Feature Request: Superior alternative to video snaps.

[Fugus]

https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/14199

Requested this with Retroarch for them to tell it might already be possible.

Instead of loading up a video snap, load up the emulator + core and play a movie of it. At least for the smaller games.

The games are typically smaller than the video snap to begin with or close to it, loads up just as quickly and takes up about as much resources to run the snap as it does the game or more. And while the snap can by anywhere from 3-15MB each, the emulator movie is only about 30kb and would look far superior to the snap as it would be the actual game running with the settings you have configured.

Could replace 100GB of video snaps with 100MB of movie files and get better looking results for about the same resources or less.

[Glauco Fox]

Another cool thing that could be done is to play a video directly from youtube/emumovies instead of having it all downloaded to your machine, it might take longer to start but it would save a ton of space on the hard drive.

I’ve already pointed that out, but somehow they say that feature is already in place. All I ever found is just a button shaped like a YouTube logo that opens up a browser with YouTube.

[Fugus]

The issues with using Youtube would be getting advertisements instead of your snap part of the time. And not sure if EmuMovies has a streaming option either as they require a membership to access them.

And any site that put them out to stream like that without the proper infrastructure would be slammed hard the moment access to it started getting rolled into EmulationStation and so many went that route instead of saving it locally. Especially when you take into account all the people who just leave their stuff running needlessly.

For videos to be viable, it would have to be stored locally. The closest would have to be stream on first watch but save it so it never has to get streamed again. And even that wouldn’t be viable for anyone who doesn’t have a solid internet connection or family that loves to hog the internet bandwidth.

[Fugus]

And with what they meant with already give the option to give video links in the metadata. A lot of people submitting it will typically leave them blank because most won’t bother to keep them updated as videos die and youtube has advertisements.

As far as a theme using those links to open videos, no clue if that is possible but even if it is, most theme authors likely wouldn’t bother because of those issues, most would have no links and the ones with links could get highly unreliable as well as you getting advertisements while your video loaded.

[Glauco Fox]

That should not be an issue if the channel were owned by launchbox itself and those links are referred at the database when importing roms.
As far as ads go, that shouldn’t be a concern as most likely the ones using this are aware of the ads that comes with youtube (or don’t if you have a premium sub).

[Glauco Fox]

I don’t think YouTube would slam videos down since they have allowed the option to embed videos wherever you want.
All the points you made refering to advert and slow connection whatever should not be a concern of the developer, that’s on the user that chose to use the feature. If you have a bad connection, or you don’t want to pay a premium sub to youtube and can’t stand advert, or you don’t want to wait for the loading time, by all means go ahead and make a local storage. Having the option to stream is not detrimental to having the option to download it, it’s just a plus for someone who lacks space on their hard drive and would rather put up with all the downs that comes with streaming than not having the media at all.

[Fugus]

I was thinking about Launchbox trying to open a Youtube channel and posting there, Youtube wouldn’t care overall, but could see the content cops starting to flag them for takedowns if they can and know exactly what they are meant for.

But then the issue comes with Youtube terms of service on if they would allow an app to stream like that that they didn’t make otherwise Launchbox would have to build a browser into their software which could be done but would really jack up the resources needed as well. But also, when you changed games, it would have anywhere from a 3 to 15 second lag on when the video started streaming as well. It would be like the old days where you had to wait for the playstation loading screen every time you played just to watch the video.

Also, Launchbox would start to get accused of trying to monetize the videos to make more money which I doubt they would want to deal with.

By comparison, with the movie file setup, the older systems would just consist of:

1: Load emulator.
2: Load ROM.
3: Load movie file.
4: Play the game with the movie file.
Would all would take the exact same resources as you running the game and load about as fast as loading the movie file itself.

Good way to show this, load up an old NES game and make a 30 second to 1 minute movie file with it. Look as the size of that file, it will typically be like 15-45kb, will play the game just fine and scale to any resolution while showing the exact graphical settings you put in your emulator when you watched it. Now multiply that across 700+ NES games, then you got all those older systems as well where actual movies only really become the best option when you get to PSX and newer systems. But all the cartridge based systems would be better off with the emulator movie files.

[Glauco Fox]

That’s a problem because you would never get to gameplay, only game titles

[Fugus]

@Glauco Fox
It would go straight into the game play without ever even seeing the title unless the movie file had it do so. That’s the whole point of loading the movie file which is effectively just loading a savestate with a prerecorded set of inputs to play out that section.

This method wouldn’t work well for the newer systems as their save states would be larger than an actual movie but for the older games it would be vastly better output quality at a fraction of the space needed. They only big issue would it would likely require Retroarch as a required system for this setup since it would be a uniform process for each system as compared to having multiple versions of commandline for different emulators.

Think of it this way, you are in BigBox and you highlight Mario 3 for the NES, so it loads up the Retroarch core for the NES and the movie for that game which would be about 30kb or so, then it plays that showing a 30 second section of the game and just keep looping that matching what the game would actually look like when you played it because that’s the actual emulator running it on the settings you have configured it to run at. It wouldn’t sit at the Title screen because it wouldn’t just be loading up the game alone.