Bug#1043506: libvips-tools: vipsthumbnail makes black thumbnails or says "Unsupported codec"

[Michael Moore]

Package: libvips-tools
Version: 8.14.3-1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

vipsthumbnail was working for me at least until the Bookworm release, it now generates solid black thumbnails or an empty file. I don't know exactly when it stopped working.

The commands below are failing for all HEIC files I have tested with, including files which I had previously generated thumbnails for, using vipsthumbnail.

You can get a sample image here: http://stuporglue.org/downloads/pie.HEIC

*** Scenario 1: A black thumbnail is generated

Callings vipsthumbnail with no arguments results in a black thumbnail.

Command that results in black thumbnails:

$ vipsthumbnail ./pie.HEIC

(vipsthumbnail:693378): VIPS-WARNING **: 08:58:03.811: error in tile 0 x 0

(vipsthumbnail:693378): VIPS-WARNING **: 08:58:03.811: error in tile 0 x 0

(vipsthumbnail:693378): VIPS-WARNING **: 08:58:03.811: error in tile 0 x 10

(vipsthumbnail:693378): VIPS-WARNING **: 08:58:03.812: error in tile 0 x 20

(vipsthumbnail:693378): VIPS-WARNING **: 08:58:03.812: error in tile 0 x 0

$ file pie.HEIC  
pie.HEIC: ISO Media, HEIF Image HEVC Main or Main Still Picture Profile

$ identify ./tn_pie.jpg  
./tn_pie.jpg JPEG 96x128 96x128+0+0 8-bit sRGB 2439B 0.000u 0:00.000

The resulting file opens successfully (eg. in eog or gimp) but is solid black. Probably not useful, but here's the generated file: https://stuporglue.org/downloads/tn_pie.jpg

*** Scenario 2: An empty file is created if the  --size argument is given


$ vipsthumbnail --size=256 ./pie.HEIC

(vipsthumbnail:693735): VIPS-WARNING **: 09:02:09.364: error in tile 0 x 0

(vipsthumbnail:693735): VIPS-WARNING **: 09:02:09.364: error in tile 0 x 0

(vipsthumbnail:693735): VIPS-WARNING **: 09:02:09.364: error in tile 0 x 10

(vipsthumbnail:693735): VIPS-WARNING **: 09:02:09.364: error in tile 0 x 20

(vipsthumbnail:693735): VIPS-WARNING **: 09:02:09.364: error in tile 0 x 0
vipsthumbnail: unable to thumbnail ./pie.HEIC
./pie.HEIC: bad seek to 1964500
heif: Unsupported feature: Unsupported codec (4.3000)

$ file tn_pie.jpg  
tn_pie.jpg: empty

The only other flag that I usually use is --smartcrop=attention. This flag doesn't seem to have any negative affect on either of the above commands. In the first case, the thumbnail is still solid black, but cropped square. In the second case the file is still empty.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
 APT prefers testing
 APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.4.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages libvips-tools depends on:
ii  libc6         2.37-7
ii  libglib2.0-0  2.77.1-2
ii  libvips42     8.14.3-1
ii  python3       3.11.4-5

libvips-tools recommends no packages.

Versions of packages libvips-tools suggests:
ii  libvips-dev  8.14.3-1
ii  libvips-doc  8.14.3-1
pn  nip2         <none>

-- no debconf information
Thank you for using reportbug

[László Böszörményi]

Control: tags -1 +confirmed
Control: reassign -1 libheif

On Sat, Aug 12, 2023 at 9:12 AM Michael Moore <stupo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> vipsthumbnail was working for me at least until the Bookworm release, it now generates solid black thumbnails or an empty file. I don't know exactly when it stopped working.
>
> The commands below are failing for all HEIC files I have tested with, including files which I had previously generated thumbnails for, using vipsthumbnail.
>
> You can get a sample image here: http://stuporglue.org/downloads/pie.HEIC

Tested the following scenarios.
1) Backport vips from Sid to Bookworm and it still produced a good thumbnail.
2) Downgraded libheif in Sid to its Bookworm version and vips still
produced a good thumbnail.

Please note that libheif went from 1.15.1 to 1.16.2 and it was
modularized. But even if I install all libheif1-plugin-* packages,
vipsthumbnail can't get the image data from libheif. Seems it is
already reported [1] or might be a bit different. Anyway, it seems
libheif was not loading plugins in all cases. This is fixed in its
upstream [2] and hopefully will be integrated into its packaging soon.

Regards,
Laszlo/GCS
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/1041242
[2] https://github.com/strukturag/libheif/issues/914