I upgraded to Ubuntu Desktop 22.04.1 from 20.04.1 a few months ago, I recently noticed that MP4 and MKV video files are not generating thumbnails for Nautilus anymore. WEBM files are working fine though.
I have ffmpegthumbnailer and gstreamer1.0-libav installed, I've tried deleting ~/.cache/thumbnails as suggested here
Totem is setup to generate them:
cat /usr/share/thumbnailers/totem.thumbnailer
[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=/usr/bin/totem-video-thumbnailer
Exec=/usr/bin/totem-video-thumbnailer -s %s %u %o
MimeType=application/mxf;application/ram;application/sdp;application/vnd.apple.mpegurl;application/vnd.ms-asf;application/vnd.ms-wpl;application/vnd.rn-realmedia;application/vnd.rn-realmedia-vbr;application/x-extension-m4a;application/x-extension-mp4;application/x-flash-video;application/x-matroska;application/x-netshow-channel;application/x-quicktimeplayer;application/x-shorten;image/vnd.rn-realpix;image/x-pict;misc/ultravox;text/x-google-video-pointer;video/3gp;video/3gpp;video/3gpp2;video/dv;video/divx;video/fli;video/flv;video/mp2t;video/mp4;video/mp4v-es;video/mpeg;video/mpeg-system;video/msvideo;video/ogg;video/quicktime;video/vivo;video/vnd.divx;video/vnd.mpegurl;video/vnd.rn-realvideo;video/vnd.vivo;video/webm;video/x-anim;video/x-avi;video/x-flc;video/x-fli;video/x-flic;video/x-flv;video/x-m4v;video/x-matroska;video/x-mjpeg;video/x-mpeg;video/x-mpeg2;video/x-ms-asf;video/x-ms-asf-plugin;video/x-ms-asx;video/x-msvideo;video/x-ms-wm;video/x-ms-wmv;video/x-ms-wmx;video/x-ms-wvx;video/x-nsv;video/x-ogm+ogg;video/x-theora;video/x-theora+ogg;video/x-totem-stream;audio/x-pn-realaudio;audio/3gpp;audio/3gpp2;audio/aac;audio/ac3;audio/AMR;audio/AMR-WB;audio/basic;audio/dv;audio/eac3;audio/flac;audio/m4a;audio/midi;audio/mp1;audio/mp2;audio/mp3;audio/mp4;audio/mpeg;audio/mpg;audio/ogg;audio/opus;audio/prs.sid;audio/scpls;audio/vnd.rn-realaudio;audio/wav;audio/webm;audio/x-aac;audio/x-aiff;audio/x-ape;audio/x-flac;audio/x-gsm;audio/x-it;audio/x-m4a;audio/x-m4b;audio/x-matroska;audio/x-mod;audio/x-mp1;audio/x-mp2;audio/x-mp3;audio/x-mpg;audio/x-mpeg;audio/x-ms-asf;audio/x-ms-asx;audio/x-ms-wax;audio/x-ms-wma;audio/x-musepack;audio/x-opus+ogg;audio/x-pn-aiff;audio/x-pn-au;audio/x-pn-wav;audio/x-pn-windows-acm;audio/x-realaudio;audio/x-real-audio;audio/x-s3m;audio/x-sbc;audio/x-shorten;audio/x-speex;audio/x-stm;audio/x-tta;audio/x-wav;audio/x-wavpack;audio/x-vorbis;audio/x-vorbis+ogg;audio/x-xm;application/x-flac;
totem-video-thumbnailer is installed and seems to be fine
file /usr/bin/totem-video-thumbnailer
/usr/bin/totem-video-thumbnailer: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=6544369ec7ddf818eb0311a0c392511bbe3f194c, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped
If I run it it produces the help output ok
/usr/bin/totem-video-thumbnailer
Usage:
totem-video-thumbnailer [OPTION…] [INPUT FILE] [OUTPUT FILE] Thumbnail movies
Help Options:
-h, --help Show help options
--help-all Show all help options
--help-gst Show GStreamer Options
GStreamer Options
--gst-version Print the GStreamer version
--gst-fatal-warnings Make all warnings fatal
--gst-debug-help Print available debug categories and exit
--gst-debug-level=LEVEL Default debug level from 1 (only error) to 9 (anything) or 0 for no output
--gst-debug=LIST Comma-separated list of category_name:level pairs to set specific levels for the individual categories. Example: GST_AUTOPLUG:5,GST_ELEMENT_*:3
--gst-debug-no-color Disable coloured debugging output
--gst-debug-color-mode Changes colouring mode of the debug log. Possible modes: off, on, disable, auto, unix
--gst-debug-disable Disable debugging
--gst-plugin-spew Enable verbose plugin loading diagnostics
--gst-plugin-path=PATHS Colon-separated paths containing plugins
--gst-plugin-load=PLUGINS Comma-separated list of plugins to preload in addition to the list stored in environment variable GST_PLUGIN_PATH
--gst-disable-segtrap Disable trapping of segmentation faults during plugin loading
--gst-disable-registry-update Disable updating the registry
--gst-disable-registry-fork Disable spawning a helper process while scanning the registry
Application Options:
-s, --size Size of the thumbnail in pixels
-r, --raw Output the raw picture of the video without scaling or adding borders
-l, --no-limit Don't limit the thumbnailing time to 30 seconds
-v, --verbose Output debug information
-t, --time Choose this time (in seconds) as the thumbnail
-p, --print-progress Only print progress updates (can't be used with --verbose)
It's also enabled in the GUI preferences:
Permissions are ok:
-rw-rw-r-- 1 baa baa 5433184 Mar 18 23:42 audio.mp4
I am using an AMD CPU and an AMD GPU, using open source driers installed using the install script from AMD's website:
I ran sudo dmesg -Hew after clearing the thumbnail cache and visiting the folder again. I can see the icons flash as it tries to generate the new ones but they remain as the default video icon, no relevant logs appear.
ls -hal? It's not usual to have the video on a different FS, maybe a external HD or NFS network mount and permissions for your user may not allow creation of new files. – Carles Mateo Aug 19 '22 at 11:59dmesg -T– Carles Mateo Aug 20 '22 at 14:04sudo dmesg -Hew, there doesn't appear to be anything relevant, mostly firewall logs. – Baa Aug 20 '22 at 14:31strace PID. Increase the length of the output or even better use -o to output to a file and take your time to check it. – Carles Mateo Aug 21 '22 at 11:20lsofgreping withgrepfor the folder of the thumbnails. With this I would get the process name, and with this the PID usinps -aux. Probably it's a process in the background so hopefully you'll be able to attach it. Is more difficult if the thumnail generator processes are launched and end but can be done as well – Carles Mateo Aug 23 '22 at 10:59