gave above. The scraper will make a release date entry of "H2" if you request it pull in info for those episodes. The Modern Marvels TVDB is kind of all over the place. It's pretty widely known that outside of show names and descriptions, its not super accurate. So missing air dates doesn't really surprise me. ...Oddly enough I think the most accurate info I have found for the show is actually on RottenTomatoes.
For the last point, I'd definitely test out a new version of the script. I have plenty more shows to pull and anything I can do that helps contribute to better tools I'm more than happy to do.
-
1
-
-
Hello, I've really been enjoying having this on hand to assist with adding data to my TV Show entries. Suddenly having an issue with the script today though. I do everything as I had been doing, but when I hit the button to scrape for an episode the script times out then shows an error message asking if I'd like to close or continue...
...and I was just about to do this again so I could screen shot the error message and post it here. When I did, the script suddenly worked. Odd since I failed out the three times prior. I suppose never mind. I guess I'll see if it happens again. (EDIT:: It seems like its just a timeout with contacting TVDB. The show I'm currently scraping has north of 400 episodes. It might just be taking to long to look through all of that data and so its throwing an error. I don't think anything is actually broken).
::EDIT 2::
Eh, yeah for some reason it just doesn't match at all now. Can't really put together why. Just all of the sudden in the middle of season 12 I stopped getting any matches from TVDB for this show. Haven't done anything different than the prior seasons. Weird, man.
---------------------------------------------------------------
While I'm here though I do have a couple other issues to bring up. When scraping TVDB and adding information to LaunchBox's XML files I'm finding I'll always have an issue if the title of an episode or the notes contain "&" - The XML format interprets it as some type of incomplete entry. LaunchBox will report a corruption error when starting up. Luckily it also reports the file and what line and position the error is at so its a pretty trivial thing to just manually edit out the mistake, but it does happen fairly frequently.
The other issue I've noticed is with TVDB's formatting for release date of an episode and the network it aired on. Every so often the air date is not listed. When this happens the script will sometimes mistakenly enter the network call sign where the XML file expects the release date. LaunchBox will then interpret the field to have invalid data at start up and again will report that the fil is corrupted. And again, its easily fixed with a manual edit.
Just thought those might be worth mentioning.
-
Man that PDF flip software is pretty pricey. There is also CDisplayEx. http://www.cdisplayex.com/desktop/
It's not as flashy, but its easy to use, can display magazines with a similar view and its free.
Aside from that I really dig this idea. I didn't need another thing to collect but now I kind of want to do this. lol
-
I thought I might try and look at the .pdb file included in the download... but I can't seem to find a tool that can read it correctly. If the author happens across this and wants to let us know what he uses to edit and create the files I'd be willing to take a crack at it.
-
Eh, well. I ended up using shortcuts.
I used the xcopy command in windows to mirror the folder structure I had on the file server. Shortcuts went into those folders and Notepad++ took care of swapping out file extensions and the leading bit of the directory structure. No more spinning up the NAS to just browse around. I saved a backup of an unedited version of the platform's xml file if I need to swap it back in for some unknown reason.
...creating the shortcuts sucked. Smooth process otherwise.
-
Sorry for the title, hard to sum up.
I have ROMs stored on a NAS for a couple of my platforms. As soon as I click on one of these platforms via the sidebar, Launchbox will immediately reach out to my NAS. This is a problem because the NAS isn't always spun up. So when Launchbox does this the menu locks up until it can begin communicating with the NAS after its done booting. Which is fairly disruptive when I'm just trying to flip through content.
All images, video, & metadata is stored locally where Launchbox is. Nothing the front end needs is stored over the network. Just the ROMs. I feel like the only reason it should have to spin up the NAS is if I ask it to access a ROM that is stored there.
I assume that when I click on a platform, there must be a check that is being performed to ensure that the file pathing is still correct or some such. I just wish there was a way to prevent it from reaching out until I have asked it to fetch a file. The solution I'm considering is just to point Launchbox at locally stored shortcuts or bat files so when it does this file check its staying on the local drive, then the NAS will only spin up when I actually want to access something. The only thing that sucks about that is I lose my ability to file manage efficiently in Launchbox (or with in the xaml files it creates) since the actual pathing is happening outside of the application.
Hoping someone has a smarter workaround.
-
If you plug the external drive back in where you initially set all of this up, does it work again?
I'm not that familiar with RetroArch but it stands to reason that moving the external drive to another machine likely changed the expected filepaths you had setup for certain items. It's probably going to be down to ensuring the external drive has the same assigned drive letter on your laptop. Also if RetroArch saved any files to user folders on the previous machine, you'll likely need to make sure those match up and exist on your laptop.
::EDIT::
I also just remembered that Launchbox has a bunch of RetroArch stuff integrated now. Features I don't personally use, sorry. I'm used to treating RetroArch like its own thing. Still you might want to look into your file pathing when swapping drives around.
-
You might want to read through these,
-
This is only on platform images? I have to ask have you gone into the options menu and tried refreshing all platform images?
My only other thought is that maybe there is an odd scaling issue specific to your display resolution and that specific skin or some such. Might be worth trying a different bigbox theme as well to see if the issue is reproducible.
-
Just to add onto this, I have had issues where I created a new platform, and it ended up as an orphan. As in it wasn't listed under root or under any of my other platforms or categories. Going to Tools > manage platforms, I was able to see it and tag it as belonging under root which forced it to appear in Launchbox.
I mention this because my first knee-jerk was to assume there was an issue with my import. So I initially tried importing the files again only to have them not show up again. Ended up being that issue with the platform not knowing where to show itself.
-
Where is your storage located? Are you running local SATA drives? Or do you have storage on USB/LAN?
Regardless... I'm going to hazard a guess that when Windows is putting the PC to sleep something is coming back online later than expected after wake. BigBox is trying to find a resource it previously had a hold of and then bombing out when it isn't there. In my experience USB is great at causing that particular issue, but it isn't the only possibility.
As for your remote power on... Silverstone actually makes a PCI-E add-in device that lets you remotely power the PC with a keychain dongle that ships with it. To my understanding, you could probably make that work with a universal remote if you want it more integrated to your entertainment setup. It's not an xbox controller, but I figure it's worth mentioning.
-
It's not too common but I have had LaunchBox not acknowledge category and platform changes right away. When I have had this happen I don't repeat the action, I just close and re-open LaunchBox. This usually sorts it out. Sounds like you might have experienced something similar.
-
3 hours ago, davidgrohl said:
Thanks guys. Just a question: I want to use Big Box Unified theme: which image groups I have to download?
In my experience, it's a bit of a preference and can depend a bit on the theme you want to use. I haven't used Unified much myself but I like to grab BoxFront, BoxBack, Clear Logo, Fanart Background, Cart Front, Disc, and Banner. For certain themes and views, gameplay screenshots are also handy to grab. (For example wall views that make use of screenshot images overlayed with clear logos). You might also prefer to have 3D box images over flat box front images.
Banners are only really needed if you need a marquee image, so you could probably axe that pick if that's not something your theme needs.
Honestly, it might be best to take two or three of your games and experiment with them before doing the whole library. Once you have those setup just how you like you'll know exactly what you need to grab.
-
1
-
-
By your image, it looks like you have Arcade as a platform category and then Arcade appears underneath it as the actual platform. If you just want one entry you can right-click on the Arcade platform and set its parent to "Root". If the Arcade category doesn't disappear then right-click on it and delete it.
Alternatively, you could rename the platform to something more specific to your collection. I believe The Arcade Category is automatically created to provide you with more nesting options.
-
1 hour ago, Rlad said:
This tool is great, i've been using AviDemux but it only does MP4, no good for Steam trailers without converting them first. And it's a lot more straightforward.👍
I've run into issues as well with needing to edit something in DaVinci Resolve and that software not playing well with mkv or webm. I came across this page that has some pretty handy commands for re-containerising content from within mkv or webm into MP4. It's pretty neat since it basically works as a direct transfer without any re-encoding so it should be lossless as well. You'll of course need ffmpeg's command line tools. Its a handy trick to have in the arsenal.
-
1
-
-
I've been curious about their guidelines as well. I haven't run into anything that says "video must be formatted" followed by any specifics, but this document I came across on their discord seems to lay out an expected "40 seconds of gameplay with 10 seconds of title screen". With the gameplay bit coming first and the title screen second. I know that I haven't run into any other formats for their video media which is why I haven't uploaded my own MS-DOS snaps. (I just let the gameplay demos run and record those).
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ObZfWpS6yTd8Nxjh6v847Y_bpxxGZtsuaPmMVV5HOSs/edit
If you have questions about specifics it looks like Discord is the place to ask. https://discord.com/invite/D6KbKZr
-
On 9/30/2022 at 6:30 AM, jackhulk said:
Great idea thank you. For now I've just been downloading and using trailers from YouTube. Wrong forum I know, but is it possible to download/upload single videos on Emumovies? I usually download videos directly via LaunchBox, but would be great to share missing videos I've sourced with community on Emumovies, but I find the website somewhat confusing. It appears it's only possible to download videos in packs. If this is incorrect, can you advise please how I can download and upload single videos on there please?
EmuMovies with their paid account gives you access to their FTP server. I've downloaded single videos that way through FileZilla (FTP Client). They also have a downloads forum similar to what is here at the LaunchBox forums for themes and artwork. For EmuMovies, it looks like you can submit your own files here: Submit Media.
Also, if you're not put off by a bit of tinkering, trimming down YT gameplay to something more manageable can be pretty easy with this tool I've been using it for a while to trim the "trailer approved for all audiences" message off of my movie previews. Works pretty well and is pretty straightforward to use.
-
1
-
1
-
-
Yes, there sure are. I was just giving feedback on this particular one. My overall impression was mostly positive and in the same vein as a few other folks in previous posts. I realize this is a style choice. Not sure what your point is...
Like I said, I'll probably use these.
-
As others have said, I'm conflicted with the design choice showing off the cartridge's connector. On the one hand, I can appreciate these being accurately represented. On the other, my brain won't stop telling me it looks wrong given the angle. Overall though I appreciate the effort and its high-quality work. In the end, I think the uniformity of this is going to be a really attractive addition to a BigBox. I could definitely see myself making use of these.
Thanks!
-
This really looks great. Any chance you might do a wall layout for this theme as well?
-
I'm not asking where I can find movie posters and artwork for Launchbox. I have them. Before we get too far into this, I know Movies and TV Shows are currently outside the scope of this application and this is just a thing I'm doing, but I know others have an interest in hosting all of their media under one roof which I how I got started down this rabbit hole.
At this point I have a collection of... I'd say nearly 300 movies. Poster art, fan art, backdrops, front covers, back covers, video trailers, banners... most of what you need to make it feel like it was scraped at a similarly thorough level on par with your game folders. I'm still building this out but it occurs to me that I could post my collection of media here in the downloads section to share. Again though, citing what I already said above, I know this is a bit of a niche and I don't know to what degree the community here wants to participate in that. I also understand if there is some apprehension about hosting media related to movies and television since that area of copyright tends to be scrutinized more closely.
I wasn't sure where this question would be appropriate so I'm putting it here in the noobs section. Just thought it might be worth gauging interest.
Thanks.
Long Jewel Case 3D Model Warping Images
in Features
Posted · Edited by Whatscheiser
Hello,
I'm currently working on updating my media art for my Sega CD collection and I am noticing that the long jewel case model seems to distort any images I'm creating for the Sega CD. I'm basing the resolutions off of what I'm finding from original scans at SegaRetro.org ...It's only very slightly noticeable sometimes on front and back covers, but the spines are super squished. It became a little extra apparent recently when cleaning up the cover art for NHL '94. That spine contains a round NHL Official Product seal and, yeah its not round when viewed on that spine. It's become quite an oval.
I've not had this issue with the DVD cover or box models. Just the long jewel cases.
Resolution size for my spine is 208x2360 Which again, lines up pretty well with scanned artwork that I have from the original packaging. So I don't think I am producing an image that ratio wise would be something completely unexpected for the model to deal with.
I'm wondering if there is a certain resolution size I need to be shooting for, or could it be possible to get that model to conform to the size of the image it is displaying? Which I believe is how the 3D boxes are setup.
Thanks.