Arch Linux

Cirno

Member

Registered: 2009-07-06

Posts: 3

GIF thumbnails not generating in nautilus

Hey guys,

I'm on nautilus 3.10.1 (along with all the other latest packages for GNOME) and thumbnails for GIF images are not generating at all. When I delete the thubnail cache in ~/.cache/thumbnails, it just creates failed thumbnails in a directory called ~/.cache/thumbnails/fail.

JPG and PNG thumbnails get generated without any problem. Video thumbnails are also generating fine. It is only GIF.

Some diagnostic output:

[me@thinkpad ~]$ ls /usr/bin | grep thumb
evince-thumbnailer
gnome-thumbnail-font
gsf-office-thumbnailer
thumbnail
totem-video-thumbnailer
[me@thinkpad ~]$ ls /usr/share/thumbnailers
evince.thumbnailer  gnome-font-viewer.thumbnailer  gsf-office.thumbnailer  totem.thumbnailer

Does anyone know how or what I can do to begin diagnosing why this is happening?

Thank you.

Last edited by Cirno (2013-11-30 19:38:38)

h54

Member

Registered: 2011-11-22

Posts: 96

Re: GIF thumbnails not generating in nautilus

I'm having the same issue as well.  Any resolution to this?

weltensegler

Member

Registered: 2013-12-26

Posts: 2

Re: GIF thumbnails not generating in nautilus

Me, too! Highly interested in the reason. Regards.

Cirno

Member

Registered: 2009-07-06

Posts: 3

Re: GIF thumbnails not generating in nautilus

Well after a few months of not having thumbnails for my favourite chinese cartoon GIFs, I went about to fix this myself with a dirty hack.

I created a gif.thumbnailer file in /usr/share/thumbnailers with the following contents:

$ cat /usr/share/thumbnailers/gif.thumbnailer 
[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=convert
Exec=convert %i[0] -resize %sx%s %o
MimeType=image/gif;

It runs convert to create the thumbnail. You will need imagemagick installed.

unheeding

Member

Registered: 2013-03-25

Posts: 1

Re: GIF thumbnails not generating in nautilus

Well after a few months of not having thumbnails for my favourite chinese cartoon GIFs, I went about to fix this myself with a dirty hack.

I created a gif.thumbnailer file in /usr/share/thumbnailers with the following contents:

$ cat /usr/share/thumbnailers/gif.thumbnailer 
[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=convert
Exec=convert %i[0] -resize %sx%s %o
MimeType=image/gif;

It runs convert to create the thumbnail. You will need imagemagick installed.

Awesome, thanks Cirno. 

Minor note:  I had to clear the thumbnails in order for the gifs to start showing up

rm -r ~/.cache/thumnails

h54

Member

Registered: 2011-11-22

Posts: 96

Re: GIF thumbnails not generating in nautilus

I can also confirm that Cirno's solution worked.

However, to check a hunch, I removed:

 ~/.cache/thumbnails 

deleted

 /usr/share/thumbnailers/gif.thumbnailer 

and appended:

 image/gif; 

to the end of an existing thumbailer.  I tested it with totem.thumbnailer and ffmpeg.thumbainer (requires ffmpegthumbnailer package).

Both Totem and ffmpegthumbnailer worked but I found that Totem would skipa gif every once in a while and was slower.  ffmpeg seemed like a better solution.

I don't think the solution is too hackey but I think we can say this one is solved if it works for others as well.

Last edited by h54 (2014-02-22 21:10:57)

gentledevil

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 3

Re: GIF thumbnails not generating in nautilus

and appended:

 image/gif; 

to the end of an existing thumbailer.  I tested it with totem.thumbnailer and ffmpeg.thumbainer (requires ffmpegthumbnailer package).

Thanks.

It works for me as well (with ffmpeg, I didn't try Totem). I opened an issue upstream for the image/gif mimetype to be present by default (https://code.google.com/p/ffmpegthumbna … ail?id=115), so hopefully it will work in a future release.

However, to check a hunch, I removed:

 ~/.cache/thumbnails 

Just FYI, deleting ~/.cache/thumbnails/fail is sufficient and avoids losing the already generated thumbnails for all files (can take a while to recreate in folders where you have a lot of videos, or at least it did before SSDs).

h54

Member

Registered: 2011-11-22

Posts: 96

Re: GIF thumbnails not generating in nautilus

Sorry to necro-bump but I figured it was relevant.

I did a fresh install with Gnome 3.14 and the thumbnailer issue still requires a little intervention.

First install:

ffmpegthumbnailer

append image/gif; to:

/usr/share/thumbnailers/ffmpegthumbnailer.thumbnailer

You should be good to go.

allcaps

Member

Registered: 2016-02-25

Posts: 1

Re: GIF thumbnails not generating in nautilus

Again, with the double-necro, but this issue is still current as of now.  It can be easily fixed.  Open up...

/usr/share/thumbnailers/totem.thumbnailer

and add onto the very end...

image/gif;

Make sure it ends with a semicolon.  Then flush your thumbnail cache.

rm -r ~/.cache/thumbnails

Thumbnails for gifs will now populate.

Last edited by allcaps (2016-02-25 05:35:19)