title: Is there a Python library to create thumbnails for various document file formats?
body: <p>I'd like to generate thumbnails from various "document" file formats such as odt, doc(x) and ppt(x) but also mp4, psd, tiff (and possibly others) from a Python application. As far as I know for each of these formats there is at least one open source application which can generate preview images/thumbnails (e.g. LibreOffice, ffmpeg) or at least extract embedded thumbnails (e.g. imagemagick).</p>
  
  <p>My main problem is that each of these applications/libraries use different command line options so I'm looking for a Python library (or a unified CLI tool) which provides a high-level API to generate a thumbnail with specified dimensions, quality level given a filename and calls the appropriate external tool (ideally including catching exceptions, segfaults and timeouts). Bonus points if it can generate multiple thumbnails if requested (e.g. one per page, page X-Y, every Z seconds but at most N images).</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone know such a library/utility? (Boundary condition: The files may contain sensitive material or might be quite big so this must work without any network communication, using an external web service is not possible.)</p>
  
  <p>If there is no such thing in Python, a locally installable web service would be fine as well.</p>