Add support for video playback in Zaparoo using Batocera's built-in mpv player

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Issue created from Discord

Source: Zaparoo / #support

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Reported Message

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VictoryCoffee (@.victorycoffee) - 2026-02-21 14:00 UTC

As the above mentions there is another command option (?) for launching mpv with even more controls, but again I don’t really know if it does or doesn’t work with batocera as I haven’t tried it:

<command>/usr/bin/mpv --fs --ontop --no-border --force-window --osd-level=0 --no-input-cursor %ROM%</command>

Context (previous messages)

wizzo (@.wizzo) - 2026-02-20 22:16 UTC

It may be that the sd card itself is having some trouble. Making the db is quite a heavy operation. May want to back up anything you need to keep

VictoryCoffee (@.victorycoffee) - 2026-02-21 08:10 UTC

This is an absolutely amazing project. Game launching is so much fun and works absolutely perfectly in batocera on my old pc!

I'm actually trying to get another option set up for video playback. Batocera has a built-in (not using Kodi) mp4 player that works great. Simply dropping videos into the "library" folder on "Share" and refreshing the games list, allows playback without any issue, however, I assume because it's not one of the core platforms for Zaparoo, Zaparoo cannot see the videos inside the "library" folder. Is there any way I can force Zaparoo to read those video files?

wizzo (@.wizzo) - 2026-02-21 10:11 UTC

The install is quite a bit rougher than batocera but yes it’s the same. Both platforms share the same module for Kodi connections

wizzo (@.wizzo) - 2026-02-21 10:12 UTC

We can certainly add it. Do you know if there’s any docs about this player? I heard of it a couple times but never used it

VictoryCoffee (@.victorycoffee) - 2026-02-21 13:53 UTC

Thank you for making this incredible project, it is seriously one of the slickest/best open source projects I’ve ever come across! I really can’t believe how seamlessly everything works, it must’ve taken you a titanic effort, I will definitely be buying the official reader/cards soon to support the project!

I’m nothing even close to a developer, but I think this is the documentation related to the mpv player Batocera bakes in: https://mpv.io/manual/stable/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

I don’t have enough technical understanding to know why this is the case, but there’s more control options when making a fake console that uses the mpv player and video files (ie, you can scrub playback, play/pause) rather than the library option alone as I initially described which doesn’t seem to have any player features.

It’s as easy as making a config file called “es_systems_movies.cfg” (or whatever you wanna call it, I assume you just need to be consistent with naming) and dropping it here:

/userdata/system/configs/emulationstation/

Heres the config file I nabbed off another user trying something similar, it seems to work very well:

<systemList>
  <system>
    <fullname>Movies</fullname>
    <name>movies</name>  <!-- Must match your roms folder name -->
    <manufacturer>Media</manufacturer>
    <release>Any</release>
    <hardware>Player</hardware>
    <path>/userdata/roms/movies</path>
    <extension>.mp4 .mkv .avi .mov .wmv .flv .webm .iso .mpg .mpeg</extension>
    <command>/usr/bin/mpv %ROM%</command>  <!-- Simple MPV launch; see alternatives below -->
    <platform>movies</platform>
    <theme>movies</theme>  <!-- Optional: for custom themes/artwork -->
  </system>
</systemList>```