No MOV thumbnails in XP folders?

[terrypin]

My previous digicam was a Canon Ixus 60, with AVI (MJPEG) files as output. These were displayed as thumbnails in my XP Explorer folders. But my new Canon Ixus 220 HS produces MOV files. I have these associated with VLC Player, so I can play them OK, but all I get in the thumbnail is the standard VLC icon.

How can I get proper thumbnails displayed please?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[edDV]

Your Canon Ixus 220 HS records h.264 video + PCM audio in a MOV wrapper.

For h.264 icons you may need to upgrade to Win7. Mine shows thumbnails for VLC h.264.

[jagabo]

Windows XP doesn't know what MOV files are. In order for it to recognize them as A/V files you have to have a MOV File Reader installed. And in order to play them you have to have a File Splitter and decoders for the audio and video compression types that are used within the file. To see thumbnails those components have to support Windows' A/V thumbnail API.

I haven't tried this (I hate thumbnail view) but... http://ddhr.org/2008/03/13/winxp-mov-thumbnails/

[terrypin]

Thanks.

Pleased to report that I had a reply to my similar query over in the Magix forum, from xerox, that sorted it in a flash. Here's a paste:

--- Start paste ---
Do you have the Codec Tweak Tool? http://www.videohelp...odec_Tweak_Tool

Select "MOV" under the Thumbnails category.
--- End paste ---

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[DarrellS]

^^^This^^^

You need to set ffdshow to decode H264 video and under Haali Media Splitter, Explorer Integration set Enable Thumbnail Extraction to "Yes" and set Thumbnail Offset to 10000..

With the Codec Tweak Tool you can set AVI, DivX, MKV, MP4 (and all it's variants), FLV, ASF, WMV, MPG (and all it's variants), Quicktime (HDMOV and MOV), MPEG-TS (and all it's variants), OGG, 3GP and Realmedia to show thumbnails.

[terrypin]

Thanks Darrell, but I'm not getting consistent results with this tool now.

One specific issue concerns FLV files. If I checkmark that in Thumbnnail Settings, I get a message
"CTT has detected that CoreAVC 0.0.0.4 is installed on your computer.
CoreAVC is known to cause Explorer crashes when generating thumbnails.
We therefore recommend to disable thumbnail generation for the following groups of file extensions:
Matroska, MP4, QuickTime, Flash video, MPEG-TS, and AVI."
If I click Yes to Continue with your current selection?, so that FLV is enabled anyway, I still don't see FLV thumbnails.

And how should I interpret the AVI box? That could be any of many types couldn't it?

I'm also having other thumbnail issues, but I'm not ready to explain them clearly yet.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[DarrellS]

Just ignore the message. That's what I do. I noticed in the other thread that you uninstalled ffdshow which you need to see thumbnails for most file types that XP does not support like FLV.

AVI is just a container. You need to tell ffdshow to decode all the off the wall compressions that those AVI may entail. Without ffdshow installed, there is no guarantee that any thumbnail that XP does not support will show up.

FLV with H264 is hit or miss (not sure what causes them to show or not). I've had them show before but most of the time they don't show which is kinda good since it tells me which FLV need to be put back in an MP4 container.

[terrypin]

Thanks Darrell. I really was hoping to avoid re-installing ffdshow...

But what I can't grasp is why I need it? These types that are problematic in Thumbnails View play perfectly in my players. So the codecs for them exist and work already.

Is there at least an alternative codec package or something that will perform a similar function and that's not so darned obscure as ffdshow?

I sure wish I could emulate your imaging approach, but I failed to partition either of my 750 GB drives on this OEM (Mesh) PC at the outset. And now they're 3/4 full, so it's sort of too late to do safely. At least for a non-techie like me.

I may try a system restore, but that risks screwing up other stuff as I've been pretty busy installing/uniostalling/tweaking/etc for the last couple of weeks.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[jagabo]

Just ignore the message. That's what I do.

If you do this, and CoreAVC has problems, Windows Explorer (ie, the Desktop) may crash when you open the folder. If you have dozens or hundreds of videos in a folder and it crashes every time you open that folder it can be hard to figure out which file is causing the problem.

[DarrellS]

Just ignore the message. That's what I do.

If you do this, and CoreAVC has problems, Windows Explorer (ie, the Desktop) may crash when you open the folder. If you have dozens or hundreds of videos in a folder and it crashes every time you open that folder it can be hard to figure out which file is causing the problem.

I am not sure why it shows this warning. As far as I know, I don't have CoreAVC installed on my machine. When I do a search, I can't find it anywhere. I do have Nero Ultimate and PowerDVD on my PC. I think it's just some generic message that K-Lite throws into their Codec Tweak Tool.

terrypin, when I install ffdshow, I don't have it set anything to keep from having conflicts with other codecs and splitters I already have installed on my system. I only set what I need after I've installed ffdshow. I go in and set everything that I need for both VFW (for Virtualdub) and Video Decoder to...

H264/AVC .....ffmpeg-mt ....H264,AVC1,X264,VSSH
FVFW,FFDS ....libavcodec .. ffdshow ffvfw internal FOURCCs
FLV1 .........libavcodec .. Flash Video (FLV1)
Theora ...... libavcodec ...Theora Video (THEO)
VP3 ..........libavcodec .. VP3 Video (VP31)
VP5 ..........libavcodec .. VP5 Video (VP51)
VP6 ..........libavcodec ...VP6 Video (VP60,VP61,VP62)
VP6F .........libavcodec ...Flash Video (VP6F,FLV4,VP6A)
VP8 ..........libavcodec ...VP8 Video (VP80)
WMV1/7 ...... wmv9 .........Windows Media Video 7 (WMV1)
WMV2/8 ...... wmv9 .........Windows Media Video 8 (WMV2)
WMV3/9 ...... wmv9 .........Windows Media Video 9 Simple
VC-1 .........libavcodec .. Windows Media Video 9 Advanced
FFV1 .........libavcodec .. FFV1 Codec for libavcodec (FFV1)
Avisynth .....Avisynth .....AVIS (Avisynth AVI files)

ffdshow is a must if you're going to use Virtualdub. If not, you can do away with it and use a player like VLC or MPC-HC with built in codecs and splitters to view your movies. Not sure if your other editing software uses the codecs you need to encode or if you'll have to install them separately. I believe all the major codec packs use some version of ffdshow. K-Lite does.

[Ai Haibara]

From what I've read, K-Lite used to include a rather old (and buggy) version of the CoreAVC decoder, at least until (K-Lite) version 2.8.0. If you had one of those older versions of the codec pack, maybe there's some remnants of that version of CoreAVC in your registry, or elsewhere.

[DarrellS]

I don't have the K-Lite Codec Pack. I only have the Codec Tweak Tool. I don't know about terrypin though.

[terrypin]

Thanks a lot Darrell, very helpful. I'll have another crack at it soon.

But I confess I still don't understand why, without ffdshow, the combination of XP and my installed, working codecs cannot generate thumbnails in some cases!

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[DarrellS]

By default, XP only supports a few video thumbnails. WMV and MPG (and maybe some AVI if you have the codecs but no guarantee). Vista and Windows 7 have a different thumbnail generator that shows thumbnail for most video types. My friend has Windows 7 and all of his videos show thumbnails. Thus, the need for ffdshow and Codec Tweak Tool (or some codec packs) to generate thumbnails in XP. Haali media splitter allows you to show thumbnails for MKV and MP4 and also set it so that it doesn't show just a black frame. It's supposed to be for MP4 and MKV but I notice it affects other video types also.

XP Pro 64bit doesn't show video thumbnails at all.