A Weird Imagination

Thunar custom actions

The problem#

While I use the command-line and keyboard-based interfaces a lot to manage files, I also regularly use graphical and mouse-based interfaces. As with any time there's different ways of interacting with a system, there's some times when in one mode when you want the features of the other.

The solution#

Xfce's file manager Thunar has a feature called custom actions, which lets you add menu items that run commands on files or directories you are viewing or selecting.

The documentation suggests multiple ideas of actions you might want, including converting among different formants, rotating images, and various file management actions like viewing disk usage and bulk moving files. Additionally, the default action "Open Terminal Here" is one I use frequently.

The details#

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Playing Android motion photos

The problem#

My Android phone's camera app has an option to take a "motion photo", which, similar to the iOS "live photo" feature, records a short, silent video along with the photo. When viewing the photos on the phone, there's an option to play the video. But image viewer programs on my computer like Eye of GNOME (eog) do not support playing them.

The solution#

ExifTool (in Debian, the package name is libimage-exiftool-perl) can extract the video to a file using this example from a forum post:

exiftool -b -EmbeddedVideoFile photo.jpg > photo_motion.mp4

You can also play it directly without saving it to a file by piping to VLC:

exiftool -b -EmbeddedVideoFile photo.jpg | vlc -

The details#

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