---- Reported by shotwell-maint@gnome.bugs 2012-06-20 06:43:00 -0700 ----

Original Redmine bug id: 5424
Original URL: http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/5424
Searchable id: yorba-bug-5424
Original author: jason todd
Original description:

I like to use Shotwell to display video files because of the nice big
thumbnails it provides. But if the first half-second of the video-file is dark
(before the images start), then all I get in Shotwell is a black thumbnail.
The Nautilus file-browser does not have this problem. It shows image-
thumbnails for all the files that Shotwell shows black-thumbnails for, so I
know that it is possible to show an image-thumbnail for these videos.

Can you please fix this bug so that Shotwell shows an image-thumbnail instead
of a black-thumbnail.

I attached a screenshot to show the black thumbnails.



---- Additional Comments From shotwell-maint@gnome.bugs 2012-09-13 15:52:00 -0700 ----

### History

####

#1

Updated by Lucas Beeler over 1 year ago

Hi Jason,

For precisely this reason, the shotwell-video-thumbnailer helper application
that Shotwell uses to generate thumbnails does not make its thumbnail from the
first video frame. Instead, it seeks to a frame 1/3 into the duration of the
video and uses that frame to create the thumbnail. So even if your videos have
black early frames, this shouldn't affect Shotwell's video thumbnail
generation. So I suspect there's something else going on here. What format are
these video files? Does Shotwell generate correct thumbnails for any video
files on your system?

Lucas

####

#2

Updated by Eric Gregory over 1 year ago

I believe the Totem thumbnailer will check if the frame is black, then seek
further into the file, etc. until it finds a non-black frame. The Shotwell
thumbnailer currently isn't smart enough to do this.

####

#3

Updated by Lucas Beeler over 1 year ago

@Eric:

But we do seek a third of the way in before generating the thumbnail, right?
So even if the first few frames were black (say because of a fade-in) that
shouldn't affect the frame we sample, should it?

Lucas

####

#4

Updated by Eric Gregory over 1 year ago

From looking at the code, it looks like we're grabbing the frame at 5% into
the video. I believe this is also the first frame that Totem will look for.

Regardless, we should be doing black frame detection.

####

#5

Updated by jason todd over 1 year ago

@Lucas:

I have two kinds of video files, MPG and MP4.

10% of my MP4 files have black thumbnails when viewed in Shotwell.

3% of my MPEG files have black thumbnails when viewed in Shotwell.

3% of my MPEG files have dark thumbnails that look like they're halfway
through a transition-phase from black to video-image when viewed in Shotwell.

All of the video files that show dark & black thumbnails in Shotwell have full
image-thumbnails when viewed in Nautilus.

####

#6

Updated by Adam Dingle over 1 year ago

  * **Priority** changed from _Normal_ to _High_
  * **Target version** set to _0.13_

####

#7

Updated by Adam Dingle about 1 year ago

  * **Target version** deleted (<strike>_0.13_</strike>)



--- Bug imported by chaz@yorba.org 2013-11-25 21:57 UTC  ---

This bug was previously known as _bug_ 5424 at http://redmine.yorba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5424
Imported an attachment (id=262400)

Unknown Component 
   Using default product and component set in Parameters 
Unknown version " in product shotwell. 
   Setting version to "!unspecified".
Unknown milestone "unknown in product shotwell. 
   Setting to default milestone for this product, "---".
Setting qa contact to the default for this product.
   This bug either had no qa contact or an invalid one.
Resolution set on an open status.
   Dropping resolution