LaunchBox Beta Testing - 6.8+

[Jason Carr]

Yeah, correct. I absolutely love VLC and do not blame it for these issues. It has better video compatibility out of the box than most anything.

[kmoney]

@Jason Carr I do not use the VLC engine but I did switch over to it to test it out today after the newest beta and gave it a good run to report my test results:

1. I can tell VLC has improved, especially on how it seems the videos load almost as fast as WMP now when scrolling through the games list.

2. I am getting some weird graphical glitches on some of my Steam webm videos. It only effects just the bottom of the video about 1/4 of the way up and is green in color. Its weird because it only affected about 3 of my 55 webm videos and its always the same 3 videos. Also it seems to only affect webm and not mp4's on any of my other systems. This does not happen on these same videos when I use WMP and I have the k lite codec pack installed.

3. Occasionally when I am scrolling through my game list in any platform and stop on a game the video doesnt start unless I move to the game beside it and then back to the game I was on and then the video starts. This is random and does not happen with WMP

4. I also noticed one time when a video was playing on the platform wheel view and then I entered into the games, the platform video sound continued to play. I noticed that this has gotten better as I only noticed it one time and it used to be a lot worse with VLC

If I had to pick which one of these issues that happened the most it would be number (3) in my list above.

[Jason Carr]

Thank you very much, @kmoney. I am currently researching those issues. I also have a ticket in with the creator of Meta.Vlc which is our library that we use to interface with VLC to help with some additional issues.

I just put out a new beta with the following fixes:

- Fixed: Images are no longer renamed unnecessarily when editing games if they already existed; will help prevent issues when using the same image folders for multiple frontends

- Fixed: Little tiny feint (and rare) graphical glitches on clear logos in the games wheels have been fixed thanks to code suggested by Nielk1 on the forums

- Fixed: Viewing images fullscreen in Big Box had an odd issue where returning to the start of the list would not update and show the first image

- Fixed: The PlatformTitle property used for Big Box custom themes in the platforms views was not working properly

[ThePolish]

I have come across a slight glitch with videos using WMP - it seems that in BB if WMP is selected the video will stutter start, almost playing a 1 frame or 2 then starting again. It seems to be video dependent so it might be just the video files themselves, but I created all my video files the same way, same format.

 

When I switch to VLC I do not have this glitch on any video however if I go into a platform, sometimes the platform select video's audio will be playing in the background too as @kmoney above I'll have to back out then go back into the games list to get it to stop.

 

I took a potato quality video here - You can see Gunforce does the stutter glitch @ 5 seconds in.  At 30 seconds I switch over to Windows and almost every video does it. I then switch to VLC mode and go back. When I enter Windows again you can here the Ace Combat audio from the video on the platforms page playing on every video until I back out. After I back out no stutter under vlc and no platform video audio playing over game video audio.

Wow that felt wordy. - I'm on 6.8b4 and all my videos are mp4 ripped using clipconvert.cc as info.

 

Edit 2 - This carriers over into videos not stopping audio in the background once an emulator is launched. Retro Arch off N64 platform kept playing the video from Crusin' after the game was launched. I Alt+Tab back to Big Box, video was stopped but audio was still going.

Edited August 18, 2016 by ThePolish
Clarification + Tag

[shinra358]

What happened to the part when importing where you could choose the file extension that launchbox sees and imports?

Right now, I'm running into the problem of all the bioses and other things are being imported when trying to import things from a folder.

 

I remember something being said about it but I don't remember what lol Thing about not having it is that when porting PC games, there are waaaaay too many files to highlight and exclude in pc games. The same could be said about everything else if you do game folders and already have manuals n stuff included with your normal emus.

Edited August 18, 2016 by shinra358

[Jason Carr]

Thanks guys. @ThePolish I'm hoping to look at some of those issues this afternoon.

@shinra358, we just added something to help with that, though it's probably not what you're expecting. At the end of the wizards you can sort by file extension and then easily remove any files that shouldn't be imported by selecting them all and pressing the Delete key.

[Jason Carr]

A new beta is out guys, but the only change for this beta is for the Big Box custom themes. The themes can now include platform images that will override what the user has in their collection. I'm hoping to record some more Big Box custom theme tutorial videos this afternoon as well.

[ALIE]

WOW Jason this is the dream  now we can set up multiple Theme's with different console image styles and just jump between Theme's like Kodi. 

Unless I miss understood and made my self look like a fool 

[Zombeaver]

18 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

A new beta is out guys, but the only change for this beta is for the Big Box custom themes. The themes can now include platform images that will override what the user has in their collection. I'm hoping to record some more Big Box custom theme tutorial videos this afternoon as well.

So how does this work exactly? Is this something I can use to package the various types of custom images I've uploaded here?

One concern I've had is with platform naming - not everybody uses the same platform names (like NeoGeo vs Neo Geo vs SNK Neo Geo etc.) so is this something that themes can detect and compensate for?

Thanks as always!

[Jason Carr]

That is indeed correct, @ALIE. This isn't the complete "image pack" solution that I expect to add in later on, but it can certainly be used that way if you're so inclined.

@Zombeaver, it could be used for image packages but I wouldn't recommend it until we build an actual image pack solution. This is more for custom themes to be able to tweak the images that are displayed directly. Per the platform naming issues, we'll probably never have a 100% perfect solution for that, to be honest. But when I implement the image packs I can use the platform alternate names to try and match them up. But it's still not likely to be perfect.

[Jason Carr]

I did just put out another new beta guys, mostly with obscure bugfixes from Bitbucket tickets. The one notable thing I did change was to change the temp folder. LaunchBox was using the Windows temp folder for some things which flies in the face of our policy to keep everything inside of the LaunchBox folder. From here on out, LaunchBox\Metadata\Temp should be being used for all temporary files, and should be deleted on exit. Hopefully we don't run into any bugs due to those changes.

[Jason Carr]

@ThePolish Unfortunately I did not get to tackling those issues today, but they are still on my shortlist.

[shinra358]

Selecting to use folder names during import doesn't activate the disc numbering system for multi disc games.

[Jason Carr]

@shinra358 Can you explain what your file names and folder names are exactly?

[Bedwyr]

46 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I did just put out another new beta guys, mostly with obscure bugfixes from Bitbucket tickets. The one notable thing I did change was to change the temp folder. LaunchBox was using the Windows temp folder for some things which flies in the face of our policy to keep everything inside of the LaunchBox folder. From here on out, LaunchBox\Metadata\Temp should be being used for all temporary files, and should be deleted on exit. Hopefully we don't run into any bugs due to those changes.

Out of curiosity, Jason, since I only develop dedicated command line stuff for mostly Linux, how does it work if the user installs to ./Program Files/? Does Windows take over and place changes in %AppData% or is there another separate automated folder for redirects.

Edited August 19, 2016 by Bedwyr

[Jason Carr]

Hi @Bedwyr, Program Files is strictly off-limits for LaunchBox to be installed to. Typically, it won't even start up if you choose that folder. The installer explains not to install to Program Files or any folder that requires Administrator permissions. Unfortunately that's just a side-effect of portable applications and there's no way around it. LaunchBox installs to C:\Users\[username]\LaunchBox by default.

[Bedwyr]

Huh. I thought there was something in the OS that handled it.

edit: Virtual Store that was it.

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/222389-what-virtual-store-folder.html

Not thinking about good practices or what you do; was just trying to remember how it's handled at the OS level to prevent oopsies.

[ThePolish]

56 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

@ThePolish Unfortunately I did not get to tackling those issues today, but they are still on my shortlist.

No worries, only trying to help the cause. I have full faith that this program will be beyond perfect before you finally decide you can rest! I hope my video helped you pinpoint something! 

[Jason Carr]

Yeah, that makes sense @Bedwyr but the whole point of a portable application is not to affect anything on the computer other than what's inside the application folder. Also we need Dropbox syncing support, so that you can sync everything, settings included inside of your Dropbox folder.

[Bedwyr]

Just now, Jason Carr said:

Yeah, that makes sense @Bedwyr but the whole point of a portable application is not to affect anything on the computer other than what's inside the application folder. Also we need Dropbox syncing support, so that you can sync everything, settings included inside of your Dropbox folder.

I fully agree. I just want to make sure I'm educated about the system correctly, including stupid-proof measures.

Hmm. I wonder if its possibly for a folder divided and virtualized like that can be abstracted before Dropbox sync has access? Like maybe with the equivalent of a symlink. Not that it's remotely a good idea, mind you, but I wonder if it would work? Anyhow. I'll stop spamming the beta thread, sorry.