SLAMorris Final Thesis After Corrections.pdf - Cranfield University

5.10 Audio and Media thumbnails
This section briefly discusses audio and media thumbnails, which are the two
other types of thumbnail used in Ubuntu and Kubuntu systems.
5.10.1 Audio thumbnails
An audio thumbnail can be heard by a user hovering their cursor over an audio
files icon; the audio file then begins to play from the beginning and continues
until the cursor is moved away from the file’s icon. By default both Ubuntu and
Kubuntu are able to play audio thumbnails. An audio thumbnail is generated at
run-time and is therefore not stored on the system. A collection of 15 audio files
were copied from a USB stick on to the virtual machine and on to the user’s
desktop. Each of the 15 audio files was then hovered over to activate the audio
thumbnail. On analysis of the virtual hard disk it was shown that audio
thumbnails do not use the .thumbnails cache, and do not have any direct
connection to the visual thumbnails. The audio information is played as required
and plays the contents of the original file; no audio thumbnail information is
stored.
5.10.2 Media thumbnails
Media thumbnails are also generated at run-time by the system and allow the
user to view a media file from the beginning by hovering over the media files
icon. Whilst the thumbnail is the same size as the file icon, the moving images
and associated audio can assist a user in identifying files. Ubuntu and Kubuntu
do not, by default, implement media thumbnails; however there are various
implementation methods available on the Ubuntu community forum. A collection
of 15 media files were copied from a USB stick on to the virtual machine and on
to the user’s desktop. Each of the 15 media files was then hovered over to
activate the media thumbnail. On analysis of the virtual hard drive it was shown
that these thumbnails are also generated at run-time and do not store
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