dolphin doesn't load video thumbnail services

[Jason Straight]

After installing both mplayerthumbs and ffmpegthumbs, dolphin still does not have the option to enable video thumbnailing under services. It seems like many more are missing as well?

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
Package: dolphin 4:15.08.1-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-16.19-generic 4.2.3
Uname: Linux 4.2.0-16-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Sun Oct 11 16:57:08 2015
SourcePackage: dolphin
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Hkz85825915 (hkz85825915)]

Dolphin used to have ffmpegthumbnail and mplayerthumbnail which are useful for generating video Thumbnails with "Preview" turned on.
However after upgrading Dolphin to 15.08, it does not, even not in settings list.

Reproducible: Always

[U-kail-k (u-kail-k)]

Same here (Archlinux).

[Frank78ac (frank78ac)]

Thanks for the bug report.

(In reply to hkz85825915 from comment #0)
> Dolphin used to have ffmpegthumbnail and mplayerthumbnail

No, Dolphin never had them, nor did Dolphin ever have any thumbnailers, or Preview plugins, at all. All these plugins are provided by other packages, which are then used not only by Dolphin, but also by the file dialog, Folder View, and others, to generate thumbnails.

Maybe ffmpegthumbs and mplayerthumbs are not ported to Qt5/KF5 yet?

[Sam Rog (samrog131)]

The ffmpegthumbs has been ported to the Qt5/KF5 - KDE review: https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/118545/ .

The problem seems to be that the ffmpegthumbs master branch is still for the KDE4 and the KDE Applications 15.08 was releasing the ffmpegthumbs from the master.

For the Arch there is an option to use the KF5 version: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=201484 .

[Albert Astals Cid (aacid)]

Did the dolphin people think about this when deciding to do a KF5 release?

[Sam Rog (samrog131)]

Same kind of (missing plugins): https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=351913

[Frank78ac (frank78ac)]

(In reply to Albert Astals Cid from comment #4)
> Did the dolphin people think about this when deciding to do a KF5 release?

I think it's quite obvious that nobody thought about this.

We all agree that thinking more about this and some other aspects of the file management infrastructure would have been good, but I'm not sure if blaming just those who work on Dolphin makes much sense. Considering that the same infrastructure has been used for quite some time by Plasma's Folder View and by some applications that need a file dialog and that had their first KF5/Qt5-based release earlier than Dolphin, I think that it was not entirely unreasonable to assume that the worst KDE SC 4.x -> KF5 transition issues were already resolved or being worked on and discussed in public.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it seems obvious that the KF5-based preview plugins (which exist since last year, thanks for the links, Rog131) should have been released as soon as possible in addition to the KDE SC 4.x-based ones (which are still needed until all applications are KF5-based).

I guess the lesson to learn from this is that the dependencies between different packages should be analyzed in much more detail if another transition like this one, where everything is ported and released at its own pace and in different groups (frameworks, applications and workpspace), happens in the future. Moreover, one should not feel too safe if the software that is built by kdesrc-build seems to work fine, because it builds a lot of stuff which is either not released yet, or might never be released (like lib/konq in kde-baseapps). The same applies to the packages made from git checkouts which distros made (thankfully!) available to those who were willing to test KF5-based apps early.

[U-kail-k (u-kail-k)]

> We all agree that thinking more about this and some other aspects of the file management infrastructure would have been good, but I'm not sure if blaming just those who work on Dolphin makes much sense.

Agreed! Any chance to help with this? (no KDE dev experience yet)

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

It appears to me that ffmpeg primarily needs someone to maintain it? I am not sure releasing something that isn't maintained, as it were, is something I can appreciate.

That being said. What needs to happen is:
- merge frameworks into master
- i18n freeze (assuming there are strings anyway?)
- do a standalone beta
- do a standalone release
- pick up for applications 15.12 release moving forward.

Also, I think the discussion about how to prevent future screw ups like this ought to be moved to the release-team mailing list as this is really a global issue of how we track runtime dependencies (right now: the lack thereof).

[Cfeck (cfeck)]

*** Bug 352199 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Ryan Babchishin (rbabchis)]

Is there a work around for Ubuntu?

[Sam Rog (samrog131)]

"Is there a work around for Ubuntu?"

You could add a bug report to the Ubuntu - Something like ' Please package the framework version of the thumbnail plugins'.

or/and

Simply grab the source and compile it - Kubuntu Forums: https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?32568-Video-Previews&p=367642&viewfull=1#post367642

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Cfeck (cfeck)]

*** Bug 354334 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[vmagnin (vincent-magnin)]

Is this bug related to Bug #1510913 ?

[Cfeck (cfeck)]

Both kdegraphics and ffmpeg thumbnailers will be released with a KF5 port together with KDE Applications 15.12. Thanks to Hrvoje Senjan from openSUSE KDE team for the porting.

[Tasev Nikola (tasev-stefanoska)]

Hi devs,

This bug is still present in the new Kubuntu 16.04 Xenial build.
Recompiling ffmpegthumbs like suggested in comment 14 still work's.

[Stéphane (stephane-treboux)]

I just updated to KDE Applications 15.12. In the Dolphin preferences under General -> Previews the following options are available and ticked:
- PS/PDF/DVI (provided by kdegraphics-thumbnailers 15.12.3)
- video files (provided by ffmpegthumbs 15.12.3)
Still no thumbnails are generated. Any idea what could be missing?

[Sam Rog (samrog131)]

(In reply to Stéphane Tréboux from comment #14)
> I just updated to KDE Applications 15.12. In the Dolphin preferences under
> General -> Previews the following options are available and ticked:
> - PS/PDF/DVI (provided by kdegraphics-thumbnailers 15.12.3)
> - video files (provided by ffmpegthumbs 15.12.3)
> Still no thumbnails are generated. Any idea what could be missing?

Distribution ?
If Ubuntu then it is a packaging bug: https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?69996-No-video-amp-pdf-files-preview-in-Dolphin-15-12-3&p=386740&viewfull=1#post386740
Bug should be filed to the Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ffmpegthumbs/+bugs

[Stéphane (stephane-treboux)]

(In reply to Rog131 from comment #15)
> (In reply to Stéphane Tréboux from comment #14)
> > I just updated to KDE Applications 15.12. In the Dolphin preferences under
> > General -> Previews the following options are available and ticked:
> > - PS/PDF/DVI (provided by kdegraphics-thumbnailers 15.12.3)
> > - video files (provided by ffmpegthumbs 15.12.3)
> > Still no thumbnails are generated. Any idea what could be missing?
>
> Distribution ?
> If Ubuntu then it is a packaging bug:
> https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?69996-No-video-amp-pdf-files-
> preview-in-Dolphin-15-12-3&p=386740&viewfull=1#post386740
> Bug should be filed to the Launchpad:
> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ffmpegthumbs/+bugs

Your guess is correct; the distribution is Kubuntu 16.04 LTS. Thanks for the hint about the packaging bug. kdegraphics-thumbnailers is affected too.

I filed two bugs in Launchpad.
ffmpegthumbs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ffmpegthumbs/+bug/1574037
kdegraphics-thumbnailers: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdegraphics-thumbnailers/+bug/1574049

Until the packages are fixed there is a workaround (I took it from kubuntuforums.net).
This command will link all the files from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/plugins/ to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/plugins/* /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/

[jwilf (james-wilford)]

I can confirm the bug is present on Kubuntu 16.04 and the symlink fix worked. Thanks - you saved me having to recompile the package!

[Balaam's Miracle (balaam-balaamsmiracle)]

I too can confirm the presence of this bug, and that the symlink fix worked.
But not only that, I now not only have previews for my videos but also for PDF files, as well as fonts, which appeared as black boxes in Dolphin prior to applying the symlink fix.
The issues with the fonts was supposed to have been fixed in KDE5.6 (pardon me whilst I am struggling to remember the correct name), but after my upgrade via backports, that issue remained a problem for me (I looked but can't seem to find the report for that bug).
Now with the symlink fix, I have previews for fonts again, and who knows what started working now that didn't work before?