gnome-video-thumbnailer unable to process file

[Brian Murray]

Binary package hint: totem

1) Hardy Heron
2) 2.21.90-0ubuntu3

I executed the following command to create a thumbnail per Pedro's instructions on #ubuntu-bugs:

GST_DEBUG_NO_COLOR=1 GST_DEBUG=5 gnome-video-thumbnailer ~/tmp/JLA-pilot.mpg thumbnail.jpg 2> thumbnail-creation.log

I received the following message when trying to index that video:

gnome-video-thumbnailer couln't process file: '/home/theman/tmp/JLA-pilot.mpg'
Reason: Took too much time to process.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I appended the error I received to the log file too.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for your report, subscribing slomo that may have an idea of what happened ,thanks Brian.

[Kimiko Koopman (kimiko)]

This bug is still present in totem-gstreamer 2.23.3-0ubuntu1 (from intrepid I think). About 90% of .mkv video files end up with default video icons instead of proper thumbnails. .xsession-errors shows the same error as given above. "gnome-video-thumbnailer couldn't process file: ..." and "Reason: Took too much time to process.". .avi videos seem to work just fine. I don't have any .mpeg videos around at the moment to check that format.

[Chris H. (ahmshaegar)]

Hi, just want to say I have this error also. I also want to say that if I cd into ~/.thumbnails/fail/gnome-thumbnail-factory and keep deleting all those failed thumbnails, then refreshing the directory in nautilus, I can eventually get thumbnails for all the files that failed. I suppose a workaround would be to adjust the timeout of gnome-video-thumbnailer? Is there a way for us to do that? I'll be searching on Google, I guess.

[Chris H. (ahmshaegar)]

Sorry for the double-post, but I have better luck generating thumbnails using totem-xine. By that I mean installing totem-xine, then telling gnome-video-thumbnailer to use totem-xine.

For anyone who is new to Ubuntu and who lands on this page via a search engine, here are the instructions.
1. open a terminal (gnome-terminal)
2. sudo apt-get install totem-xine
3. sudo update-alternatives --config gnome-video-thumbnailer
4. select /usr/bin/totem-xine-video-thumbnailer, which should be option 2

Thumbnailing is faster for me (and also much more reliable.) Perhaps this should be the default if gstreamer can't be/isn't fixed?

[greyor (greyor)]

Chris, thank you so much. I've had problems with thumbnails ever since 8.04, and your workaround fixed it immediately for me. I thought I'd never get them working -- I thought it was a Pulseaudio problem or something of the like, but I guess GStreamer just wasn't happy. I'd recommend this fix to others as well, as it worked brilliantly for me.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I've tested the same mpg file using gnome-video-thumbnailer from totem-gstreamer version 2.26.1-0ubuntu5 on Jaunty Jackalope and was unable to recreate the bug. Additionally, I also tested with an mkv file and was unable to recreate the bug.

[Roni Laukkarinen (roni-laukkarinen)]

I have this problem too, and got stuck in the phase 3 (by Chris):
update-alternatives: error: no alternatives for gnome-video-thumbnailer.