A video's preview and a picture's thumbnail are made inside the request that posts the message, and
nothing bounded how long either could take.
- The video preview filter also selects any frame from 5 seconds on. Rails' filter takes the second
frame it selects, which a video with a single keyframe and no scene change only gives at its end, so
ffmpeg decoded all of it.
- TimeLimitedVideoPreviewer gives ffmpeg 10 seconds of wall-clock time, kills it past that, and reports
a failed preview, so the message is posted without one.
- Pictures and videos above 250 megapixels, or whose size couldn't be read, get no preview: decoding
costs in proportion to the pixels, however small the file.
- The view shows a preview only if it was made when the message was posted. Its URL used to make it on
view, so a preview that failed or was skipped would be attempted again on every view. The cached
presentation's version goes up, so cached messages pick this up.
- A video's poster is made, when the message is posted, at the size the view shows it. The full-size WebP
made until now wasn't shown anywhere, and encoding it costs in proportion to the frame's pixels.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Bj8KnxpTf9sj2Ysa8aLAVa
The thumbnail or video preview is generated while the message is posted.
When ffmpeg or libvips can't decode the file (a truncated upload, an .mp4
holding only audio), the error escaped after the message had been saved:
the request failed with a 500, the message was never broadcast, and the
sender's upload stayed at 100% while the rest of the files in that drop
were never sent. Posting the message without a preview keeps the file and
lets everyone see it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JVFo3Lt9T8M5NR7KxVvsZ2
Marcello Costagliola
Kevin McConnell