Known Issue: Big Box Startup Videos Not Playing Reliably

Bug ReportKnown Issue13.28Dec 28, 2025

Overview

Some users are experiencing an issue where Big Box startup videos do not play consistently, or are skipped entirely, when launching Big Box. Reports began around LaunchBox 13.19–13.20 and continue through recent builds.

Symptoms

You may see one or more of the following:

Startup video plays only on first launch, then gets skipped on subsequent launches
Restarting Windows may allow the video to play once, then it stops again
Startup video plays intermittently (for example, around 1 in 3 launches)
Big Box skips the splash screen, but the startup video also fails to play
Occurs on fresh installs as well as upgraded builds
Reproduced across both low end and high end systems
Happens with both FFMPEG and Windows Media Player

Affected Versions

Reported from approximately 13.19–13.20 onward
Confirmed by users in 13.24
Reproduced internally in 13.25 beta

Expected Behavior

When a startup video is present in LaunchBox/Videos/Startup, Big Box should:

Reliably play the startup video on every launch
Allow users to skip the video via controller, keyboard, or mouse
Transition smoothly into Big Box after playback or skip

What This Is Not

This issue is not typically caused by:

Incorrect folder structure
- Correct path is LaunchBox/Videos/Startup
A specific video file, format, or number of videos
System performance alone

Current Understanding

Based on community reports and internal investigation:

The issue is real but highly inconsistent, which made it difficult to diagnose
The problem appears tied to startup video changes introduced when Big Box moved away from the legacy VLC based playback system
Startup video playback now relies on FFMPEG or Windows Media Player, depending on user settings
The behaviour suggests a timing or initialization issue in certain Windows or machine environments

What We’re Doing

We’ve now identified machines internally that reproduce the issue
The startup video system has been rebuilt from the ground up in a test branch
Early testing shows strong improvements, including:
- Startup videos playing reliably across repeated launches
- Proper skipping via controller, keyboard, or mouse
- Improved transitions into Big Box during or after playback

What Happens Next

Continued testing across a wider range of systems and configurations
Once validated, the fix will be included in a future LaunchBox update
Progress updates will be shared as testing continues

How You Can Help

If you’re affected and willing to share details, the following are especially helpful:

Windows version
CPU and GPU details, integrated vs dedicated
How Big Box is launched
Playback engine selected, FFMPEG or Windows Media Player
Startup video file details and how many videos are present

Thank you for your patience and for the detailed reports. Your feedback directly helped us identify and rebuild this system.

Affected Product
OS Version: Windows 11
LaunchBox Version
Plugins: NA

Posted by AstroBob · Dec 28, 2025

Completed5

AstroBob changed status to Completed

Team•

Aug 15

Pinned

Hi there,

With today’s release of LaunchBox for Windows 14.0, the fix for this is now available to everyone. We’ve completely revamped the startup video process so things should be back to normal You can update to the latest version from within the app to receive this.

Notes on the release can be found below:

LaunchBox for Windows - 14.0

Please let us know if anyone is continuing to experience this issue, and thanks for bearing with us while we go that sorted.

BDeRbDaMaStA

•

May 18

I would like to add some feedback and a potential solution to this issue as I have been experiencing this problem since around LaunchBox 13.19–13.23 (over a year) on my main PC . I recently reinstalled 13.19 and was able to play all my videos successfully. As soon as I installed 13.23, I was having issues with various videos. Specifically videos in the “AV1” format. I could play them using the FFMPEG player but they were extremely choppy and pretty much unplayable. I always had K Lite installed separately, so I didn’t believe I was missing codecs as I was able to play videos outside of Launchbox/Bigbox. I have had Bigbox for many years and didn’t experience theses issues until the changes to the media playback which I believe was around 13.23.

I had a specific theme video for my “Windows Platform” that did not play at all, just a black screen when using the “Windows Media Player” version, and extremely choppy on “FFMPEG player”. I also had many other videos that were not playing.

I have an ROG Xbox Ally X that has Launchbox/BigBox installed as well. I experienced no issues on video playback. K lite media pack also installed on ROG Ally.

After doing some further digging, I found out the videos that were not playing, not only was coded in “AV1” format specifically, but I had an codec on my main PC installed via windows store called “AV1 Video Extension”. I did not have this extension installed on my Xbox Ally X.

The only way I was able to uninstall was via powershell as admin using the following command (without the quotations):

“Get-AppxPackage AV1VideoExtension | Remove-AppxPackage”

I wanted to verify that this package was uninstalled, so I ran the following command afterwards:

“Get-AppxPackage AV1”

If it returns with nothing, then the package was successfully removed. You can also check the Microsoft Store to ensure its no longer installed.

I rebooted my pc afterwards. Once completed, I was now able to play all of my videos again in Launchbox/BigBox with no issue on my PC.

Let me know if that works. Hopefully this is a fix for some!

retr0gamer0815

•

Mar 23

Windows version
-Windows 11 Pro 24H2
CPU and GPU details, integrated vs dedicated
-AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS w/ Radeon 780M Graphics (4.00 GHz)
How Big Box is launched
- Task Scheduler with a slight delay at startup of Windows
Playback engine selected, FFMPEG or Windows Media Player
-BOTH
Startup video file details and how many videos are present
-I only use one but tried a few (all very popular one from the community forum)
-I set up a Geekom Mini PC to run exclusively Big Box and auto login into Windows and have Big Box run automatically. I tried a shortcut in the autostart folder and now Task Scheduler with a 10 seconds delay and before no delay and highest priority, always the same result, the startup video plays maybe 4 out of 10 times this way. It plays more reliable when I launch Big Box manually again, however the goal is to have it start automatically and keep Windows hidden.

ShouBen

•

Jan 15

Windows version
-Windows 10, M
CPU and GPU details, integrated vs dedicated
-AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, RTX3060
How Big Box is launched
-Directly from start menu, From Launchbox Menu
-All start methods regularly fail to play the startup video
Playback engine selected, FFMPEG or Windows Media Player
-BOTH
-Initially left default to Windows Media Player, switched to FFMPEG to test this issue, both options fail to play startup video
Startup video file details and how many videos are present
-Box Station, from theforum of the comunity, I tried to let it on format MP4 and also converted the video on H.264 format, but still dosent work

Silex88

•

Jan 2