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user2817
Asked: 2010-12-11 07:43:49 +0800 CST

Missing Thumbnails for .swf files in Nautilus?

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Before I upgraded to Maverick, .swf files used to have a thumbnail in Nautilus. However, Nautilus doesn't generate thumbnails for them anymore, even after removing ~/.thumbnails/, which most likely indicates that a package is missing.

How do I get Nautilus to generate thumbnails for .swf files?

EDIT: I've added a bounty, as I believe this question might still be answered...

10.10 nautilus swf thumbnails

4 Answers

  1. The thumbnails were made with libswfdec (i.e. /usr/bin/swfdec-thumbnailer from the package swfdec-gnome), which was removed in Ubuntu 10.10 ("maverick"). The libswfdec author stopped development because there are already 2 other open source projects working on implementing an SWF player: gnash (which is included in Ubuntu) & lightspark (which is new and not included yet). I am not sure if there exists a thumbnailer that uses gnash...

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  2. Best Answer

    There is a way of getting this done explained in the Floorplanner Tech Blog. To compile dump-gnash on a fresh Maverick you'll need 

    sudo apt-get install gcc libboost-dev libboost-thread-dev libagg-dev libsdl1.2-dev libcairo-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libatk1.0-dev libglib2.0-dev libpango1.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgtkglext1-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libgif-dev libjpeg-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev libspeex-dev libcurl-dev

    And then you just follow the steps. This will take a long time.
    NOTE: For Step 7 use the following script instead:

    if [[ $3 ]]; then
    raw="$(mktemp)"
    dump-gnash $2 -P "FlashVars=url=file://$1" -D "$raw" --max-advances 1 -j 500 -k 500
    tail -c 1MB "$raw" | convert -size 500x500 -depth 8 rgba:- -separate -swap 0,2 -combine -trim png:"$3"
    trap "rm $raw" EXIT
else
    echo "Insufficient arguments (expected 3 arguments)"
    exit 1
fi

    Once you have the final script running you just hook it into gconf-editor

    gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/application@swf" -t string "/usr/bin/swfthumbnailer.sh %s %i %o"
gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/application@swf/enable" -t boolean 'true'
gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/application@x-swf" -t string "/usr/bin/swfthumbnailer.sh %s %i %o"
gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/application@x-swf/enable" -t boolean 'true'
gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/application@x-shockwave-flash/command" -t string "/usr/bin/swfthumbnailer.sh %s %i %o"
gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/application@x-shockwave-flash/enable" -t boolean 'true'

    Then restart (or restart gnome-settings-daemon), and you've got swf thumbs!

    P.S.: This is a huge hack. A better way to do this would be vastly appreciated.

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  3. The closest thing I've been able to find is perhaps using ffmmpegthumbnailer to create thumbnails for you and that should handle the .swf files.

    This blog post has the instructions.

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  4. Simplest answer should simply be to install swfdec-gnome, but the Lucid version. Not hard to do, just go to http://packages.ubuntu.com/da/lucid/swfdec-gnome and select your architecture. Then just do what you did previously to make it work; it seems to just randomly kick in for me, as I recall. Maybe after a log out/restart. Good luck to you.

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