FileManager should have option for viewing rather than exporting

[James Lewis]

I would expect to be able to open a .MP4 video from the file manager, and have it play in Media Player... but the it seems that Media Player is not an option for playback, only Gallery, which is not terribly suitable.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

@ken maybe easiest for you to do?

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

I agree that you should be able to open video files directly in the mediaplayer-app, however mediaplayer-app is not a library and cannot "import" files and doesn't present this to content-hub as gallery does.

However, you can request files to be played by mediaplayer-app by using url-dispatcher with the video:///<url> argument.
Filemanager should directly call url-dispatcher for Video files (can use Qt.openUrlExternally()) instead of or in addition to asking content-hub to import them. This has the benefit of not doing a file copy as well as mediaplayer will play from where it is where content-hub makes a copy.

I'm opening a filemanager task for this bug.

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

The same is true with opening a photo - it doesn't need to be imported to the Gallery via content-hub to be openend, it can be opened with url-dispatcher photo://<url>. This is true for any photos that live beneath ~/Pictures (or /media/phablet/ which is SD card path) as gallery has access to this diretory. Any photos that live outside these directories would have to use content-hub to first import into gallery.

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

We've added support for mediaplayer-app to be a conent-hub desitination for videos such that they can be opened directly rather than having to go through gallery. Note that the video will be imported into ~/Videos, which is also read by gallery, so the video will be correctly available in gallery to view at a later time after you close mediaplayer-app

Comment #3 is still valid. Filemanager should request to open videos via url:// rather than content-hub operation.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package mediaplayer-app - 0.20.5+16.04.20160126.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
mediaplayer-app (0.20.5+16.04.20160126.1-0ubuntu1) xenial; urgency=medium

  [ Jeffrey Flaker ]
  * Fixing Bug #1377918, fixed the grammatical error (LP: #1377918)

  [ Renato Araujo Oliveira Filho ]
  * Fixing Bug #1377918, fixed the grammatical error (LP: #1377918)
  * Implement support for content hub. Use themed icons for full screen
    button. (LP: #1312659, #1518332)
  * Updated to SDK 1.3

 -- Renato Araujo Oliveira Filho <email address hidden> Tue, 26 Jan 2016 22:06:57 +0000

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

To make a general statement, FileManager "open" functionality tries to export the content via content-hub, which will cause a copy of the content to be sent to the destination app and a copy to be made. A "view" operation should be supported as well that simply calls url-dispatcher with the correct url so the content can be viewed by the app but not copied. This should be done for pictures and videos that live under ~/Pictures, ~/Videos, or SD card to prevent copies.

[Matthew Exon (ubuntubugs-mexon)]

Is this bug going to be closed because importing is now an option? If so does there need to be a new bug for opening via URL?

Importing a multi-gigabyte video from an SD card isn't going to work, of course there's not enough space on the phone's internal memory for that, not to mention the amount of time it takes.

[Andrew Hayzen (ahayzen)]

This looks like a duplicate/linked to bug 1413821 [0], please see the discussion there as well where we stated that it needs to check if the path is within, for example for music.
/home/*/Music
/media/*/*/Music

Then use url-handler, otherwise use content-hub. This should be the same for documents, music, photos, videos etc.

Or alternatively for music (possibly photos, videos) check if it is in the MediaScanner store.

0 - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-filemanager-app/+bug/1413821