I'm using Nautilus 2.4 and, for some reason, the thumbnails for certain video types have just stopped working. MPEGs make the previews just fine but pretty much all the other formats, AVI, MOV, WMV, they all don't make thumbs anymore. I thought before that it was just a problem with permissions, but the permissions are just fine, and it's not even trying to make the previews, my failed folder under .thumbnails is completely empty. I don't understand, this happened around when I started using Azureus, I originaly thought it was only files off of azureus causing the problem, but after I cleared my thumbnail cache, I then noticed it wasn't making thumbs for any of these types. Any ideas?

from this post:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=170027

"ps. I deleted my ~/.gconf ~/.gconfd ~/.gnome ~/.gnome2 ~/.gstreamer-0.8 ~/.metacity ~/.nautilus and ~/.thumbnails and started again.
It all works fine now."

edit: this has happenned to me twice now, still trying to work out why.........

okay, I did that and it's attempting to make previews of those file types again, but they're failing now. This is most distressing

It is also a pain in the proverbial, can anyone else shed any light on this? Mine seems ok for the time being.
It seems to start happening after I have run the gconf editor for the first time, the reason I say this is because it is working ok now and I have yet to run the gconf editor after having deleted all my preferences.
I understand the gconf editor is still in beta form, perhaps we have found a bug? Is there any way to record what nautilus is doing so as to make a decent bug report? I could run it in a console but all i get is this:

tuttle@shangrila:~$ nautilus
tuttle@shangrila:~$

no errors and it is as if I had run "nautilus &" if you know what I mean.

edit: It's nothing to do with gconf editor... sorry!

I figured out the problem, I had uninstalled Totem earlier in a vain attempt to fix the problem I was having and I forgot to reinstall it. A quick reinstall leter it was working fine and I have previews of all my videos again. I'd like to thank you, LinFreak!, for the help you gave me, I couldn'ta done it without ya. Now, I'm off to watch it make thumbs of all my Anime (it's strangely entertaining watching them generate).

Excellent! Cowboy Bebop 1......... 2......... 3.......... ahhhh thumbnails! Well found man.

hmmm, thumbnails still stop working after looking at thumbnails in removeable media (cdroms). I wonder if the fact that I am looking at thumbnails in cdroms has anything to do with it? ie. look at cdrom, change disk, look at more thumbs, thumbs stop working. That seems to be the pattern anyway!

edit: was LinFreak! btw. it was getting on my nerves calling myself a freak, freak!

found the solution i think: db4 wasn't installed correctly (i was messing around with it a few months back) + I got an error when running dropline-installer (cannot stat db4-4.2) so I re-installed it:

upgradepkg --reinstall db4-4.2.52-i686-1dl.tgz

Ill post again if this doesn't fix it.

That didn't fix it but I notice that it happens after I change the default program for opening avi's and mpg's from totem to mplayer.
If anyone can shed any light on this please do!

this problem continues to plague me as well. I've done that delete your config folders thing a couple times, and it sees to fix it, but I really hate putting my desktop back together. I think this time, I'm gonna instead only delete those folders one atatime and see which one it is, with any luck I'l be able to get it down to gthe file. I think I'm zeroing in on the cause, as it seems only to happen when the program used to access the filetype is changed. Maybe just deleteing those files will do it. I'm gonna check it out.

I FIGURED IT OUT! i think. at least, I've got a solution. the specific file that's giving us crap is ~/.gnome/mime-info/user.keys This file seem to be storing the difference in the mime-type registry that the particular user has from the system-wide one (which is the one we're falling back on every time we delete those files). Looking in there, it seems that when we add gmplayer (or mplayer) as a player for the particular video type, it assigns it an icon, which is recorded in this file, and, because it's got an icon now, it doesn't generate the thumbnails. by going to the right section (ie video/mpeg) and then delete the line relating to the icon, it seems to be okay. This should fix it and leave us with our selected player as the default. IF you delete the mime-type's entire section, it will fall back on the system's global setting, which means back to Totem or whatever as the default, but if you go into the right-click>open with>other application, the app you added before (in my case, gmplayer), should still be in the list and you can select it without causing the problem again. The problem only seems to be caused by using the File Types & Programs dialogs to change the settings, as that assigns an icon (which is at the top). Maybe there's a way to stop that icon? I dunno.

well found! I also have been fiddling on my laptop (just slack - no dg) and have found a difference in the gconf settings (applications -> system tools -> configuration editor) :-

desktop -> gnome -> thumbnailers

with dg it's full of empty keys, without dg (on my laptop) the keys are full of descriptions of the applications used to open different file types. The app for thumbnailing appears to be /usr/bin/totem-video-thumbnailer. Had a long week this week so I'll do more later, hope that helps though :~]

edit: perhaps we should carry this on here:

http://www.dropline.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2702

the *duh* dropline forums!

MY MISTAKE! Just to clarify: removed obsolete link to libdb4.1 in /usr/lib - I shouldn't mess with my db!