Fix Thumbnails in Nautilus with ffmpegthumbnailer.

demizer · 2010-07-25 22:36:52

I use nautilus-elementary from AUR, but unfortunately, the video thumbnails were not getting generated at all. Hopefully someday nautilus devs will add settings to adjust how thumbnails are generated, but until then, here is how I fixed it. This technique also generates thumbnails for webm video files.

First and foremost, install nautilus and ffmpegthumbnailers:

yaourt -S nautilus-elementary gconf gconf-editor gnome-settings-daemon ffmpeg ffmpegthumbnailers

Once the programs are installed, use the following script:

#!/bin/bash

VIDEO_EXTENSIONS="video@flv video@webm video@mkv video@mp4 video@mpeg \
video@avi video@ogg video@quicktime video@x-avi video@x-flv video@x-mp4 \
video@x-mpeg video@x-webm video@x-mkv application@x-extension-webm \
video@x-matroska video@x-ms-wmv video@x-msvideo video@x-msvideo@avi \
video@x-theora@ogg video@x-theora@ogv video@x-ms-asf video@x-m4v"

THUMBNAIL_COMMAND="/usr/bin/ffmpegthumbnailer -s %s -i %i -o %o -c png -f -t 10"

for i in $VIDEO_EXTENSIONS; do
    gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/$i/command" -t string "$THUMBNAIL_COMMAND"
    gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/$i/enable" -t boolean 'true'
done

You can download the script from my binfile git repo at github.

The script above only supports video files that I use at the time of this posting. You can add more video types as long as ffmpeg supports it (ffmpeg pretty much supports everything). I did this by right clicking the file in nautilus and checking the file type which is displayed right under the name. For example, if I right click a video file: "my_movie.mpg", the file type will be "MPEG Video (video/mpeg)". In the shell script above you can see that "video@mpeg" is in the list, as I have added it previously. For new file types, just add the type string to the VIDEO_EXTENSIONS variable above, make sure to replace the "/" in the type string with "@". It is best to use nautilus to check the file type as nautilus is going to generate the thumbnail.

Run the shell script and gconf will automagically be updated. I had to restart my computer to get nautilus to recognize the changes (you could problably restart gnome-settings-daemon) but I didn't feel like messing with all that as it is easier to just restart and be done with it. Before starting nautilus, delete the failed thumbnail images with:

rm -rf ~/.thumnails/fail/

once this is done, simply start nautilus and navigate to the directories where the files are located and your thumbnails should be updated. If not, open up gconf-editor and take a look at the setting under

/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers

and make sure the command under the video type is set to "/usr/bin/ffmpegthumbnailer". Thanks and good luck!

Last edited by demizer (2010-07-26 01:25:21)

ngoonee · 2010-07-25 23:32:40

Hi Demizer. While contributing to the community is always appreciated, posting [HOWTO] threads isn't the way things are done around here. We have an awesome wiki, and its not much work to create a wiki account and contribute advise such as this there.

Reason is quite simple, forum threads get lost, wikis endure. Also, outdated wiki entries can be modified, while outdated forum threads have the nasty habit of sometimes popping up in google and messing with people's systems when they don't know any better.

demizer · 2010-07-26 01:25:02

Good point. I'll add it to the wiki. Thanks!

ngoonee · 2010-07-26 02:39:12

Yep. Please post a link to the article here when you've done that, then I'll close the thread so we don't get it bumped 2 years from now =p.

whaevr · 2010-08-06 03:52:50

You dont have to restart comp just open up terminal

sudo killall nautilus

Then open up nautilus and it'll start generating thumbs
and thanks for the script!

Arch Linux

#1 2010-07-25 22:36:52

Fix Thumbnails in Nautilus with ffmpegthumbnailer.

#2 2010-07-25 23:32:40

Re: Fix Thumbnails in Nautilus with ffmpegthumbnailer.

#3 2010-07-26 01:25:02

Re: Fix Thumbnails in Nautilus with ffmpegthumbnailer.

#4 2010-07-26 02:39:12

Re: Fix Thumbnails in Nautilus with ffmpegthumbnailer.

#5 2010-08-06 03:52:50

Re: Fix Thumbnails in Nautilus with ffmpegthumbnailer.

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