No previews

An update of Handbrake yesterday started installing a bunch of .i586 files. I tried to reverse this, but after doing so Dolphin stopped showing previews of video files (.mkv, etc).

Due to some other odd behaviors I reinstalled Tumbleweed (KDE) this morning. Initially upon reinstallation Dolphin would not even show icons of folders, but switching themes around seemed to cure this. However, I still get no previews of any video files in any format. Previews of other types of files like photos works.

Any ideas about what went wrong or what I can do to fix it?

Hi Steve,

I assume you have reinstalled keeping your home folder / partition? The dolphin settings are in

~/.config/dolphinrc

You can try to modify it or simply delete it. Then a new one will be created. I just tried this be simply renaming it - and back again.

You can also set the preview behaviour in Dolphin. Probably you know this. I even have a button in the symbol bar for this by default. But I’m on Leap 15.2.

Cheers,

kasi

Thanks kasi.

The one thing that I hadn’t tried was deleting the ~/.config/dolphinrc file. I did this but the problem persists.

I don’t think the problem resides in my home folder. I tried creating a new user but still no video file previews. Even when I open a dolphin instance as root there are previews of everything except video files.

Of course, I don’t know what could have persisted after a complete reinstall (I did preserve my home partition.) In the dolphin settings menu under “Previews”, Video Files (ffmpegthumbs) is checked.

I’m wondering if this is due to some update. I might try installing an older version of Tumbleweed, or maybe Leap just to check it.

Unless there are any other ideas…

Well, that sounds strange. You may be right about the update. I have version 20.04.2. With Tumbleweed you must be way ahead. Can’t help there, sorry.

Maybe it’s related to an issue with cache or temp folders? I think dolphin must use some space to cache the previews - I just can’t find where. Maybe it can’t access that folder? Just a guess…

Edit:
It can’t be ~/.cache/dolphin. I don’t have anything significant there - and you said it’s system wide issue.

Maybe you have used the wrong solution when updating and running in the “ffmpeg-4” problem.
Post:

zypper se -si | grep -Ei 'i586|i686|i386|i486'

Well, I’m not necessarily suggesting a cause-and-effect relationship here, but I installed Leap 15.2 replacing my old Tumbleweed installation, again preserving my /home partition, and everything went back to normal.

I think the problem started when I accepted an update of Handbrake in my previous Tumbleweed installation. Not only did dolphin start acting up, but Handbrake stopped working too. It would error-out when trying to process an .mp4 file.

At some point, probably today, I’ll try installing Tumbleweed on another partition, again incorporating my preexisting /home partition.

I’ll report the results back here in case anyone is interested.

To bring this to a close, a reinstall yesterday of the 4/20 snapshot of Tumbleweed fixed everything.

Of course, I think problem was really with Packman upgrades, but I guess this has been fixed too.

The lesson that I have learned is that if “zypper dup” threatens to cast me into dependency hell, I’ll just select “cancel”.

Yes, and this might be a better way to prevent bad upgrades:

zypper dup --no-allow-arch-change --no-allow-vendor-change 

In case zypper doesn’t fin a better alternative, it can present vendor/arch changes as problems for you to decide. Vendor changes are rarely needed after the first install. Arch changes happen sometimes involving “no-arch”, but never x86-64 -> i586.