Thumbnails not showing in video in Ubuntu 18.04

Question

I have Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and I've manually installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Everything looks fine except video thumbnails. How to solve this?

Solution 1

Install FFMPEG Thumbnailer-

sudo apt install ffmpegthumbnailer

Then close and reopen file manager. Thumbnails for most video files should generate now.

However, if it's still not working then open file manager, go to your home folder if you're not already there (Home folder is usually the folder which contains Downloads, Documents, Photos etc folders).

Press Ctrl+H, enter into the folder named .cache. Then enter in the folder thumbnails.
Delete everything in there. Restart your PC.

Solution 2

I have tried HattinGokbori87's solution but it failed, and I found another way to solve it.

First I installed the HattinGokbori87's suggested package like this:

sudo apt install ffmpegthumbnailer

Then I restarted the computer but I still could not see the video's thumbnails in the file manager, so I tried to install another package like this:

sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-libav

Then cleaned up the directory like this:

rm -r ~/.cache/thumbnails/fail

Re-opened the Ubuntu file manager, it works!

Refer to this article if your Ubuntu 18.04 thumbnails still do not work.

Update: For Ubuntu 20.04 this method still applies (I just upgraded my computer operating system from Ubuntu 19.10 to Ubuntu 20.04).

Solution 3

Install following packages

ffmpeg,ffmpegthumbnailer,gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg ffmpegthumbnailer gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

Then edit the following file with respective content

sudo vi /usr/share/thumbnailers/totem.thumbnailer

just paste the following lines

[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=ffmpegthumbnailer
Exec=ffmpegthumbnailer -s %s -i %i -o %o -c png -f -t 10
MimeType=application/mxf;application/ogg;application/ram;application/sdp;application/vnd.ms-wpl;application/vnd.rn-realmedia;application/x-extension-m4a;application/x-extension-mp4;application/x-flash-video;application/x-matroska;application/x-netshow-channel;application/x-ogg;application/x-quicktimeplayer;application/x-shorten;image/vnd.rn-realpix;image/x-pict;misc/ultravox;text/x-google-video-pointer;video/3gpp;video/dv;video/fli;video/flv;video/mp2t;video/mp4;video/mp4v-es;video/mpeg;video/msvideo;video/ogg;video/quicktime;video/vivo;video/vnd.divx;video/vnd.rn-realvideo;video/vnd.vivo;video/webm;video/x-anim;video/x-avi;video/x-flc;video/x-fli;video/x-flic;video/x-flv;video/x-m4v;video/x-matroska;video/x-mpeg;video/x-ms-asf;video/x-ms-asx;video/x-msvideo;video/x-ms-wm;video/x-ms-wmv;video/x-ms-wmx;video/x-ms-wvx;video/x-nsv;video/x-ogm+ogg;video/x-theora+ogg;video/x-totem-stream;audio/x-pn-realaudio;audio/3gpp;audio/ac3;audio/AMR;audio/AMR-WB;audio/basic;audio/midi;audio/mp2;audio/mp4;audio/mpeg;audio/ogg;audio/prs.sid;audio/vnd.rn-realaudio;audio/x-aiff;audio/x-ape;audio/x-flac;audio/x-gsm;audio/x-it;audio/x-m4a;audio/x-matroska;audio/x-mod;audio/x-mp3;audio/x-mpeg;audio/x-ms-asf;audio/x-ms-asx;audio/x-ms-wax;audio/x-ms-wma;audio/x-musepack;audio/x-pn-aiff;audio/x-pn-au;audio/x-pn-wav;audio/x-pn-windows-acm;audio/x-realaudio;audio/x-real-audio;audio/x-sbc;audio/x-speex;audio/x-tta;audio/x-wav;audio/x-wavpack;audio/x-vorbis;audio/x-vorbis+ogg;audio/x-xm;application/x-flac;

and finally restart your machine and see.

Comments

[pomsky]

Did you choose the "minimal installation" option instead of "normal installation" as shown here: omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/…?

[Vikas]

I choose normal installation.

[shyam]

Upgraded to ubuntu 18.04 from 16.04 recently, same issue no thumbnails in my list view of folders and never checked icon view. I did everything except for some commonsense then bumped on following reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/8di3ce/… and that seems to be my issue, icon view thumbnails always work and in list view I need to zoom to 150%.

[smac89]

No need to restart my PC; quitting and restarting Nautilus was enough

[HattinGokbori87]

Alternatively you can run- rm -rf ~/.cache/thumbnails/* in Terminal to clear the thumbnail cache.

[Michael]

already installed. in my case, some mp4 files have thumbnails, others do not. file size limit is 4096MB, which is larger than any of my files...

[Daniel]

Installing ffmpegthumbnailer works for Ubuntu 20.04. Thumbnails were displayed immediately in the Nautilus window that was already opened.

[Kevin]

This worked for me on Arch as well with PCManFM with just a restart of it.

[Juan M]

Did this with nautilus closed, then opened it after installation, worked perfectly. Thank you.