Drag and drop of GVFS locations from Nautilus to VLC doesn't work

[Viktor Ilijasic]

Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick
Nautilus 2.32.0
VLC media player 1.1.4

I presume vlc came from
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/n-muench/vlc/ubuntu maverick main
but it does not matter, this is an old bug that's been around for at least a year, or more.

Description:

When I drag and drop a file that is visible through a mounted smb share from nautilus to vlc, vlc silently refuses to play the file. No error at all is given.

On the other hand, if I right-click that same file and choose "Open With VLC media player" vlc happily plays the file.

I've come across a similar old bug (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+bug/211632) related to vlc not playing smb bookmarks from nautilus, might this be related?

How to reporoduce:
- mount one smb shared directory with at least one media file in it
- open vlc
- drag and drop the media file to the already opened vlc window

and nothing happens. Now:
- close that vlc window
- in nautilus right-click the same file and choose "Open With VLC media player"

and vlc happily plays that same file.

I would be happy to provide more info if needed.

[Viktor Ilijasic (viktor.ilijasic)]

I presume this behaviour has the same underlying cause as discussed in that old bug I mentioned. Unfortunately in the old bug discussion does not state what was actually done and how the old bugfix was actually achieved.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont (rdenis)]

Does VLC add an item in the playlist at all? If so, what's the Location of that item?
What happens when you try to open the SMB file from the CLI ('vlc smb://server/share/path')?

It has been reported that Nautilus does not provide the SMB username and password to VLC. In this case, VLC will obviously fail, but it should print an error.

[v1nce (vincent-pennec)]

see also https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/4399

Using right click in nautilus, the playlist is filled with /home/v1nce/.gvfs/nas0000 sur 192.168.0.10/1.mp3 and the real title and album name of the track is right

Using command line (it works), the playlist is filled with smb://192.168.0.10/nas0000/1.mp3 and it does not display title or album name => maybe related to "TagLib: Could not open file 192.168.0.10/nas0000/1.mp3"

Using drag and drop nothing is added to the playlist

vlc smb://192.168.0.10/nas0000/1.mp3 works

VLC media player 1.1.4 The Luggage (revision exported)
Blocked: call to unsetenv("DBUS_ACTIVATION_ADDRESS")
Blocked: call to unsetenv("DBUS_ACTIVATION_BUS_TYPE")
[0x9e80914] main libvlc: Lancement de vlc avec l'interface par défaut. Utilisez « cvlc » pour démarrer VLC sans interface.
Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "")
Blocked: call to sigaction(17, 0xb73f70d4, 0xb73f7048)
Warning: call to signal(13, 0x1)
Warning: call to signal(13, 0x1)
Warning: call to srand(1294376198)
Warning: call to rand()
Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "")

(process:6505): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
 Using the fallback 'C' locale.
Warning: call to signal(13, 0x1)
/home/v1nce/.themes/T-ish-Brushed-Overlaid/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:56: Clearlooks configuration option "sunkenmenu" is not supported and will be ignored.
/home/v1nce/.themes/T-ish-Brushed-Overlaid/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:57: Clearlooks configuration option "menuitemstyle" is not supported and will be ignored.
/home/v1nce/.themes/T-ish-Brushed-Overlaid/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:58: Clearlooks configuration option "listviewitemstyle" is not supported and will be ignored.
/home/v1nce/.themes/T-ish-Brushed-Overlaid/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:59: Clearlooks configuration option "progressbarstyle" is not supported and will be ignored.
Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "C")
Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "fr_FR.utf8")
params.c:OpenConfFile() - Unable to open configuration file "/home/v1nce/.smb/smb.conf":
 Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
Blocked: call to setlocale(6, "")
params.c:OpenConfFile() - Unable to open configuration file "/home/v1nce/.smb/smb.conf.append":
 Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
TagLib: Could not open file 192.168.0.10/nas0000/1.mp3

Yeah I know my gtk theme is broken

[v1nce (vincent-pennec)]

Ubuntu 10.10 (upgraded from 9.10 as far as I know)
Nautilus 2.32.0
VLC 1.1.4

It looks like a Nautilus issue :
opening vlc by clicking its shortcut then dragging files [error] !=
drag files directly to the VLC shortcut [OK]

Steps to reproduce bug

I made a new vlc onto the desktop by dragging vlc icon from Apps/Audio to the desktop.
Then by right clicking / Properties I checked what is the command line => 'VLC %U'.

I clicked the shortcut to open vlc and drag a file to the vlc windows that just opened => if file is local it's ok. If it's a smb share then nothing happens
Now IF I DRAG THE FILE DIRECTLY ONTO THE SHORTCUT IT WORKS (local or shared)
In that case the playlist is "/home/v1nce/.gvfs/nas0000 sur 192.168.0.10/1.mp3" [I go to nas0000 by clicking a Fav in nautilus]

It also works with a directory or a group of files

PS:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+bug/211632 says changing command line to VLC %F could be better. In fact it's worst :

I changed the properties of shortcut for 'VLC %F' (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+bug/211632)

I clicked the shortcut to open vlc and drag a file to the vlc windows that just opened => if file is local it's ok. If it's a smb share then nothing happens
Now if I drag the file ONTO THE SHORTCUT then local file works and shared failed with warning "Target of drag and drop only handle local files"

[Viktor Ilijasic (viktor.ilijasic)]

I can confirm that drag and drop from an SFTP (SSH) mounted location (through GVFS) is exhibiting the same behaviour as originally reported for SMB.

If I drag and drop a file from Nautilus to an already opened VLC window, nothing happens. The file is not added to the playlist, no error at all is reported.

If I right-click the file in nautilus and choose "Open with VLC" it works as expected, no errors, simply starts playing the file.

[Philip Keogh (pkeogh)]

A patch made to the VLC git tree on April 10th by Rémi Denis-Courmont fixed this issue for me:
http://git.videolan.org/gitweb.cgi?p=vlc/vlc-1.1.git;a=commitdiff;h=c4961610c72a79c049a38edc9f8112e5bfc96a5b;hp=679b3fb15ef0e2b6d19963ddd649ad32abb03e2b

Thanks Rémi! I went to fix it myself when I noticed you beat me to it!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package vlc - 1.1.10-1ubuntu1

---------------
vlc (1.1.10-1ubuntu1) oneiric; urgency=low

  * Merge from Debian unstable, remaining changes:
    - build and install the libx264 plugin

vlc (1.1.10-1) unstable; urgency=high

  [ Benjamin Drung ]
  * New upstream release.
    - Security: Fix XSPF integer overflow (CVE-2011-2194) (LP: #795410)
    - Improve .desktop file:
      - Add smb as supported protocol (Closes: #622879, LP: #737192)
      - add video/webm to supported MIME formats (LP: #769463)
    - Fix libdvdread errors while playing ogg files (Closes: #622935)
    - Support three channels in pulseaudio output plugin (LP: 743478)
    - PulseAudio output re-written due to unstability of the current one
      (LP: #743323)
    - Fix crashes (LP: #754497, #785979)
    - Qt: allow drag and drop of any URL, not just a local file (LP: #664030)
    - Fix libvlcplugin.so: undefined symbol: NPP_Initialize (LP: #722690)
  * Refresh patches.
  * Drop as-needed patch due to autoreconf run.
  * Backport PulseAudio build fix.
  * Add GNOME MIME types for Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora (Closes: #629619).
  * Mention potcast support in package description (Closes: #488771).

  [ Reinhard Tartler ]
  * run autoreconf on the buildds
  * Weaken dependencies on libschroedinger
 -- Benjamin Drung <email address hidden> Sat, 11 Jun 2011 19:56:27 +0200

[v1nce (vincent-pennec)]

NOT fixed in 2.0.5 twoflower on ubuntu 12.04

[Dražen Lučanin (kermit666)]

This bug appeared in Ubuntu 13.10. It used to work fine for me in 13.04. I was happilly dragging folders that I wanted to listen to and now it just drags some smb://... link instead of the locally mounted gvfs link. :(

[Liny (liny)]

Yes, I can confirm that 13.10 does have this issue.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont (rdenis)]

Complain to GVFS.

[Jérôme Poulin (jeromepoulin)]

This is a bug in Nautilus or GVFS, not VLC, something has changed and it breaks compatibility with all the other software. Every other software would have to support every other network share instead of having GVFS doing all the work.