video thumbnail generation failure with continuous high CPU usage

[splace]

thumbnail generation, on a small fraction of video files, is failing and is continuously consuming l50% cpu.

the file type or size not indicative of problem, 'file' command quite happy to identify type, and they play without issue.

adding or removing a file extension (.mp4, .flv etc.) will fix, no matter if the added extension is actually right!

feature request; if a thumbnail is very small, say in list mode and zoomed out, don't bother with thumbnail generation. (this is where i see the problem most, because you have very many thumbnails on the same screen, making it more likely to get one that does this.)

nemo 1.8.3

Note, cant use option not to thumbnail files above size limit, because it doesn't work. if it had i wouldn't have seen this problem.

[evrignaud]

I also have the same kind of issue with nemo 1.8.3.
High CPU usage of nemo an computer quite unusable.
Even after 2 hours, nemo is still using the CPU.
Why can't he give up and put no thumbnail, instead of going into an infinite loop and use that much CPU?

[splace]

did you try the add/remove an extension trick? as a hack. if this
always works it might give a good indication of the problem. ( are
yours video files?)

[selaux]

I have a similar issue with a pdf file. Seems like nemo is just trying to generate the thumbnail repeatedly without success, but generating considerable amounts of cpu usage calling "evince-thumbnailer" again and again. (Nemo 1.8.3)

Maybe someone can reproduce it, this is the pdf file that causes the issue:
http://www.dbs.ifi.lmu.de/Lehre/STMD/SS2013/Uebung/u01.pdf

[splace]

can not reproduce here. u01.pdf thumbnail is fine

could it have been tidied up by uploading/downloading? try downloading back a copy?

[mtwebster]

I can observe Nemo having trouble with the .face file in my home folder, but no issue generating thumbs for video files. However there is something going on... Nemo was eating 8gb of ram this morning. I'll keep debugging it.

[splace]

did some testing;

when i have the high cpu use, and no thumbnail, a process 'totem-video-thumbnailer' keeps appearing and going, with new higher ID each time, no memory leak i can see though.

[AlbertJP]

Does emptying the ~/.thumbnails/fail folder fix this temporarily? Maybe this problem is happening on the failed thumbnails. It could be that it runs the thumbnailer again and again if it keeps reporting failure because it failed to make a thumbnail the first time. (Files that fail once are remembered in the fail folder and not thumbnailed again unless the name is changed or the folder is emptied)

[mtwebster]

At least in the case of the .face file I'm experiencing, it's not actually reporting failed - it creates some thumbnail, then goes to save it, then reports back to nemo that the thumbnail has changed. Nemo then goes to regenerate the file info, and decides it needs to generate a thumbnail, and the cycle repeats.

Deleted all thumbnails and the .files file from .thumbnails, no difference.

I think this is an issue with gnome-desktop... there are checks seemingly in place to prevent what's happening, yet it's still happening.

[fifthrider]

My system doesn't even have a ~/.thumbnails/fail directory, and I haven't seen any failed thumbs yet. It just seems to get more and more bogged down, presumably with successful thumbs.

[splace]

for me (OP), ~/.thumbnails/fail directory exists, but is empty.

[mtwebster]

Nemo 1.8.4 should be in Mint 15 Romeo that has a fix for this - someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this issue only appears to affect Mint 15 users - it seems fine for me on my 14 vbox. Anyhow, I think the culprit is the gnome-desktop thumbnail factory lib - it's generating a thumbnail successfully, but failing to save, and not reporting that it failed, so Nemo keeps trying over and over.

Please let me know if the problem still exists in 1.8.4 and i'll reopen

[selaux]

I'm running nemo 1.8.4 on ArchLinux and I've still got the same issue with a lot of pdf files (nemo is trying to generate the thumbnail over and over again). Running evince-thumbnailer manually seems to generate the images correctly.

[mtwebster]

I goofed on 1.8.4, you're right it didn't fix it. Just made another patch today, hopefully another point release in the next day or 2 to evaluate.

[VolMi]

I have this issue ever since I upgraded to nemo 1.8.x on my LMDE and was happy to see this addressed lately.

However, the last commit (04c11ef) to this issue was merged (eb2279c) 16 days ago and there is no newer version available (1.8.5, probably).

I would love to see this fix in the repositories...

[mtwebster]

1.8.5 is available, with the correct fix.