Creating Thumbnails for Videos

Omeka S
1

Hi all,

I’m working on an Omeka S project, and most of the items are MP4 video files. I’ve uploaded the item metadata and media files using the CSV importer module. All of the videos have the built-in grayed out film reel as the thumbnail on the Browse Items page, in item showcase blocks, and in the editor dashboard area.

I’ve written a script to create a thumbnail out of the first frame of the video for all of my video items. I have uploaded the images as assets and selected them for the custom thumbnail for the corresponding video media item. However, this only changes the thumbnail in the edit item page in the editor dashboard. The thumbnail remains the grayed out default in the list of items page in the editor dashboard, in the browse items page on the site, and in the item showcase page on the site.

I’ve followed the instructions in this forum post, but it doesn’t seem to be working: Creating custom thumbnails

Thanks in advanced for your time and expertise :slight_smile:

2

When you set these thumbnails, are you setting them on the media, the item, or both? In other words, are you doing this on the “Edit item” page or the “Edit media” page?

3

Ahhh I was only adding it to the media file, not the item as a whole! That worked thank you! Is there a way to attach thumbnails to items in bulk? I haven’t seen a way to do it using csv import. Could I do it with the API?

4

We also have a fix in the works at the moment that will make a thumbnail set on the media also apply to the item automatically when that’s the primary or only media. It should be out with version 4.1.1, when we release it.

2 Likes
5

Got it! I need to wrap up this exhibit by August, so I’m not sure that will work out on the time line I need it to. Is there a way to edit media + item thumbnails with the REST API? Or can I only do that with the PHP API? I was trying with the REST API yesterday and kept getting 403 errors.

6

the exhibit has 450 or so video items, so I’d much prefer to not have to do this by hand

7

We’re looking to have the fix for this out… I’d say within this month.

8

Version 4.1.1, including this change for thumbnails, is now released.

1 Like
9

Is there a way to get ImageMagick to automatically generate thumbnails for video content? Adding the thumbs as assets and assigning them as thumbnails by hand is taking a while, and it is resulting in our assets folder becoming very crowded.

10

Hi @elizschw ,

It is currently possible to autogenerate thumbnails for videos, you just have to have FFMPEG installed on your server.

To install ffmpeg on Ubuntu you would run the following commands:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install ffmpeg

You can then verify the installation it by running:

ffmpeg -version

If your host doesn’t allow you to install FFMPEG, I would suggest something like RefBytes Platform Manager which was created with Omeka and Omeka S in mind and lets you focus on your collections and not server management. It already has FFMPEG installed for video thumbnail generation.