LaunchBox 13.23 - Beta Thread

[C-Beats]

5 hours ago, Joe35car said:

Using the newest beta and see it now supports a new video player. I go into options and all I see is vlc and windows media player.

Because this beta doesn't have a new video player. One is slated potentially for beta 3.

[JoeViking245]

4 minutes ago, Undertherainbow said:

Hello.

Whats consensus on getting data back to LB after update?

I tried clean instal couple times, it boots completely empty no playlist/database , nothing. And says "Free version" even tho my license file is right there. And then when i close , copy my data back it wont start any more.

If you reinstalled LaunchBox, check your install location.  Make sure it's not something like D:\LaunchBox\LaunchBox\LaunchBox.exe

[Undertherainbow]

1 minute ago, JoeViking245 said:

If you reinstalled LaunchBox, check your install location.  Make sure it's not something like D:\LaunchBox\LaunchBox\LaunchBox.exe

Yeah thats what happened.

Went to wrong folder. Not my normal one. 
Got it working. But im still having error i posted here

 

 

[5thWolf]

Thought this was a fluke on beta 1, for it happened one time, but happened to me again now. Very rare but when I launched LB it hung like this:

Have to kill iit on task manager since it's completely unresponsive. No clue what causes it and can't replicate since it's very rare.

Edited August 12 by 5thWolf

[Drybonz]

10 hours ago, 5thWolf said:

Thought this was a fluke on beta 1, for it happened one time, but happened to me again now. Very rare but when I launched LB it hung like this:

Have to kill iit on task manager since it's completely unresponsive. No clue what causes it and can't replicate since it's very rare.

This has happened to me, occasionally, and other people reported it as well, but they don't know what causes it.

[Fursphere]

Any updates on the MAME importer being broken?

[C-Beats]

7 minutes ago, Fursphere said:

Any updates on the MAME importer being broken?

Fix has been put in for MAME importer that will be in next beta. Currently the issue that was reported with the Next button being disabled happens if there is an error thrown trying to get versions for MAME that we can auto-download. The fix will make it possible to still manually assign MAME as an emulator when that happens. If you're referring to anything else you'll need to be more specific.

[Fursphere]

18 minutes ago, C-Beats said:

Fix has been put in for MAME importer that will be in next beta. Currently the issue that was reported with the Next button being disabled happens if there is an error thrown trying to get versions for MAME that we can auto-download. The fix will make it possible to still manually assign MAME as an emulator when that happens. If you're referring to anything else you'll need to be more specific.

That's the one.   Thank you!

[drtechnolust]

On 8/14/2025 at 8:05 AM, C-Beats said:

Fix has been put in for MAME importer that will be in next beta. Currently the issue that was reported with the Next button being disabled happens if there is an error thrown trying to get versions for MAME that we can auto-download. The fix will make it possible to still manually assign MAME as an emulator when that happens. If you're referring to anything else you'll need to be more specific.

When updating MAME from version 0.278 to 0.279, the import process only brings in 4,602 ROMs regardless of whether “Skip All Prompts” is checked or unchecked. (Non-Merged Set, 24000+ roms in directory) 

I completely deleted my MAME platform and all auto-generated playlists before this test, so this was a fresh import. The same result occurs every time.

Is this related to any other reports?

[Drybonz]

I noticed that when you set "arrange by" as "progress" it now moves your active game group to the bottom (you can reverse the order but then it also reverses the alphabetical sub-order).  I thought the behavior in a previous beta with the active games group at the top made more sense.  I guess this might be because of the new progress system?

[C-Beats]

9 hours ago, Drybonz said:

I noticed that when you set "arrange by" as "progress" it now moves your active game group to the bottom (you can reverse the order but then it also reverses the alphabetical sub-order).  I thought the behavior in a previous beta with the active games group at the top made more sense.  I guess this might be because of the new progress system?

It now mimics the order you set in options. Sidebar order does as well.

[Drybonz]

2 hours ago, C-Beats said:

It now mimics the order you set in options. Sidebar order does as well.

Ok, thanks... that sounds good.  Where is that option, exactly... I can't seem to find it?

[C-Beats]

1 hour ago, Drybonz said:

Ok, thanks... that sounds good.  Where is that option, exactly... I can't seem to find it?

Notice you can move the items up and down to reorder them how you want.

[Drybonz]

1 hour ago, C-Beats said:

Notice you can move the items up and down to reorder them how you want.

Ah... got it.  Thank you.

[faeran]

Beta 3 is out with the following changes:

• New Premium Feature: LaunchBox and Big Box now include a brand new FFMPEG-based video playback option, delivering more reliable performance, with the old VLC engine now phased out

We are coming to the end of the cycle very soon if all goes well. The main change in this beta is obviously the FFMPEG-based video playback engine, which replaces the old VLC option.

You will need to switch to this engine to try it out.

• In LaunchBox, go to Tools > Options > General > Video Playback 
• In Big Box, go to Options > Videos > Video Playback Engine 

Please give it a try and let us know how it performs for you. Any feedback will be a huge help in making sure this new engine is ready for prime time.

@Fursphere - we have put in a potential fix for the issue you were hitting with the MAME Arcade Full Set Importer. Previously, if LaunchBox timed out when trying to reach MAME's GitHub to fetch all available versions, it would block you from moving forward. Now, if that request fails, there is a fallback that should let you continue down the manual path and point directly to your own MAME emulator. Hopefully you have some time to confirm this works for you now.

 

[Hedgecore024]

1 hour ago, faeran said:

• In LaunchBox, go to Tools > Options > General > Video Playback 
• In Big Box, go to Options > Videos > Video Playback Engine 

Please give it a try and let us know how it performs for you. Any feedback will be a huge help in making sure this new engine is ready for prime time.

 

So far, so good, working great in both LB & BB. Load times and transitions seem snappy as well. Great work!

[Drybonz]

3 hours ago, faeran said:

 we have put in a potential fix for the issue you were hitting with the MAME Arcade Full Set Importer. Previously, if LaunchBox timed out when trying to reach MAME's GitHub to fetch all available versions, it would block you from moving forward. Now, if that request fails, there is a fallback that should let you continue down the manual path and point directly to your own MAME emulator. Hopefully you have some time to confirm this works for you now.

 

Thanks... I think it must have been someone else having this issue.

[Fursphere]

14 minutes ago, Drybonz said:

Thanks... I think it must have been someone else having this issue.

That was me. 

I'll test it out in a bit. 

[skizzosjt]

5 hours ago, faeran said:

Please give it a try and let us know how it performs for you. Any feedback will be a huge help in making sure this new engine is ready for prime time.

The positives  

THE COLORS! FFMPEG actually matches color management that VLC uses! this is the fix I've been waiting for!

Category, platform and playlist videos recall their time position when going from a one of those wheels, into a downstream wheel, and then returning to the upstream wheel. Not exactly something I would call a show stopper if it did not work like this, but it's a win regardless since it's how VLC worked.

I did not run into any videos that did not play when using Windows 11, even before I updated K-lite pack. (Windows 10 is another story though, detailed below)

 

The negatives  

USING WINDOWS 11
Everything else is worse compared to both VLC and WMP. With FFMPEG videos don't start at their actual start. They are instead starting playback a few seconds into the video.

To elaborate I end up with videos showing as a black screen then after a few seconds they start playing, but, several seconds into the video rather than at the start (00:00:00). I see this behavior in the default theme and ones I've customized

 

If you go into the platform/playlist wheel or game details screen at a particular point in transitions the audio from the video continues to play from the previous screen, while the video on the current screen also plays. so FFMPEG allows two videos to play at once somehow. Only can see one of them, but the previous screen video audio will continue to be audible. Once backing out of current screen and returning to previous screen the behavior returns to normal only hearing the audio of the visible video that is playing. 

 

USING WINDOWS 10
All above issues mentioned under Windows 11 applies to Windows 10 too and then are more specific to just Windows 10 detailed below

FFMPEG doesn't work really at all for me in Windows 10.  (almost) every video is a black screen and never plays video or audio. some videos change to a green screen instead after waiting long enough. idk, it's a mess from my perspective.

the only videos I've gotten to play back using FFMPEG in either LaunchBox or Big Box are just a few random webm format videos (4 webm format videos played - out of the 164 webm format videos I have - all Steam trailer vids). Not a single mp4 file played in either LB or BB. When a video does play with FFMPEG it looks bad. Audio sounds OK I think, no crackling or crazy misalignment, but video wise it's awful. Seems like a slide show with frames dropping off. for videos not playing at all, vast majority of the videos I have tried, they seem like they are gonna be a black screen with no audio forever.....if you wait long enough, say maybe 30secs, they switch to being green instead and you might hear some audio chirp but nothing else happens.....at this point is when Big Box becomes unresponsive having to wait several seconds for inputs to be recognized. Fans ramp up, it's clearly super busy trying to do something when this occurs. Performance will feel terrible until it seems Big Box has not tried to play a video for a bit, then it goes back to normal. So overall performance using FFMPEG feels worse relative to VLC or WMP, but this specific performance behavior I only saw on my Windows 10 system, but not the Windows 11 one. 

 

 

All issues can be seen on the default theme too regardless of using Windows 10 or 11.

 

Already updated k-lite pack to latest 19.1.5 basic version on both Windows 10 and 11 systems. I was on a version from a couple months ago, 18 point something on both of those systems....regardless the update didn't change any behavior with FFMPEG on either system. 

[bundangdon]

With the latest beta-update, LaunchBox is crashing whenever a video plays and then I navigate to anything else in the program, using the new FFMPEG video engine. Never had this issue happen before with VLC

Edited August 20 by bundangdon