Riffman81 Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 Having some trouble extracting GameCube archives in LB. It seems that if the file is in a folder within the archive, Dolphin will launch but not launch said game/file. Occasionally, I'll get an error from dolphin saying it can't recognize the ISO file. All of my GC games are in .gcz format, zipped, and each within a folder in the archive. Ive tested the .gcz files outside of LB and they all loaded in Dolphin straight away with no issues. So then I unzipped the game, removed it from the folder, re-zipped the game and launched it in LB and it loaded just fine. I want to point out that my PS1, TurboGrafx CD games are all in folders and then zipped and there aren't any issues when extracting them within LB. I'm using a recent build of Dolphin 4.0 build 9146. Does anyone else have issues with GameCube games that are in a folder within a .zip? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 LaunchBox might not be fully supported yet for all instances of how rom's are set up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted March 23, 2016 Author Share Posted March 23, 2016 Alright, new beta is out with VLC support inside Big Box (LaunchBox will have it too in a separate beta here soon). It's not a perfect solution because there's no possible way to make the VLC videos support transitions, but we're gonna have to live with that. There's a new Big Box General setting called "Video Playback Engine" that lets you switch between VLC and Windows Media Player, so if WMP is working fine for you, you can certainly stick with it. Here are my goals for the rest of this week: - Get VLC working in LaunchBox - Add the ability to sync your collection to the cloud on the LaunchBox Games Database Thanks all! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted March 23, 2016 Author Share Posted March 23, 2016 I may also add an option to search for an archive file with the same name as the ROM file if it doesn't exist. That way users can compress their collections and their games will still work without having to edit them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CADScott Posted March 23, 2016 Share Posted March 23, 2016 Jason Carr said I may also add an option to search for an archive file with the same name as the ROM file if it doesn't exist. That way users can compress their collections and their games will still work without having to edit them. That sounds like a great idea Jason, many thanks, that will save a heap of time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riffman81 Posted March 24, 2016 Share Posted March 24, 2016 SentaiBrad said LaunchBox might not be fully supported yet for all instances of how rom's are set up. I'm thinking this is more of an issue with Dolphin rather than LaunchBox... either way, I've removed all my GameCube games from the folders and re-zipped them. All are loading just fine now. Now that LaunchBox has support for compressed ROM files, I'm wondering if it would be possible in a future build to have the user specify a temp directory? Maybe it could be setup on a per platform/emulator basis? The reason I ask is because the games I play the most I'd like to leave extracted. Ultimately, this will save on write/rewrites to the HDD. 11 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted March 24, 2016 Share Posted March 24, 2016 Riffman81 said SentaiBrad said LaunchBox might not be fully supported yet for all instances of how rom's are set up. I'm thinking this is more of an issue with Dolphin rather than LaunchBox... either way, I've removed all my GameCube games from the folders and re-zipped them. All are loading just fine now. Now that LaunchBox has support for compressed ROM files, I'm wondering if it would be possible in a future build to have the user specify a temp directory? Maybe it could be setup on a per platform/emulator basis? The reason I ask is because the games I play the most I'd like to leave extracted. Ultimately, this will save on write/rewrites to the HDD. 11 Could also be useful if you have LaunchBox on an external but your games on an internal drive since internal drives are faster (internal but not your OS Drive, the OS eats most of the read and write cycles so speeds are lowered here) but specifying an internal location for the temp folder can also increase performance too when unzipping the games on the fly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riffman81 Posted March 24, 2016 Share Posted March 24, 2016 SentaiBrad said Riffman81 said SentaiBrad said LaunchBox might not be fully supported yet for all instances of how rom's are set up. I'm thinking this is more of an issue with Dolphin rather than LaunchBox... either way, I've removed all my GameCube games from the folders and re-zipped them. All are loading just fine now. Now that LaunchBox has support for compressed ROM files, I'm wondering if it would be possible in a future build to have the user specify a temp directory? Maybe it could be setup on a per platform/emulator basis? The reason I ask is because the games I play the most I'd like to leave extracted. Ultimately, this will save on write/rewrites to the HDD. 11 Could also be useful if you have LaunchBox on an external but your games on an internal drive since internal drives are faster (internal but not your OS Drive, the OS eats most of the read and write cycles so speeds are lowered here) but specifying an internal location for the temp folder can also increase performance too when unzipping the games on the fly. Having the option to choose to delete files within the temp directory or keep them. I forgot to mention that above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CADScott Posted March 24, 2016 Share Posted March 24, 2016 Jason Carr said Alright, new beta is out with VLC support inside Big Box (LaunchBox will have it too in a separate beta here soon). It's not a perfect solution because there's no possible way to make the VLC videos support transitions, but we're gonna have to live with that. There's a new Big Box General setting called "Video Playback Engine" that lets you switch between VLC and Windows Media Player, so if WMP is working fine for you, you can certainly stick with it. Here are my goals for the rest of this week: - Get VLC working in LaunchBox - Add the ability to sync your collection to the cloud on the LaunchBox Games Database Thanks all! :) The new VLC playback seems to be working well, I actually find it a little faster to change between videos than the Windows Media Player player. The only issue I see is that there is a small black bar at the top and bottom of the video window with VLC and it is not there with WMP. WMP seems to stretch the video to fit and VLC plays at the correct aspect maybe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted March 24, 2016 Share Posted March 24, 2016 There was a ticket about this too, probably not, no. Most of these video's are 480p, meaning that it is 4:3 usually. This isn't always the case, but generally (especially for the older games) the video is is 4:3 (a box). The black bars are added because it is being displayed in a 16:9 aspect ratio. WMP automatically stretches out the video which squishes and bends the pixels to how it feels like which means that the video is distorted and extra blurry usually. VLC by default adds the black bars because it is attempting to play the video in the correct aspect ratio. At least this is the most likely scenario. I don't remember if WMP automatically stretches 4:3 content. For anyone who asks if the video player should be put in 4:3 like the video, just know that if you have 720p video or video in a 16:9 aspect ratio then there would be black bars at the top and bottom. Letter boxing 4:3 content is a standard. There are newer and different methods to stretch 4:3 video so that the center of the video is less distorted and stretched and the edges take most of the distortion. This scaling is in the latest Kodi but I am unsure if VLC could do that. It would also cause weaker systems to use more resources to play the video. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted March 24, 2016 Author Share Posted March 24, 2016 CADScott said The new VLC playback seems to be working well, I actually find it a little faster to change between videos than the Windows Media Player player. The only issue I see is that there is a small black bar at the top and bottom of the video window with VLC and it is not there with WMP. WMP seems to stretch the video to fit and VLC plays at the correct aspect maybe? Good to hear, @CADSCott. With WMP, it is able to detect the exact aspect ratio of the video and cut off the black bars, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do that with VLC. Not sure if it's possible at this point. So both methods are actually using the correct aspect ratio, but the VLC engine fills the video content area, black bars or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted March 24, 2016 Share Posted March 24, 2016 If you had VLC already installed would changing it to display stretched change how it would display in LaunchBox? I always play my 4:3 videos in 16:9 VLC it is one of the main reasons I stopped using WMP because of no Aspect Ratio settings. I don't mind the new Windows 10 TV and Movies app either because it has aspect controls built in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted March 24, 2016 Author Share Posted March 24, 2016 The installation of VLC on your computer is separate and isn't used (you'll notice a new VLC folder inside of LaunchBox that contains the VLC DLLs and such). I suppose it is possible that it's still picking up the settings from a different installation; I haven't tested for that, so that's a good question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hubz Posted March 24, 2016 Share Posted March 24, 2016 Jason Carr said I may also add an option to search for an archive file with the same name as the ROM file if it doesn't exist. That way users can compress their collections and their games will still work without having to edit them. Awesome idea, little features like this end up saving large amounts of time, thank you for attempting to tackle them! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyny77 Posted March 24, 2016 Share Posted March 24, 2016 Hi, My name is Tony (France) It's possible add video system (intro) ? Ex : http://hpics.li/b6f4296 Thank you very Much Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drybonz Posted March 24, 2016 Share Posted March 24, 2016 nyny77 said Hi, My name is Tony (France) It's possible add video system (intro) ? Ex : http://hpics.li/b6f4296 Thank you very Much That would be awesome if it could play the bios opening or something. Good idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmoney Posted March 24, 2016 Share Posted March 24, 2016 nyny77 said Hi, My name is Tony (France) It's possible add video system (intro) ? Ex : http://hpics.li/b6f4296 Thank you very Much It is a great idea and one of the more requested features over at bitbucket that I hope gets implemented. Please feel free to add your vote. Here are the links. https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/313/add-videos-for-platforms https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/242/system-video Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted March 25, 2016 Author Share Posted March 25, 2016 Thanks everyone, new beta is out: - VLC support in LaunchBox - New LaunchBox splash screen - New Register License option in LaunchBox to make it easier for simpletons to add or update their license (for users who can't seem to find their LaunchBox folder, I get this all the time) - If the ROM file isn't found, LaunchBox will look for an archive file with the same name I think that's it. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MesonW Posted March 25, 2016 Share Posted March 25, 2016 Jason Carr said Thanks everyone, new beta is out: - VLC support in LaunchBox - New LaunchBox splash screen - New Register License option in LaunchBox to make it easier for simpletons to add or update their license (for users who can't seem to find their LaunchBox folder, I get this all the time) - If the ROM file isn't found, LaunchBox will look for an archive file with the same name I think that's it. :) Excellent to see these! Great work guys. VLC support has stopped my issue with Launchbox crashing when switching between games with videos. WMP begone! Particularly like the splash screen too. So glad I signed up for Beta releases :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supermario56 Posted March 25, 2016 Share Posted March 25, 2016 Hello everyone, sorry for posting this in the beta testing, but I think there should be an option to use either boxes or in-game snapshots as part of the default view in LB and BB. So far its easier to find complete or close to complete sets of in-game images for most platforms, than for box arts, specially imports. Also, and I think this is already in the to-do list, but hopefully there could be an option to jump quickly between letters while browsing games. Cheers, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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