spiritedusual

Launchbox Second Screen Companion View File Second Screen Companion - View Manuals, Guides, & Media on your Phone! Second Screen Companion is a lightweight LaunchBox plugin that instantly turns your smartphone or tablet into a dedicated companion hub for whatever game you are currently playing. Whenever you launch a game, the plugin silently starts a local web server. Just scan a QR code, and your phone will instantly load a beautiful, dark-mode hub containing all of the game's manuals, strategy guides, artwork, and media so you can browse them while you play! 🌟 Features The Companion Hub: A sleek, mobile-optimized webpage that automatically uses your game's Clear Logo and Fanart Background for a premium look. Comprehensive Media Scanner: Automatically finds and serves: 📖 Documents: Game Manuals and Strategy Guides (pulled dynamically from your Additional Apps). 🖼️ Artwork: Front/Back Box Art, Discs, Carts, Clear Logos, Fanart, Storefront Posters, and dozens of other image folders. 🎵 Media: Automatically plays your game's Theme Music or Gameplay Videos right in your mobile browser via native HTML5 players. Smart Image Viewer: Transparent PNGs (like Clear Logos or isolated box art) are displayed over a dark-mode checkerboard background so they always look perfect and never vanish into a black screen. One-Click Network Setup: Built-in tools to automatically open the required Windows Firewall ports so you don't have to mess with command prompts. 🛠️ Installation Download the latest release zip file and unpack in your LaunchBox\Plugins\ directory. You might have to right-click the dll file, go to Properties, and check the "Unblock" box at the bottom (this is required by Windows for downloaded DLLs). Extract the Second Screen Companion folder directly into your LaunchBox\Plugins\ directory. (You should have a folder path that looks like: LaunchBox\Plugins\Second Screen Companion\WirelessScreenServer.dll and QRCoder.dll) 📱 How to Set Up & Use Open LaunchBox. Go to the top menu and click Tools -> Second Screen Companion Settings. You can leave the Default Port as 8080, or change it if you have conflicts. Click Apply Network Rules (Admin). This will trigger a Windows prompt to automatically open the port in Windows Firewall for the server. (You only need to do this once!) Click Test Connection QR. Scan it with your phone's camera. If your phone and PC are on the same Wi-Fi network, you will see a green "Success!" screen. Play a game! The next time you launch a game, access the host pc ip on the port assigned. The hub will automatically populate with all the media for the active game. ⚠️ Troubleshooting / Notes Same Network Required: Your phone/tablet and your LaunchBox PC must be connected to the same local network/Wi-Fi. Missing Media? The plugin strictly reads the media you have stored in your LaunchBox folders. If LaunchBox doesn't have a manual or video for the game, the hub won't display it. Browser Caching: Mobile browsers like to cache things. If you swap games and the phone still shows the old game, just pull down to refresh the page! Submitter spiritedusual Submitted 03/01/2026 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins  

The Game Scraper View File 🎮 The Game Scraper for LaunchBox The Game Scraper is a high-performance, multi-threaded metadata and media powerhouse for LaunchBox. It intelligently routes requests based on platform, performs deep "gap-filling" between APIs, and features a unique Bulk Resolution workflow to ensure no game is left behind. ⚠️ ATTENTION: If you encounter issues with YouTube video downloads, always ensure you have the most up-to-date version of yt-dlp.exe before seeking support. 🛠️ Dependencies & Requirements (Pre-Bundled) To provide a seamless experience, everything you need is included in the plugin folder. You do not need to download external binaries unless you wish to update them manually. Required Core Components (Included) yt-dlp.exe: The core engine for downloading trailers. ffmpeg.exe: Handles video merging and ensures files play correctly within LaunchBox. SteamKit2.dll: Enables high-speed, anonymous communication with the Steam network. aria2c.exe: Included to provide accelerated, multi-segmented download speeds for video assets. deno.exe: Included to help solve captchas and bypass YouTube's bot protection for age-gated or restricted content. Recommended APIs (User-Provided) SteamGridDB API Key: Required for high-quality, community-voted covers, heroes, and logos. IGDB Client ID & Secret: Powers all console metadata and "Gap Filling" for PC titles. FlareSolverr: Required for HowLongToBeat integration to bypass Cloudflare security gates. 📖 How to Use Running a scrape takes only a few clicks: Select one or more games in your LaunchBox library. Right-click the highlighted selection. Choose The Game Scraper from the pop-up menu to open the dashboard and customize your options. 🚀 Feature Guide: How It Works & What It Can Do 🧠 General/Metadata Options What it can do: Automatically scans, identifies, and populates game descriptions, developers, publishers, genres, play modes, release dates and other metadata fields based on your source selection. How it works: In automatic mode the plugin checks your game's platform. For PC games, it scans Steam first, then automatically reaches out to a second console database to "gap-fill" hidden details that Steam lacks, like what Series a game belongs to or its official Age Rating. For Console games, it skips Steam entirely and routes straight to dedicated console databases based on the platform name. By selecting a different source you force the plugin to use it as the primary source. Select other options as you deem necessary. Better Pc Game Importer integration: If you have the Better PC Game Importer plugin it will integrate and you can select your game install folders. When you start your batch here the plugin will rename the folder, shortcuts, and update the path to match the new game title ensuring your library is in sync next time you import new game(s) in the Better PC Game Importer plugin. 🎬 Game Trailer Downloader & Trimmer What it can do: Finds, trims, and downloads game trailers up to 4K quality that stream seamlessly inside LaunchBox when you highlight a game. How it works: You select your preferred source (Official Steam Storefront videos or a YouTube search query). For YouTube videos the plugin will automatically download the video and slice it at your exact cutoff mark (e.g., turning a 20-minute walkthrough video into a tight, 2-minute attraction preview). If your chosen resolution isn't available, it automatically scales down to the next best option. You can also select between FFMPEG and WMC. I recommend you try FFMPEG if it doesnt work or crashes Launchbox use WMC instead. Also for YouTube is the Suffix field. You may change this and the plugin will add it on to the end of the search which is always going to be the name of the game (sometimes the platform) and then your suffix. ⏱️ Playtime Tracking (HowLongToBeat) What it can do: Imports real-world completion times into custom LaunchBox fields so you can filter your library by game length. How it works: The plugin HLTB to get the aggregated playtime for the game being scanned. It uses FlareSolverr to bypass cloudflare protections. The plugin will pull the completion times, Main Story, Main+Sides, Completionist, etc... and will create a new category the game fits in to based on the "Main Story" completion time. This allows you to create dynamic, auto updating, playlists in Launchbox that get updates when you add games. Quick: Under 5 hours Standard: 5-15 hours Extended: 15-30 hours Long: 30-60 hours Massive: Over 60 hours NOTE: Because there is no official API, and because we use FlareSolverr, HLTB cannot be ran with the metadata/media portions on the plugin. To do so would either get you banned or be incredibly slow. Thus it must be ran separate. Special thanks to 7nseccmem for extensive testing and ideas for this version. Coming soon... ScreenScraper source Submitter spiritedusual Submitted 12/28/2025 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins  

add me to the list of users that have crashing problems with ffmpeg.

Hi thank for sharing your experience with this. I don't think we had the same issues. My problems started months ago well before the ffmpeg issue. I fixed my issue by installing a new LB instance and slowly adding my xml files from the first install to the new one. I discovered that certain xml files would cause the infinite save games issue. I have a lot of xmls so in the end I just used it as an opportunity to download full romsets and create 1g1r dats to have a both a more complete yet efficient collection.

The creator of the steam scrapper updated recently and I was able to download new trailers. If this is an issue with the newest beta maybe try sharing it in the beta thread to get some exposure to the team?

what version are you on? Newest beta?