Custom Thumbnails

[miguelut]

Hey Folks –

I need a bit of help here.  I have proprietary files in the Alfresco repo and I need to generate/attach thumbnails to them so they show up in the browser, and I'm just not sure how to go about doing that.  I'm an Alfresco newbie so I'm not even sure which API to use (or if this is simply a matter of configuration).  From what I've read in the documentation and on this site it sounds like I can attach a "rendition" to the node that contains a .png or .jpg to use as the thumbnail.  Is this the right idea?  If so, how do I do it?

I have a Java program that will convert the proprietary file into a .png.  I think basically I need Alfresco to call this external service each time a file of the specified type is uploaded so that it can create/attach the rendition to the node… again, is this the right idea?  Any guidance on this point would be greatly appreciated.

~Michael

[rjohnson]

What you need to do is define your proprietry format as a dummy mime type and then create a thumbnail context for that mimetype. The best example is to look at the video-thumbnail-context.xml.sample. This uses ffmpeg to generate thumbnails from video files.

You need a version of this for your mimetype.

Bob Johnson

[miguelut]

Bob –

I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to my post.  Your brief yet informative response helped point me in the right direction and allowed me to get this up and running after beating my head against the wall for a few days.

~Michael