faeran

Hi Everyone, Beta 5 is now available. This should be the last beta that we expect to contain major changes, and this time those changes are centered on Big Box. We’ve reworked several of its core navigation, transition, and image loading paths to hopefully make browsing feel a bit smoother and more responsive, especially when moving rapidly through wheel, wall, CoverFlow, CoverFlow with Details, hybrid, and Game Discovery Center views. Selected and visible artwork is now prioritized while duplicate loading work is reduced, transitions and video handoffs are cleaner, and 3D FlowModel navigation has a smoother, more natural feel with less redundant animation work. These changes also improve how wall-style views settle and update, while helping the selected metadata and media remain synchronized as you move around. There’s plenty more included as well, including continued improvements to the Fast Grid, more reliable metadata updates and shutdown handling, fixes for Vita3K imports, MAME high-score uploads, and Bezel Project downloads, plus a substantial modernization of plugin management and bundled integrations. For this beta, we’d especially appreciate testing around: Big Box navigation - Rapidly browse wheel, wall, CoverFlow, CoverFlow with Details, and hybrid views; use Filter / Sort, playlist sort orders, Jump To, and Game Details, and confirm navigation remains smooth while the wheel, selected game, artwork, videos, and details stay synchronized and fully load Big Box long-running Attract Mode - Run Attract Mode for an extended period with an image-heavy theme or CoinOP-style wheel, then confirm wheel images continue loading, navigation remains responsive, and Windows does not begin failing to create new windows or UI resources Big Box startup videos, game videos, and background music - Test startup videos with keyboard/controller skipping, slower Big Box startup, Jump To, Search, and Filter / Sort popups, and large background-music folders; confirm startup videos remain visible until Big Box is ready, game videos continue behind navigation popups, music discovery does not stall navigation, and game-launch focus is not taken back after handoff LaunchBox Image Grid and image caching - Change Fast Grid section heights by clicking and dragging, restart LaunchBox, clear selection, inspect badge tooltips, download or replace artwork, and rapidly resize or scroll; confirm layout overrides persist, the empty Game Details background remains correct, downloads resume correctly, and artwork caches update without file-lock errors Metadata update reliability - Refresh the metadata package while performing searches or imports and confirm brief file locks recover automatically, large lookups complete, and the previous metadata remains usable if an update cannot be applied Startup and shutdown - Close LaunchBox and Big Box several times and confirm the shutdown progress window appears, displays useful progress, and both programs close cleanly without hanging Controller input settings - Disable controller input separately in LaunchBox and Big Box, then connect, disconnect, and switch physical or virtual controllers; confirm background detection never silently re-enables controller input PlayStation Vita imports - Import Vita3K games through watched folders, drag-and-drop, and manual import workflows, including a custom platform scraping as PlayStation Vita; confirm embedded titles are used instead of title IDs and that version, region, duplicate detection, and changed param.sfo metadata behave correctly MAME high scores from Big Box - Sign in to the LaunchBox Games Database, launch supported MAME games from Big Box, set or beat a score, and confirm legitimate scores upload and appear on the leaderboards Bezel Project downloads - Download and apply Bezel Project artwork for MAME and RetroArch, including retrying after a cancelled or failed attempt; confirm extraction succeeds without ZIP file-lock errors and temporary downloads are cleaned up LaunchBox window and Options behavior - With VLC - Media Engine video playing, minimize LaunchBox and restore it using the taskbar and Alt+Tab; also open Options with Ctrl+, and repeated rapid input, confirming one activation restores the window and only one Options workflow opens Plugin Manager and bundled integrations - Upgrade an existing Beta 4 installation containing LaunchBox Reader, VLC - Media Engine, official emulator integrations, and third-party plugins; confirm everything remains installed and functional, then test install, update, repair, uninstall, restart handling, compatibility messages, and source-code links Beta 5 changelog: New Feature: Added Ctrl + , as a keyboard shortcut for opening LaunchBox Options, with repeated input prevented from opening overlapping Options workflows Improvement: Fast Grid selection now uses a polished glass highlight with a smoother specular animation Improvement: Big Box view transitions and 3D FlowModel navigation are smoother and more responsive during rapid browsing, with cleaner video handoffs and fewer redundant visual updates Improvement: Big Box wheel, wall, CoverFlow, and Discovery artwork now prioritizes selected and visible items, reducing duplicate loading and making images appear more quickly during rapid navigation Improvement: Big Box background music discovery now runs outside the UI thread so startup and navigation remain responsive while music folders are scanned Improvement: Higher-resolution fullscreen screenshots now scale smoothly to the available display, while lower-resolution screenshots retain crisp pixel-art integer scaling Improvement: Big Box game videos now continue playing while Jump To, Search, and Filter / Sort navigation popups are open Improvement: LaunchBox and Big Box now close more reliably while the shutdown progress window tracks cleanup work Improvement: Plugin management and bundled system integrations have been modernized with safer installation, update, repair, uninstall, migration, compatibility handling, failure isolation, and source-code links for supported plugins Improvement: Windows CRC storage failures now show a clearer message identifying a drive or file-system problem instead of appearing as a generic startup, folder, or plugin error Improvement: Added a themeable BlurredVideoBackground element that safely provides blurred video backdrops for custom Big Box themes across supported video players Fixed: Long-running Big Box Attract Mode sessions no longer leak WPF image-worker resources that could cause wheel images to disappear or prevent Windows from creating new UI resources Fixed: Rapid navigation into Big Box Game Details no longer leaves menus, metadata, images, or videos empty because an outgoing view cancelled the incoming view's load Fixed: Big Box playlist views once again respect each playlist's configured sort order, with a contextual Playlist Sort option and per-playlist Big Box overrides Fixed: Big Box Filter / Sort changes now keep the wheel, selected game, Game Details, and Jump To navigation synchronized Fixed: Big Box startup videos remain visible until the interface is ready after being skipped, and startup cancel input no longer brings Big Box in front of a game after focus has been handed off Fixed: MAME high scores launched from Big Box now use the same parsing and upload path as LaunchBox, including safer factory-score filtering and recovery from transient archive failures Fixed: PlayStation Vita imports now use embedded Vita3K metadata for game titles, versions, and regions instead of displaying title IDs Fixed: Metadata updates now recover more reliably from brief database and ancillary-file sharing conflicts instead of failing the entire updateFixed: Image cache deletion, decoder-affine cache writes, and image-download queue persistence are more reliable during concurrent artwork loading and replacement Fixed: LaunchBox now restores with a single taskbar click or Alt+Tab activation after being minimized while VLC - Media Engine video is playing Fixed: Bezel Project downloads now close temporary ZIP files before extraction, preventing file-lock failures for MAME and RetroArch bezel installation Fixed: Fast Grid section height overrides persist correctly, badge tooltips are restored, and clearing selection retains the intended empty Game Details background Fixed: Disabling controller input now consistently prevents background controller initialization and polling from silently turning it back on Fixed: Steam game discovery no longer shows an error when Steam replaces an application manifest while LaunchBox is scanning it Fixed: Invalid custom carousel scrollbar styles now fall back to the built-in style instead of preventing the carousel from initializing Fixed: Grouped old and custom LaunchBox grids retain stable scroll anchoring during keyboard navigation and programmatic selection while still scrolling upward smoothly Fixed: Powered-off or disconnected DirectInput controllers no longer cause repeated phantom navigation when Use All Controllers is enabled As always, when reporting issues, please include your hardware specs, Windows version, theme, video engine, controller setup, any relevant plugins, and logs/crash details when available. Thanks everyone for continuing to test and report back. With the major changes now in place, the remaining betas will be focused on fixes, stability, and general polish as we work toward the official release.

This still happens, granted you are using Default theme or a theme based on the same Play button logic, and you haven't enabled the option Assume game application paths exist (skip file checks), under Options > Visuals > Game Details. Having that option on stops the checks from happening, so the Play button will always remain a play button, although for people that have their ROMs on a different computer/server (or just a generally slow computer), they will gain performance by not having LaunchBox run that check.

This one is actually by design. The new fast grid prioritizes scrolling, and badges are a huge cause of the performance issues when scrolling, so to prioritize a smoother experience, badges temporarily clear while grabbing the scrollbar and dragging past a specific threshold, then they instantly appear when you stop scrolling. it does not happen when scrolling with a mouse wheel. This will only happen when a theme uses the new fast image grid, which the default theme is currently the only one that utilizes it. Which themes is this happening with? Animations can be triggered in many ways in a custom theme, so it's not as simple as "turn off all animations when returning to Big Box", and it's more "make that theme's animation triggers more robust so it doesn't trigger an animation when returning to Big Box". Basically not all animation triggers in all themes are made equally, and you may notice if you look closely that all animations are not being triggered when exiting a game, only ones that use a specific trigger, or have a particular storyboard/workflow. I may look at shoring up some of that so it's less likely that theme devs can make a mistake there, but it may have unintended side-effects, so I'll tread lightly there and see what I can come up with. This one sounds like a build specific issue more than a global specific issue, in that for the most part this is not happening for users and is more of an edge case. When this does happen to you, provide logs that get generated, LaunchBox logs and windows event logs, and we'll see if there's anything more we can do.

I think what is happening right now is that the reader is setting mappings to the first controller, regardless if you have many controllers. Curious how you would like this to work. Are you wanting to have a specific physical controller be your "reader" controller, or do you want all your controllers to be able to navigate the reader, or are you wanting a specific controller index to navigate the reader (ie: controller 3 is always the reader controller).

This feature is designed to be on for new users and off for users that upgrade. It's one of those features that you either love it or hate it, but I may look at adding it into the new configure layout options as well for the new fast image grid path.

This is a tough one, as it's not actually a thing that's happening using any of our controllers, so we'll try again to fix this blindly. We'll shore up some edge cases and see if that helps for the next beta, What you can test is going into Big Box options, turning off controllers, immediately exiting the Options, and checking BigBoxSettings.xml to see if <EnableGamepad>false</EnableGamepad>. Then close Big Box and see if it's somehow changed to true for you. I checked our fix and while I'm unable to actually break it, although I'm currently leaning towards a possible obfuscation issue (which basically means code = good, but some other process garbles code and breaks things later down the pipeline). We'll put in some extra protections for next beta here. This one is my bad. We fixed it internally and then it looks like it missed the cut off time of beta 4, so the fix will be in beta 5. It's happening due to a safety measure put in for the new startup screen system that allows users to escape out of a situation where the startup screen may wait for a game that never ends up loading due to windows issues. It also only affects certain controllers, but when it does, affects them 100% of the time. Either way, beta 5 will have this fixed. Also not able to reproduce this. Maybe LEDBlinky specific? That's just a guess, but some things that seem global end up being very edge case, and this one may one one of those scenarios. This is one of those VLC quirks that has been around since the beginning of time (well, since VLC was a thing in BB from all the years ago). Be curious if we can figure it out before release. Thanks for the reminder. Unable to reproduce your alt-tab situation, so sounds more of an edge case scenario there. As far as Playlist sort order in Big Box, we haven't yet investigated it yet, but it's slated for beta 5. I assume the sort order set in LB made its way to Big Box before we added the ability to sort games in Big Box. We should have something in place for Beta 5 that should allow respecting the playlist sort order while still allowing the option to change it.

Hi Everyone, Beta 4 is now available, and this one is focused heavily on continuing to address the biggest issues that have been reported throughout the last couple betas. We’d also love to hear how the new VLC-based Media Engine feels in this beta across LaunchBox and Big Box, both where it’s working well and where it still needs improvement. For this beta, we’d especially appreciate testing around: LaunchBox game list navigation - Enable Options > Visuals > Main Window Theme > Features > Use Arrange By scrollbar, or search Options for "Arrange By scrollbar", then test List View and the default Image Grid with large libraries arranged by Title, Platform, Genre, Series, Star Rating, Date Added, and Custom Fields; confirm the new scrollbar markers, hover labels, click jumping, drag scrolling, mouse wheel behavior, and native scrollbar fallback all behave correctly Fast Grid / Image Grid layout controls - In the default LaunchBox theme's Image Grid, open Configure Layout and test the Aspect Ratio slider and Fill image alignment option; resize box images quickly, switch between fit/fill alignment modes, restart LaunchBox, and confirm the layout, image cropping, rounded corners, and saved section overrides remain correct Fast Grid image loading and selection - Scroll quickly through large platforms and playlists, drag the scrollbar thumb, resize box images while images are loading, switch between List View and Image Grid, click empty space to deselect games, and confirm images stay matched to the right games, selection clears fully, and Game Details does not show stale content Plugin and Themes & Media Managers - Confirm the window appears immediately with a loading state while the plugin catalog loads; test installed plugins, available updates, tag filters, sorting, manually installed plugins, and newer local plugin versions to confirm update/repair labels are correct Pause screen manuals and documents - Launch a game, open the pause screen, then open manuals or additional documents using LaunchBox Reader, Windows default apps, and an external reader; confirm the document appears above the pause screen, duplicate launches are prevented while loading, and the pause screen regains focus/topmost behavior after the document closes Startup and LocalDb performance - Launch cold with a larger collection and test metadata searches/import lookups afterward; confirm startup remains stable and local metadata/platform lookups behave normally Big Box videos using VLC - Media Engine - Set Big Box video playback to VLC - Media Engine, then test startup videos, preview videos, background music, and video audio; confirm videos start, stop, mute, unmute, defer during startup, and switch games without stuck audio or leftover video state Controller input settings - Disable controller input, connect or switch controllers, restart LaunchBox/Big Box, and confirm fallback controller detection does not silently turn controller input back on Metadata refresh and search edge cases - Refresh metadata, test searches with titles containing characters such as +, ., (, ), [, ], and confirm searches complete normally; if possible, test a failed metadata extraction path and confirm the error remains clean while diagnostics are captured Xbox / UWP / Dolphin resilience - Scan Xbox/UWP imports on systems with inaccessible WindowsApps packages, and test Dolphin install/version detection with normal and file-in-use scenarios; confirm expected local failures produce clean warnings or normal failure messages instead of crashes Beta 4 changelog: New Feature: Added an optional Arrange By scrollbar for LaunchBox game lists and the default Image Grid, with group markers, hover labels, and click/drag jumping through the current arranged view Improvement: Plugin Manager now opens immediately and loads the online plugin catalog in the background with a clear loading state Improvement: LaunchBox Themes & Media Manager now opens immediately and loads themes and media packs in the background with a clear loading state Improvement: LocalDb startup work has been optimized to reduce startup overhead during local metadata database initialization and lookups Improvement: Big Box VLC - Media Engine video playback and startup-video handling now include additional diagnostics when debug logging is enabled Fixed: Manuals and documents opened from the pause screen no longer appear behind the pause screen Fixed: Image cache writes and CoverFlow image loading are more reliable, reducing file-lock, stale-image, corrupt-cache, and cross-thread image loading issues Fixed: Clicking empty space in the default Image Grid now clears selection more reliably and prevents stale Game Details content from remaining visible Fixed: Fast List View column headers now stay aligned when columns are hidden, resized, or narrower than the available view Fixed: Installed plugin and media pack versions that are newer than the online catalog version no longer incorrectly appear as available updates Fixed: Controller fallback detection no longer re-enables controller input after controller input has been disabled Fixed: Metadata searches now handle titles containing regex-style characters more reliably Fixed: Several Xbox/UWP scanning, startup junction, Dolphin integration, plugin resource, and media extraction edge cases have been hardened to reduce crashes and noisy error reporting Fixed: Music volume changes now unmute Media Engine audio when raising volume above zero As always, when reporting issues, please include your hardware specs, Windows version, theme, video engine, controller setup, any relevant plugins, and logs/crash details when available. Thanks everyone for continuing to test and report back. If all goes well, we have one last change to Big Box we'll get to in the next round, along with more improvements, fixes, and general polish.

Hi guys, Beta 3 is now available. To elaborate on what @AstroBob mentioned, we spent the majority of the time smoothing out the experience of all our big features of beta 2. It took a while to get a specific build made to see a lot of what you guys were seeing, and from there we were able to get beta 3 into a much better state. Beta 3 is essentially an extension of beta 2, in a way, and I would expect that more computers out there will see the benefits of the new fast image grid. Please keep the reports coming, especially if you were affected by the Image Grid, Game Details, video playback, or controller issues in beta 2. We still have much more that we want to do, so expect even more changes to the image grid, the media engine, and Big Box in the near future. This means the beta is still very much in progress, and there are known issues we still need to dig into. A few examples that we already know about (thanks to you guys): Opening a document from the Pause Menu can leave the Pause Menu over top of the Reader/document window List View still has some column/header issues, especially after removing a larger number of columns Media Engine playback navigational information needs tweaking LaunchBox Image Caching needs tweaking For beta 3, here are the main areas we’d love feedback on: LaunchBox Image Grid - Browse large libraries in the default Image Grid, scroll quickly, drag the scrollbar thumb, resize box images, switch between List View and Image Grid, and try the new Image Corner Roundness setting in Configure Layout; confirm images stay accurate, responsive, and visually update as expected Image cache progress - Browse a large platform or playlist that needs image cache work, then confirm the processing progress appears below the working overlay, advances consistently, and goes away when the cache work is finished Game Details and media previews - Move quickly between games with screenshots, videos, music, and achievements, then confirm Game Details updates to the selected game without stale media, wrong achievements, stuck videos, or short UI freezes Video playback engines - Test VLC, FFME, and Windows Media Player video playback with preview videos, fullscreen videos, Big Box videos, and Big Box startup videos, then confirm videos start, stop, loop, resize, and switch games Related Games - Open Related Games for several games in large libraries, then confirm recommendations and thumbnails load quickly and stay matched to the selected game Music and LEDBlinky switching - Move quickly through platforms, playlists, and games with auto-play music and LEDBlinky enabled, then confirm music and LEDBlinky update to the current selection without lagging behind Beta 3 changelog: Improvement: LaunchBox Fast Image Grid scrolling and image cache handling are smoother, with fewer stale images, better fast-scroll behavior, and clearer cache progress while background image work is running, and contains a new Corner Roundness option Improvement: Game Details now refreshes media, videos, music, and achievements more smoothly while browsing, reducing stale content and short pauses when changing games Improvement: VLC Media Engine video playback now starts, stops, and switches videos more reliably, with fewer UI stalls while videos are loading Improvement: Related Games now loads recommendations and thumbnails more efficiently Improvement: LaunchBox Reader default input mappings have been updated to avoid overlapping page-turn bindings Improvement: Context menus are warmed and cached so right-click menus open more quickly after startup and view changes Improvement: Startup ROM Import no longer shows a notification when no new games are found Improvement: Auto-play music and LEDBlinky updates are more reliable when changing selections quickly Fixed: Steam media temp files are cleaned up more reliably after media downloads Fixed: Local metadata game IDs now align more reliably with the local database schema Fixed: Repeated “None” arrange-by groups no longer appear in some views Fixed: Box image cache cleanup now handles stale image sizes and cache writes more reliably Fixed: Big Box startup abort handling is more stable Thanks again for all the detailed reports

Thanks guys for providing reports, however, we'd love more information from each of you. If you are looking to help us improve the beta, we'll need some or all of this in them: The program you are referring to that you have tested: LaunchBox or Big Box Your hardware specs and OS What exactly you were doing in the app and how you were doing it Specific testing of the same scenario using all 3 video playback engines in the program you are testing in, and your performance results in whether it made a difference Which theme you used during testing while you were testing all 3 video playback engines, bonus points for testing multiple themes with all 3 video playback engine scenarios The input you were using during your testing: controller, keyboard, or mouse List all community plugins that you have installed If you had any crashes we'll need the whole crash report. If you had a hard crash to the desktop, we'll need the event logs (a lot of times it's multiple logs related to the same crash) Your LaunchBox and/or Big Box logs We will be trying to clear up as much as we can based on your testing as quickly as we can and get a beta 3 out with those fixes.

It's unclear which program you are referring to here. LaunchBox?

Sorry to hear. I'm not entirely sure why it would have less performance since the only things we did would have caused performance to slightly improve or stay level. However, if you'd like send me a PM with any logs and we'll look into it. I believe your crash in Big Box is already listed in the known issues list, so that should be solved next beta. The reader, if I had to guess, I think it requires that you have a specific version of .NET runtime installed. Instead of requiring people to have to install it, I'll bundle it in a way that the version of .NET comes with the reader, so users don't have to think about it. That should be out shortly via the manage plugins window, then we'll bundle the new version into beta 3 when that comes out.

Hey guys, Beta 2 is now available. There's quite a lot in this one, so I apologize for the dump below. Release Highlights The big change in Beta 2 is the new LaunchBox Media Engine. This is a new bundled media playback system that runs as a separate helper app alongside LaunchBox and Big Box. That separation is important: if a video or audio file causes playback trouble, the goal is for LaunchBox and Big Box themselves to remain more stable instead of being taken down with it. In everyday use, this should mean fewer crashes related to video playback, better recovery from problematic media files, and a smoother experience in media-heavy themes and views. For users, you'll simply see it as a new option under either LaunchBox or Big Box's video playback option. To try it in LaunchBox, go to Tools > Options > General > Video Playback and select Use VLC for video playback (recommended). In Big Box, go to Options > Videos > Video Playback Engine and choose VLC (recommended). LaunchBox and Big Box have separate playback settings, so please check both if you use both. Yes, we just utilized the old VLC strings for this, and it does use a different and new version of VLC within the media engine itself for this beta. This new engine affects the places where media matters most: video snaps, platform videos, theme videos, startup videos, background music, game music, and media-heavy Big Box views. Please test it while quickly browsing games, switching platforms, launching and exiting games, using startup videos, playing background music, and letting Big Box sit in media-rich views for a while. The goal is that you don't notice anything and things are just normal as far as you can tell. Depending on how this beta goes and the feedback we get, this is a real possible direction that we'd like to head to for the official release. FFMPEG also went through major overhauls for this round, including both an upgrade for FFMPEG and the WPF wrapper itself. If you have time this would be a good time to compare the media engine with FFMPEG, and WMP and come to a conclusion on how each one feels to you. The only reason we offer multiple video engines is that one size doesn't fit all, each one has its pros and cons, but it would be nice to understand if one is a clear winner for you in your exact setup and why. LaunchBox Reader is another major addition in this beta. It's a brand new separate app, that was built in house, as a new way to open manuals, guides, and other documents from inside LaunchBox. We wanted it to have some of that old-school book/manual feel, so it includes things like 3D page turns and two-page layouts, but it still works like a modern reader with mouse, keyboard, and controller navigation. You can also choose from different layouts, like single page, two page, stacked, paginated, or continuous reading, depending on what feels best for the type of document you’re reading. You can find the Reader settings in LaunchBox under Tools > Options > General > Reader. From there, you can pick which reader to use by default, adjust fullscreen and resume behavior, change themes and layout options, and customize keyboard and controller hotkeys. It can also remember settings, bookmarks, and where you left off for individual documents, so manuals and guides should be easier to jump back into later. LaunchBox also has a new image grid in the Default theme, built from the ground up with performance in mind. It uses a more structured layout so large libraries can scroll and load images faster. The new grid also has options for image size, spacing, text, alignment, card backgrounds, aspect ratio, and section height. Configuration options can be opened right from the grid itself, simply right click the grid and choose Configure layout, changing the layout will update in real time. The old boxes view is still available so existing themes keep working, but it won’t get the same performance boost or the new configuration options. Custom theme devs can add the new grid to their own themes if they want to take advantage of the faster version. More information on that will be available over on our strategy guide before launch. Big Box’s Filter / Sort menu has been overhauled to be much easier to use with a controller. You can now open one menu, choose a sort option, pick a direction, select filters, and apply everything in just a few clicks. The available filters are based on the games you’re currently viewing, so you’ll only see options that make sense for that list. Sorting is more useful now too, with options like title, release date, date added, last played, play time, and star rating. The Default theme has also been updated with new bindings so it can better show the current sort and filter state. The Jump To menu now follows your sort choice as well. If you sort by title, you’ll get the normal A-Z index jump list. If you sort by release date, you’ll get a release-year jump list instead, so you can jump straight to a specific year. Startup and game-launch behavior has also been improved with a new game monitor system. LaunchBox can better monitor the actual game or emulator window, allowing startup screens to close when the game appears and shutdown screens to appear when the game exits. This also includes all of our supported storefront launchers, which includes the ability to ignore the storefront's launch windows and understands which game process to actually look for. LaunchBox and Big Box will also automatically update its game stats more reliably for you without the need to refresh the entire game details pane. All of this will make launching games feel smoother, and more reliable for capturing your play time and game progress. Full Testing Info LaunchBox Reader - Open manuals, guides, magazines, PDFs, EPUBs, and image-based documents from LaunchBox and Big Box; try realistic page turns, different reading layouts, night mode, fit/margin settings, bookmarks, reading position resume, and keyboard/controller mappings Big Box Filter / Sort - In several Big Box views, open the new Filter / Sort popup with a controller and keyboard, apply filters, sort by different fields such as star rating, change direction, clear filters, and confirm navigation and game selection remain stable Big Box theme support for Filter / Sort - Use the default Big Box theme and at least one custom theme, then confirm sort context labels, the Filter / Sort popup, game details, and platform-specific views display correctly and remain themeable Game startup and shutdown screen monitoring - Launch games through direct emulators and storefronts such as Steam, Epic, EA, Amazon, GOG, and Ubisoft, then confirm startup screens close when the real game window appears, shutdown screens appear when gameplay ends, and play time/stat updates are accurate when returning Big Box startup videos - Test startup videos on desktop hardware and, if available, Windows handheld devices; confirm videos play reliably, hand off smoothly into Big Box, and can be skipped or completed without leaving helper windows or audio behind Recommended emulator choices during ROM imports - Import ROMs for platforms with more than one supported installable emulator and confirm LaunchBox offers multiple emulator choices, marks the recommended option, and installs/configures the selected emulator correctly (Sony PlayStation 1 is a good example if the DuckStation plugin has been downloaded) Additional Applications, Versions, and Documents - Edit a game with additional apps, alternate versions, links, and documents, confirm LaunchBox organizes them into the correct sections, and confirm Big Box shows separate Game Menu choices for Applications, Versions, and Documents when enabled LaunchBox Media Engine - In LaunchBox Options > Video, select VLC as the video playback engine, then test preview videos, fullscreen video playback, LaunchBox video playback, Big Box videos, and Big Box startup videos to confirm playback starts, stops, loops, resizes, and switches between games cleanly without stuck audio or leftover video windows LaunchBox Image Grid in the default theme - Browse a large library using the default LaunchBox theme's Image Grid, right-click the Image Grid and use Configure Layout to adjust spacing and layout options, resize the window, scroll quickly, and confirm selection highlighting and image refresh behavior remain stable; custom themes can choose to adopt the new Image Grid, but existing custom themes will continue using the previous implementation WebView2 browser migration - Use storefront logins, web views, achievements popups, and older themes that include browser views, then confirm pages load correctly and legacy theme browser views still work Known Issues There is a known issue in this beta related to Big Box startup screen cancellation/abort behavior while using a controller. In some cases, cancelling or interrupting the startup screen while Big Box is launching a game may cause an error or unstable startup overlay behavior. We already have a fix in progress for this and plan to include it in an upcoming beta, but for now please report any cases where the startup screen, shutdown screen, or game-launch overlay behaves unexpectedly. Beta 2 Changelog New Feature: Added the new bundled LaunchBox Media Engine, a separate helper app designed to improve video and audio playback stability across LaunchBox and Big Box New Feature: Added Media Engine support for video snaps, platform videos, theme videos, startup videos, background music, and game music playback New Feature: Added LaunchBox Reader integration for manuals and additional documents, including Reader defaults, saved document settings, fullscreen/resume behavior, keyboard mappings, controller mappings, and external reader options New Feature: Added Big Box Reader settings and document reader support from Big Box menus and pause-related document workflows New Feature: Overhauled Big Box sorting and filtering, including new sort/filter popup behavior, sort direction support, Jump To improvements, star rating sorting, hybrid view support, and broader view compatibility New Feature: Added game startup process/window monitoring to improve when startup screens close and shutdown screens appear New Feature: Added background startup ROM auto-import handling New Feature: Added a multi-plugin recommended emulator installation flow Improvement: Split additional applications into clearer Apps, Versions, and Documents sections Improvement: Migrated embedded browser functionality from Chromium/CefSharp to WebView2 Improvement: Refined media playback handling, audio fading, preview video loading, and startup video behavior Improvement: Improved metadata refresh resilience, validation, and diagnostics Improvement: Improved fast Image Grid layout controls, selection visuals, and image refresh behavior Improvement: Improved Game Details pane navigation responsiveness Improvement: Improved 3D model drag and carousel behavior Fixed: Big Box Jump To sort bucket issues Fixed: Big Box remembered platform/game view switching issues Fixed: LaunchBox List View double-click launch and header resizing issues Fixed: Legacy theme placeholder path and screenshot folder compatibility issues Fixed: Several import error notification and storefront startup monitoring issues Fixed: Additional startup/shutdown edge cases and stability issues Thanks again to everyone helping test. We would especially appreciate focused testing on the new Media Engine in as many setups as possible, since it touches a lot of what makes LaunchBox and Big Box feel alive: videos, music, startup screens, themes, and browsing performance. Every report helps us make the final release smoother and more stable. Thanks everyone.

I'll see what I can do. Would have to be a blind fix and you'll have to let me know whether it worked for you. I'lll see what I can do for beta 2 or beta 3.

We actually haven't touched FFMPEG yet in either LB or BB between 13.27 and this beta, but we will be soon. You'll see some major rework done in Beta2 and 3, followed by many rounds of fixes throughout the rest of the cycle. Stay tuned. Well glad you can now see which step it's failing on on your computer, so at least that's something. That step should really only take a handful of seconds, so something on your computer is timing it out. You having to force close may be a clue, could point to a locked file somewhere in the chain there that LB needs to function for whatever reason. I'll see if I can lean out that step even more for people in your situation.

I did a bunch of testing but was unable to actually get the process to get stuck, so it's quite possible there's more to it than what you may be thinking. This will be a long beta, and this first pass has nothing specific to Big Box performance in it. That is slated for beta 3. Beta 4 and beyond will be all fixes like this, so more to come. Thanks, the platform specific 3D model override preview window will be fixed for beta 2. Looks like maybe a CTC plugin essentially trying to do its own thing when it comes to displaying image in certain situations. This should be fixed in beta 2. I'll see if I can recreate this and knock it out.