[TUTO] Configuration of Marquees / Topper second screen with Retrobat and MPV on an Arcade Cabinet

Hello everyone, here's a solution for setting up a marquee or topper with a screen synchronized with your navigation in RetroBat.
For your information, I'm using a 19 inch 2K 1920*360 Ultra wide LCD marquee DV190FBM-NB0 and a compatible controller card with HDMI output. The screen is 50cm wide and 20cm high.
Here's a little documentation to set it up.
If you like Retrobat and this kind of solution, feel free to support them here: https://retrobatofficial.itch.io/retrobat
Download the program here and copy the contents of the dist folder into <your Retrobat folder>\plugins\MarqueeManager\ https://github.com/Nelfe80/RetroBat-Marquee-Manager

Example Configuration:

19" LCD Screen DV190FBM-NB0: https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005005031941676.html
Screen controller card for DV190FBM-NB0: https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005006181422166.html
Power supply for the controller card 12V 2A: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B07VCTTNWR
This screen is connected to a mini PC with two HDMI outputs.

Tutorial: Displaying Marquees (game illustration images, animations, or videos) with Retrobat for a Second Screen, on an Arcade Cabinet for example

This tutorial guides you through setting up marquees for games and systems launched by Retrobat on an arcade cabinet. By using the free and open-source application "mpv" and installing executables, you can enrich your gaming experience with dynamic and personalized marquee displays on a dedicated second screen.
The first thing to do is create a "marquees" folder in Retrobat: \RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\ (You can, of course, change the path to RetroBat according to your installation, you will just need to update the config.ini file)

Prerequisites

Retrobat installed in C:\RetroBat (adjust paths as necessary and update the scripts according to the drive letter where RetroBat is installed by replacing C: with your drive letter).
Screen settings: In Windows, the main screen is for the game and the secondary (ScreenNumber = 1 or ScreenNumber = 2 in the config.ini script) for the marquee.
Hide the Windows taskbar by default and only display the taskbar on the main screen.
Scripts tested on Windows 11 and RetroBat 5.3 and RetroBat 6.
Make sure to see file extensions in Windows to avoid problems with file names and their extensions and shortcuts. (Open an explorer window > Click on the View button on the toolbar > Hover over View at the bottom of the menu that appears then enable the File Name Extensions option)
Retrieve the files on the github: RetroBat-Marquee-Manager and get the files in the dist folder that you will place in \RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\ (or the marquees folder in your RetroBat folder)

Step 1: Installing MPV and IMAGEMAGICK

(Only necessary if you want to update them as a base version is present in the dist folder)
Objective: Install the MPV application, a versatile media player necessary for displaying marquees.
MPV allows targeting a screen and displaying an image/video in full screen.
Download and install mpv from the official website in the folder \RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\mpv\mpv.exe
ImageMagick (and the convert.exe executable) allows optimizing and resizing marquees and displaying SVG logos of systems and collections of themes.
Download and install IM from the official website in the folder \RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\imagemagick\convert.exe

Step 2: Installing ESEvents and ESEventPush executables and the config.ini configuration file

Download the files from RetroBat-Marquee-Manager and retrieve the files in the "dist" folder.
Place files from "dist" folder in \RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\ and click on install.bat

So this will give:
\RetroBat\emulationstation\.emulationstation\scripts\system-selected\ESEventPush.bat >> triggers the display when you select a system/console
\RetroBat\emulationstation\.emulationstation\scripts\game-selected\ESEventPush.bat >> triggers the display when you select a game
\RetroBat\emulationstation\.emulationstation\scripts\game-start\ESEventPush.bat >> triggers the display when you launch a game

Edit the file \RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\config.ini to configure the paths to your marquee images according to your preferences.

Configuration of the config.ini file

The config.ini file contains several parameters that dictate the behavior of the marquees system.
I invite you to edit it and modify it according to your needs. It must also be in the folder \RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\
Consult the readme and the readmesetup on GitHub to set up the ini according to your needs.

Managing Marquee Images

Game Marquees

Place your game marquee images in the directory specified by MarqueeImagePath (example: \RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\images\) or point to the folder containing your marquees.
The images must follow the naming structure defined in the pattern MarqueeFilePath.
Example: For a game "Super Mario" in the system "NES", and if MarqueeFilePath is set with {system_name}-{game_name}, the marquee image must be named nes-Super Mario.jpg and placed in \RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\images\nes-Super Mario.jpg.
Please read the readme and the readmesetup on GitHub for more information.
An option, the auto-scraping (MarqueeAutoScraping = true in config.ini to activate it) allows to dynamically retrieve the marquee that you miss, everything is automated, but you must just have configured your "screenscraper" login and password in Retrobat as this system uses the "screenscraper" service to retrieve the marquees. I invite you to support this service here: https://www.patreon.com/screenscraper/posts

System Marquees

System marquees represent game systems or consoles. Place these images in the SystemMarqueePath. The naming convention is defined by SystemFilePath. For example, if it is {system_name}-logo, the NES system marquee must be named nes-logo.jpg. Example path: \RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\images\nes-logo.jpg.
By default, this will now search for the system logos of the ES Carbon theme.

You can find marquees here for example:
Launchbox Games Database: https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/
Pixelcade Forums: https://pixelcade.org/forum/art-exchange-lcd/a-few-lcd-marquees-links/#post-2071

Others

The DefaultImagePath is used when a specific marquee for a game or system is not found. This could be a generic image indicating that no marquee is available for the selected game/system.

Step 3: Starting the Marquee System

Use Start.bat to start RetroBat with the dynamic marquee system. This script initializes everything necessary for the marquee system to work. You can also create a Windows startup shortcut to launch Start.bat automatically. (right-click, create a shortcut)
Place this shortcut in the Windows startup folder: C:\Users\%youruserid%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
Method: Windows Key + R, type "shell:startup", then drop the shortcut file there. Right-click on the shortcut and go to properties to be able to put it in minimized window so it is more discreet at startup.

UPDATE : The new version support SVGs

Thank you so much @Nelfe!! Very thankful for this!!

Thank you for this work, I was waiting for something like this for a long time. Now I just have a small problem. I can run the general marquee (images\default.png) and the specific one for each game, for example (images\Sony Playstation 2 ROMs\Ace Combat 4 - Shattered Skies (USA).png), but I can't configure it for the system only (images\Sony Playstation 2 ROMs). For the system, I don't know what file name to use and which folder to use within "images". Note: when I try to configure the game's marquee as it is in the tutorial, "{system_name}-{game_name}" doesn't work, it only works if the marquee has the same name as the game within the system folder.

Hi,
The last readme tutorial is on github.
https://github.com/Nelfe80/RetroBat-Marquee-Manager
I'll need you to enable logging in config.ini and give me the contents of your config.ini files and your ESEvents.log in MarqueeManager folder.

Systems images are by default in the Carbon theme, add your owns logos in this folder if needed : (but don't forgive to save your folder before a RetroBat update) or add logos in your /art/logos/ theme folder.
#SystemMarqueePath = C:\RetroBat\emulationstation\.emulationstation\themes\es-theme-carbon\art\logos
SystemFilePath = {system_name}

Thanks

Thanks for the answer!  The only thing I edited in config.ini was the resolution of my secondary screen, I don't have enough knowledge to make any more changes myself.  When I accessed Retrobat for the first time through "StartRetrobatMarqueesAS.bat" it automatically created folders within "MarqueeManager\images" with the same names as my roms.  Please note that I do not use the default Retrobat rom folders and keep them outside the main Retrobat folder.  When I tried to add an art inside the folder you indicated ".emulation\themes\es-theme-carbon\art\logo" with the same name that I use as a custom one, nothing happened, it continued showing the art "default.png".  I also didn't find the ESEvents.log file inside the "MarqueeManager" folder, I only have the .arg .exe and .py.

getupor wrote:How is it supposed to work if you don't use Retrobat correctly ?

Retrobat gives you the possibility of customizing several things, including the location (other or several HDs) and the name of the folders where the roms are located, as long as it is correctly configured in es_systems.cfg, as I actually did. But if the marquee program can only be used properly if Retrobat is standard, then I leave it that way and simply thank the project's creator.

You need to clean you marquee-manager folder. Only extract files from dist folder to RetroBat/plugins/MarqueeManager folder.
Click then on install.bat
If you have RetroBatv6 the carbon theme folder is with -master at the end of the name

You can use the plugin on an official installation without any problem, with many custom paths.

Nelfe wrote:You need to clean you marquee-manager folder. Only extract files from dist folder to RetroBat/plugins/MarqueeManager folder.
Click then on install.bat
If you have RetroBatv6 the carbon theme folder is with -master at the end of the name

You can use the plugin on an official installation without any problem, with many custom paths.

Now everything went well. I appreciate your patience and help. I'm going to use this marquee system for something different, showing the layout of controls for different types of systems. When the project is more advanced I will post it here so you can see what the second screen looks like. thanks.

Hello, first of all thank you very much for this tutorial.
I would need your help because I managed to install all the files on my retrobat, however when I launch retrobat the marquee does not appear on my screen dedicated to the marquee but it opens a window on my main screen. (in the screen dedicated to the marquee I simply have my windows desktop with the windows bar) however the masked screen is well identified in 2 and in the config.in file (ScreenNumber = 2)
Do you think I have to change something under windows display?
Because currently it is in Extend these displays (I can see screen 1 and 2) Thank you for your help!

Hi, try "0".
Windows screen numbers do not correspond to config numbers. It has to do with the hardware, I don't know why.

Nelfe wrote:Hi, try "0".
Windows screen numbers do not correspond to config numbers. It has to do with the hardware, I don't know why.

Thank you for your answer Nelfe,
I try 0 but still not working, that very strange

Do you think the problem come from my version Retrobat 6.2.1 ?

This has nothing to do with Retrobat. Try also 3 maybe. If you use batgui, check the number too.

Nelfe wrote:This has nothing to do with Retrobat. Try also 3 maybe. If you use batgui, check the number too.

I tried 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 nothing changes still the same problem, I also checked batgui everything was ok, I don't understand. I'll look if I find the solution I'll post a message.
Thanks again for your help!

nawfel59 wrote:Hello, first of all thank you very much for this tutorial.
I would need your help because I managed to install all the files on my retrobat, however when I launch retrobat the marquee does not appear on my screen dedicated to the marquee but it opens a window on my main screen. (in the screen dedicated to the marquee I simply have my windows desktop with the windows bar) however the masked screen is well identified in 2 and in the config.in file (ScreenNumber = 2)
Do you think I have to change something under windows display?
Because currently it is in Extend these displays (I can see screen 1 and 2) Thank you for your help!

Hello, I configured mine some time ago, but there is a detail that helped me and maybe it will help you too. My Retrobat folder was as "C:\Retrobat LED" and some errors occurred. After I changed it to "C:\Retrobat_LED" with the symbol instead of the space, the configuration improved.

PredadorBR wrote:

nawfel59 wrote:Hello, first of all thank you very much for this tutorial.
I would need your help because I managed to install all the files on my retrobat, however when I launch retrobat the marquee does not appear on my screen dedicated to the marquee but it opens a window on my main screen. (in the screen dedicated to the marquee I simply have my windows desktop with the windows bar) however the masked screen is well identified in 2 and in the config.in file (ScreenNumber = 2)
Do you think I have to change something under windows display?
Because currently it is in Extend these displays (I can see screen 1 and 2) Thank you for your help!

Hello, I configured mine some time ago, but there is a detail that helped me and maybe it will help you too. My Retrobat folder was as "C:\Retrobat LED" and some errors occurred. After I changed it to "C:\Retrobat_LED" with the symbol instead of the space, the configuration improved.

Yes its possible. My folder its R:\Retrobat-Gun.2.1\. but I cant change name of my folder I have many Shortcut and Ahk configured if I change its will broke eveything I will try to install software to asigne the program ESEVENT.exe to open on the screen selected to see.

Thank you PredadorBR!

I managed to make it work, a totally unknown problem, I simply reinstalled mpv and set ScreenNumber = 1 (which I had already done but without reinstalling mpv) I was able to solve the problem like this.

Thank you for the help you gave me, it helped me to focus on where the problem was coming from.

Hi!

First off thanks for the guide and also just installed Retrobat today and it seems to be awesome!
Just bought an micro computer to get my arcade project going again. Got a LCD Marquee (built one) years ago but never got it working good with my Pi.
Anyhow, had some problems to get this working, but after almost giving up I changed the line in config.ini to "ScreenNumber = 0" and boom it worked! I did try 1 and to before, not sure why it should be 0 but I do not know much of how this stuff works.

I love how I can scrape marquees but I do not like how it autmatic adds the core logo on the left. Been trying to exclude a couple of lines in the config but that did not matter or am I doing it wrong? Tried both ; and # in front some and then all of these lines...

IMConvertCommand = {IMPath} -background {MarqueeBackgroundColor} -alpha background -size x{MarqueeHeightBorderLess} -gravity center  "{ImgPath}"  -interpolate nearest-neighbor -geometry {MarqueeWidthBorderLess}x{MarqueeHeightBorderLess} -gravity center -extent {MarqueeWidth}x{MarqueeHeight} "{ImgTargetPath}"
IMConvertCommandMarqueeGen = {IMPath} "{FanartPath}" -resize {MarqueeWidth}x -gravity {FanartGravity} -background {MarqueeBackgroundColor} -extent {MarqueeWidth}x{MarqueeHeight}+0+{DecyOffset} "{IntermediateImgPath}"
IMConvertCommandMarqueeGenGradientLogo = {IMPath} "{IntermediateImgPath}" "{GradientPath}" -antialias -filter Lanczos -resize {LogoMaxWidth}x{LogoMaxHeight}^> -gravity {GradientGravity} -geometry {GradientPosition} -composite  "{IntermediateImgPath}"
MConvertCommandMarqueeGenLogo = {IMPath} "{IntermediateImgPath}" "{LogoPath}" -antialias -filter Lanczos -resize {LogoMaxWidth}x{LogoMaxHeight}^> -gravity {LogoGravity} -geometry {LogoPosition} -composite "{ImgTargetPath}"
IMConvertCommandSVG = {IMPath} -background {MarqueeBackgroundColor} -alpha background -size {MarqueeWidthBorderLess}^>x{MarqueeHeightBorderLess} -gravity center  "{ImgPath}"  -interpolate nearest-neighbor -geometry {MarqueeWidthBorderLess}x{MarqueeHeightBorderLess} -gravity center -extent {MarqueeWidth}x{MarqueeHeight} "{ImgTargetPath}"


So maybe anyone could help me with this, just want the auto convert not the logos to be added to the maruee

Hi,
It's the default marquee on screenscraper (console game marquee)
Clean all your marquees and test MarqueeAutoGeneration = true.
This will generate a marquee from the fanart and logo.
Test F5, F6....F12 to calibrate the marquee.

It seems to work now, did far to much to tell what I did but basically I think that what did it was just changing the default image directory for the marquees to be the same as the roms image files… (also scraping for wheels not marques do not know what that does exactly)
Now I have lovely Marquees without the annoying pictures of consoles etc taking up space.

Loving it!
Thank you for helping

Nelfe wrote:Hi,
It's the default marquee on screenscraper (console game marquee)
Clean all your marquees and test MarqueeAutoGeneration = true.
This will generate a marquee from the fanart and logo.
Test F5, F6....F12 to calibrate the marquee.

Thank you for the reply!
I tried "MarqueeAutoGeneration = true" but with this setting I could not get any Marquees no matter what else I tried.
Also could not get any effect on the marquees pressing F5, F5 or F12.

I hate seeing the perfect Marquee showing for a few seconds before it is replaced with one with the console image to the left of it.

Hi @Nelfe, I recently came across your project and I'm very excited to use it. Unfortunately, I can't get MarqueeManager to start properly. I configured config.ini with the appropriate locations for my RetroBat install. After launching Start.bat I encounter the attached error. The full text of the error is listed below.

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "ESEvents.py", line 1007, in <module>
 File "ESEvents.py", line 92, in load_all_systems_configs
 File "ESEvents.py", line 58, in load_systems_config
 File "xml\etree\ElementTree.py", line 1202, in parse
 File "xml\etree\ElementTree.py", line 595, in parse
xml.etree.ElementTree.ParseError: not well-formed (invalid token): line 2, column 63

I installed RetroBat Marquee Manager using the Content Download option within RetroBat. I've tried using both RetroBat 6.3 and 6.3.1. I noticed these in the ESEvents log,

INFO:root:Missing name and/or path in R:\RetroBat\emulationstation\.emulationstation\es_systems.cfg for a system <Element 'name' at 0x19F376E0> None

INFO:root:Missing name and/or path in R:\RetroBat\emulationstation\.emulationstation\es_systems_c64.cfg for a system <Element 'name' at 0x19F375A0> None

The gist of my config.ini looks like this,

INFO:root:update_path RetroBatPath R:\RetroBat
INFO:root:update_path RomsPath R:\RetroBat\roms
INFO:root:update_path DefaultImagePath R:\RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\images\default.png
INFO:root:update_path MarqueeImagePath R:\RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\images
INFO:root:update_path MarqueeImagePathDefault R:\RetroBat\roms
INFO:root:update_path FanartMarqueePath R:\RetroBat\roms
INFO:root:update_path SystemMarqueePath R:\RetroBat\emulationstation\.emulationstation\themes\es-theme-carbon-master\art\logos
INFO:root:update_path CollectionMarqueePath R:\RetroBat\emulationstation\.emulationstation\themes\es-theme-carbon-master\art\logos
INFO:root:update_path MPVPath R:\RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\mpv\mpv.exe
INFO:root:update_path IMPath R:\RetroBat\plugins\MarqueeManager\imagemagick\convert.exe

I can provide my full config.txt and ESEvents.log files.

Hello,

I did, yes. This is what I have set via BatGui.exe. Screen Index "1" is the marquee monitor I have and the resolution is correct.



For some added information, I'm running Windows 11 Pro 23H2 that's fully patched. I also have an exclusion set for the R: drive so it's not scanned or monitored in any way.

INFO:root:Missing name and/or path in R:\RetroBat\emulationstation\.emulationstation\es_systems.cfg for a system <Element 'name' at 0x19F376E0> None

Hi,
There is a problem in your es_systems files
Check your es_systems files and add a name to all systems if they have'nt.

Thank you kindly. Does it matter about es_systems_c64.cfg since it's throwing the same error? Or is es_systems.cfg the only one that matters here? I'll check my es_systems.cfg file for all platforms to make sure <name> ... <name> is set for each and report back with the results.

No problem. Check es_systems_c64.cfg too please...

es_systems_c64.cfg didn't have <path> ... </path> set. The system was set up with <path> and the other appropriate info within es_systems.cfg. As a test I copy/pasted the relevant info from es_systems.cfg to es_systems_c64.cfg and after running Start.cmd the ESEvent.log is now only throwing an error for es_systems.cfg. It seems that took care of the c64 issue and now I have to comb through a few thousands lines within es_systems.cfg to find the issue there .

If I understand things correctly, es_systems.cfg superseeds individual ES system cfg files. If that's accurate then it's likely why c64 was working without es_systems_c64.cfg being populated correctly before.

I'll follow up after going through es_systems.cfg.