Nautilus huge video 150%+ preview slows system down

[Andrea De Pasquale]

Binary package hint: nautilus

Putting large video file on desktop slows system down. Nautilus' memory usage in system monitor grows up to 800+ MB, swap space gets used (hardware HDD light flashes), system unusable. Removing file from desktop solves issue.
Tell me if you need some system logs / information. Thank you

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: nautilus 1:2.24.1-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nautilus
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-9-generic x86_64

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please try to obtain a valgrind log following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Valgrind and attach the file to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

[Andrea De Pasquale (depasquale-andrea)]

Tested on another computer with 2GB RAM, no swap space used but same problem. Nautilus seems to load the whole video file (1.2GB size) in memory, then doing some kind of elaboration which hangs the system. I don't think valgrind log contains something useful, but here it is. I also attached three screenshots from system monitor to better explain what happens.

[Andrea De Pasquale (depasquale-andrea)]

I tried disabling preview for "Other previewable files" under "File management preferences". Obviously problem does not happens, just to confirm that. Sorry for the pentuple post, I wasn't able to attach more than one file at a time.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

totem is doing the video thumbnail but it seems normal that getting a frame in video uses some ressources, that's not really a bug

[Andrea De Pasquale (depasquale-andrea)]

Does it load the WHOLE file in memory? Can't it just load a small portion near midtime to make a single thumbnail?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you get the issue on any video? could you try running totem-gstreamer-video-thumbnailer or totem-xine-video-thumbnailer manually and see if you get the same issue?

[Andrea De Pasquale (depasquale-andrea)]

I haven't got totem-xine package installed, but I can tell that totem-gstreamer-video-thumbnailer runs fine.

totem-gstreamer-video-thumbnailer --gst-debug-level=5 huge_video.avi thumbnail.png

Anyway, I just discovered that opening Nautilus in a folder with many huge videos (16 files, 50 GB), then switching from "List view" to "Icon view 150%" leads to the same problem (RAM, swap, CPU).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you get the issue using the standard zoom setting?

[Andrea De Pasquale (depasquale-andrea)]

No, it does not. Switching from "List view 50%" (my default) to "Icon view 66%" runs smooth. Changing zoom to 100% or less runs fine too. 150% or more, I get the issue and must kill Nautilus. May it be a bigger size thumbnail creation?

[Andrea De Pasquale (depasquale-andrea)]

Just cheched, issue on desktop apperared because I had "icon view" zoom setting at 150%. Switching back to default 100%, it does not happen, even when on desktop. Leaving huge video file on desktop, switching again to 150%, system slows down! May I try running totem-gstreamer-video-thumbnailer --size [...] ?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported, but feel free to report any other bugs you find.