Automatic thumbnails

[ferguscan]

Say I install LinuxMCE, and I import a bunt-load of previously-acquired video files.  I want thumbnails for those files, so my media list can look pretty.  Is there a mechanism for automatically generating these thumbnails?

Thanks,

Stuart

[totallymaxed]

Say I install LinuxMCE, and I import a bunt-load of previously-acquired video files.  I want thumbnails for those files, so my media list can look pretty.  Is there a mechanism for automatically generating these thumbnails?

Thanks,

Stuart

If you mean "is there a mechanism to scan through the first few frames of each video file and use one of those frames as the thumbnail" then the answers is no I'm afraid. Its a good idea that was discussed a while back over in the Pluto forums but its never been implemented.

[ferguscan]

Then I shall implement the feature.

Thanks,

Stuart

[totallymaxed]

Then I shall implement the feature.

Thanks,

Stuart

I guess this would need to be integrated into UpdateMedia (which is C++) or possibly into the wrapper scripts around it. If this approach was taken then new mpg content would automatically get 'thumbnailed' shortly after it was added.

[druke]

how is this coming? It would be really neat if it is similar to what ubuntu does for video clips.

[tschak909]

try the Cover Art Scan under Media in the Web Admin to try and get some of them at least.

-Thom

[druke]

my concern deals more with movie clips that are just old dvd rips i've saved

[totallymaxed]

my concern deals more with movie clips that are just old dvd rips i've saved

As I commented in an earlier post to this thread I think this would be a great feature. But possibly the most obvious place to add the functionality would be in UpdateMedia but that is written in C++. However UpdateMedia builds off of the inotify lib which will 'watch' a file or folder structure for changes and then alert you. Now there is a nice lib that makes inotify accessible from shell scripts called inotifywait which could be used with a few calls to another lib like ffmpeg to grab some frames from the mpeg file whenever a new video file appears in /home/public/data/videos

[bulek]

I remember that Freevo (www.freevo.org) has this functionality and AFAIK it is simple one command line with mplayer or one of the similar tools.

I'd also really like this feature....

I still cannot get it, why LMCE or better said Pluto decided to use it's own form of metadata. I also don't understand why it has to be in binary form, cause user could also easily read or edit text files.

And also: Freevo had possibility to customize look and ordering view per directory, which was really handy. For instance, you could list files in time reversed order in video surveillance directory...
 
They also have some sort of library for dealing with media files .... MAybe it can be of some help :

http://doc.freevo.org/2.0/SourceDoc/KaaMetadata

regards,

Rob.

[tschak909]

guys, stop thinking like geeks.

The system that Pluto came up with, is a bit rough around the edges, yes. But it is the right direction to go in. As such, what needs to happen now, is basically a better user interface to work with it.

-Thom