Re: [Tracker] Video thumbnailing

[Jens Georg <jensg openismus com>]

On Mo, 2011-09-12 at 18:56 +0100, Sam Thursfield wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> It would be nice if Tracker could provide video thumbnails, in the
> same way that it currently extracts album art, for media centre apps
> etc. to use. Since we have to open video files anyway to get their
> tags and stream info, it makes sense to reuse that pipeline for
> thumbnailing - some video rips also have an obvious
> folder.jpg/poster.jpg image that we can identify and use instead.

Associating folders/posters with the videos sounds like a great idea.

> I propose storing them according to the media art spec[2] (I'm sure it
> can be easily extended for videos), and we could also generate small
> thumbnails following the thumbnail spec[3] to save Nautilus the job.

I don't quite see why you would add them to the media-art spec _and_
the .thumbnails? Is it because you want to retain the original?

> Does anyone have comments on whether this is a good/bad idea? I worry
> that tagreadbin may negate some of the benefits of thumbnailing
> in-process, although we will still avoid detected the file format
> twice and I think it generally makes sense for tracker to be doing the
> thumbnailing instead of every app that wants video thumbnails making
> their own private ones (this is what media-explorer does at the
> moment, for example).

Are you aware of the (imho slightly over-engineered) thumbnailer DBus
spec[1] implemented by tumbler[2]?

Also, only one app needs to make the thumbnails, that's what
the .thumbnails directory is for.

[1] https://live.gnome.org/ThumbnailerSpec
[2] Can't find the correct repository, but Philip should know.