Launchbox Stuck Downloading Metadata/Media

[rom116]

32 minutes ago, faeran said:

Hi @rom116. Sounds like you have a unique issue that's not related to this thread,

What the process you are seeing is trying to do is download any new metadata from the LaunchBox GamesDB, which is then saved in a file called Metadata.xml, located in the LaunchBox\Metadata folder.

It may be possible that the file is somehow locked by another process, stopping LaunchBox from updating the file and therefore making LaunchBox hang.

Make sure LaunchBox isn't trying to be sync'd by a cloud storage program (like dropbox). These programs will lock files that LaunchBox needs to write to.

Thanks man.  I am familiar with the file.  My LB is not synced with any cloud storage program.  I've been using and updating LB for several years.  First time this has happened.  The zip downloads but won't extract...If I try to manually extract it tells me there's an unexpected end to the archive and the xml is much smaller than the existing xml...

[sundogak]

2 hours ago, TheRiceKing said:

I paid EmuMovies to be a Lifetime Supporter and I get stuck. Their EmuMovies Sync Tool 2.54 downloads fast but after downloading 30GB+ I can came realize that the folder structure and image names do not match on Launchbox so is useless. If I can't download images and metadata then what's the point of having Launchbox as a front end for my library. This is incredibly frustrating.

I had EmuMovies long before I had LB with a bunch of media downloaded.  I used the majority of media I had downloaded via sync tool, you just have to do a couple extra steps.  Copy the files in the Sync Tool folder to the comparable media folder for LB (e.g., ..Launchbox\Images\Atari2600\Box - Front\ ).  About 90% of the files will be picked up by LB as long as you have naming that is either linked to LB DB or using relatively standard naming convention.  You just have to refresh (F5) after you dump into LB folder structure. There will be some that are not close or using an alt name that is not in the LB DB but you use use the audit feature in LB to pick those up.  Dashes and special characters can trip up the fuzzy naming pickup in LB but you see the pattern pretty quickly.  

Or, you could just use LB linked to EmuMovies and download directly from LB vs using the sync tool and you skip the step of manually moving.  

Edited August 14, 2021 by sundogak

[sundogak]

3 minutes ago, TheRiceKing said:

Bro, the naming convention that gets downloaded using the EmuMovies Sync Toll does not match the naming convention of LaunchBox. I clearly wrote that. I use No-Intro sets. I looked in the LaunchBox media sets and LaunchBox DOES NOT use actual game names but names the images using number and letter.

Inaccurate.  If LB names the files it sticks a -01 or series designator.  However, it will either match the name or the ROM title upon import of media. It also skips/ignores anything for fuzzy matching that is in brackets or parenthesis.  So a no-intro set (which I also have) for say Sega 32X will match files such as "Blackthorne (USA).zip" with your LB title.  What LB renames files is different than what it will fuzzy match. 

[neil9000]

8 hours ago, TheRiceKing said:

. I looked in the LaunchBox media sets and LaunchBox DOES NOT use actual game names but names the images using number and letter.

Not true, media in launchbox can either be named the same as your rom file, or the same as the name is displayed in Launchbox (which is pulled from and matched from our database) see below example. We are perfectly compatible with no-intro naming.

Do you have a example of file names being pulled from emumovies sync tool? Also why are you even using that tool, launchbox has built in support for emumovies and will actually rename files on the fly when downloaded if needed?

[Tekkenlord]

Hi i have a similar problem too right now, which i think it must be your servers, i cannot import right now anything because it is stuck on refreshing the metadata from launchbox, and i figure as much it must be you because when i try to download also a new update the download goes painfully slow, that has been an ongoing issue as well for some of us, when downloading images data or anything sometimes it can take like forever.

[forgeflow]

I've been rebuilding my entire Launchbox setup, and have imported thousands of ROMs and downloaded all media and metadata available for all collections... up until this weekend. I was bringing in some largish collections - Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, and started to run into issues with coming back to the program after leaving it to run overnight, and finding it stalled in the download process partway through. The error that shows up indicated that a session has expired, or that I am being asked to log in again (I am assuming EmuMovies is the culprit in those cases). Snippet from last night's log:

2021-09-27 08:08:24 AM Downloading "http://api.gamesdbase.com/5c35342ec836375e38c8355d3531372b65336461c62ba060ffddc9f75ec86c6466c85bc5d2676455c86e72c8726ccf6e6f606262c867645fd262ce5a75c62dc65e2b363135.png" to "E:\LaunchBox\Images\Commodore Amiga\Screenshot - Game Title\Assassin_ Special Edition-01.png"
2021-09-27 08:08:24 AM FIRST CHANCE EXCEPTION: The remote server returned an error: (404) Session has expired. Please login..
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.SendRequest()
2021-09-27 08:08:24 AM FIRST CHANCE EXCEPTION: The remote server returned an error: (404) Session has expired. Please login..
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.SendRequest()
   at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
2021-09-27 08:08:24 AM FIRST CHANCE EXCEPTION: The remote server returned an error: (404) Session has expired. Please login..
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
2021-09-27 08:08:24 AM FIRST CHANCE EXCEPTION: The remote server returned an error: (404) Session has expired. Please login..
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
   at System.Net.WebClient.GetWebResponse(WebRequest request)
   at System.Net.WebClient.DownloadBits(WebRequest request, Stream writeStream)
2021-09-27 08:08:24 AM FIRST CHANCE EXCEPTION: The remote server returned an error: (404) Session has expired. Please login..
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
   at System.Net.WebClient.GetWebResponse(WebRequest request)
   at System.Net.WebClient.DownloadBits(WebRequest request, Stream writeStream)
   at System.Net.WebClient.DownloadFile(Uri address, String fileName)
2021-09-27 08:08:24 AM EmuMovies 404 error, updating URLs

At this point the program gets stalled and sits for a very long time in this state. I had 61 errors in the error list that all said that the session had expired. Seems to me that the appropriate thing the program should be doing is to renew the connection to the database(s) (start a new session, resend credentials) before trying again.

[Retro808]

We know this is an issue with EmuMovies. It has been stated a couple times in various threads about the downloading issues. It is a "timing out" issue with the current EmuMovies API. The recent betas have put some system work arounds in place to try an alleviate this issues. If beta testing is not your thing you would need to wait for the next stable release. See the post below from out beta thread.

On 9/21/2021 at 4:27 PM, faeran said:

Hi Everyone,

Beta 4 has now been released with the following:

• New Feature: LaunchBox's game-specific background image can now be disabled (Found in LaunchBox Options > Visuals > Backgrounds)
• New Feature: You can now use the Clean Up Media tool for a single platform (Community Poll feature)
• Improvement: LaunchBox should more accurately determine a ROM's region based on its filename
• Improvement: EmuMovies downloads are now downloaded last to allow them to continuously download and avoid session timeout errors
• Fixed: Rare errors while downloading Steam media
• Fixed: Importing arcade games with the ROM Import Wizard was not always obeying the "Force Use MAME Metadata" option (introduced in 11.9)
• Fixed: On some systems, starting Big Box into a platforms or filters view was not properly playing background videos on first load
• Fixed: Rare error when editing the RetroArch emulator in LaunchBox if no cores were missing
• Fixed: On rare occasions, changing the selected game too quickly in LaunchBox would cause the game details loading to hang
• Fixed: The prompt upon completion of media downloads was sometimes appearing more than once
• Fixed: Steam games rated 17+ were causing errors with the import

 

As always, thanks for the help with testing the betas.

[forgeflow]

I've had betas enabled on previous installs of Launchbox with no issues. Will do it again for this one, thanks.

[forgeflow]

Updated to the beta, and this seems to have fixed the issue. I am not sure if this is new behavior, or if it is something I never noticed before, but when you select the Download Metadata and Media from the Tools menu, I think it used to scan the entire library, whereas now it seems to only scan whatever is currently selected. This is actually a good thing - I prefer what it's doing now. I've been able to re-scan and redownload some of the problematic collections and so far, no stalling from EmuMovies. Good job.

[neil9000]

1 hour ago, forgeflow said:

I never noticed before, but when you select the Download Metadata and Media from the Tools menu, I think it used to scan the entire library

Yes is did/does, that has always been the case. It has also always been the case that you can do it by system, but i believe it is know more "visible" that you can. You have always been able to use CTRL-A or CTRL left click, and then run it.