GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 324656
Thumbnail options in file management preferences are not accurate
Last modified: 2008-03-20 10:35:43 UTC
The thumbnail options suggest that setting the file size limit to X mb will stop Nautilus from creating thumbnails for large video files however this is not the case. The option should be changed to indicate more exactly what it actually does. Other information: I filed this in Red Hat Bugzilla before and John Palmieri said the following (which I agree with): "I aggree, it should be file upstream though. It is hard to come up with precise verbage though. Thumbnail is Capture < MB? I even dislike having the user determine a threshold. Perhaps just a slider fast <-------------> flashy" (see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=172043 for reference)
I have this problem with large PDFs, as well. I have a folder full of large (25MB+) PDF files and set the preview threshold to 3MB. When I open the folder nautilus attempts to thumbnail every PDF in the folder and pegs the CPU for many minutes.
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/40874 mentions the same problem.
The option is ignored by nautilus. I've set it to files smaller than 3 mb, local files only. However it shows previews for large PDFs on mounted CD drives. Same for videos. Bug #46070 is related.
Created attachment 107646 [details] [review] Better file-size limits based on mime type Nautilus only applied the size limit to certain image mime types. It did not apply them to PDF files. A patch is attached to apply the limit to everything except video files (which are so large that "normal" limits should not apply to them). - Mike
In general its a bad idea to limit thumbnailing based on file size for most non-image formats, because the size of the file does not generally indicate how much you have to read or how much work you have to do to thumbnail it. So, a 500 megabyte pdf with 500 pages is likely as fast to thumbnail as a 1 megabyte file with one page. Therefore we do not artificially limit out-of-process thumbnailers. If a particular thumbnailer requires it it can enforce the limits itself.