YouTube-DL - Embedding Thumbnail in MKV File

[AndersonJames]

When downloading from YouTube via YouTube-DL it's not possible to embed a thumbnail in an MKV at the moment. The best that can be done with that program is that you can download a video and a thumbnail in a separate file. Here's my script to do that:

@echo off
cd /D "%~dp0"
setlocal enableDelayedExpansion
set /p video="Paste the video link to download: "
youtube-dl ^
-f ("bestvideo[width>=1920]"/bestvideo)+bestaudio/best --write-thumbnail --embed-thumbnail ^
--o "L:/VideoSharingSites/%%(title)s.%%(ext)s" ^
!video!
PAUSE

For the MKV downloaded I then dragged it into MKV Toolnix GUI. I resized the thumbnail file to various sizes as mentioned below. I renamed the file as "cover_land" and dragged it into the attachments tab. I then clicked on "Start muxing". The resulting MKV file doesn't have a thumbnail show in Windows Explorer in Windows 7.


When I embed any of the following:
1280 x 720 cover image (which is the size of the thumbnail downloaded) with MKV Toolnix GUI the thumbnail doesn't show in the video in Windows explorer.
1066 x 600 cover image with MKV Toolnix GUI the thumbnail doesn't show in the video in Windows explorer.
960 x 600 cover image with MKV Toolnix GUI the thumbnail doesn't show in the video in Windows explorer.
960 x 540 cover image with MKV Toolnix GUI the thumbnail doesn't show in the video in Windows explorer.

What am I doing wrong? Is there a specific dimensions I'm supposed to have for the thumbnail to show? I did what it said here but the thumbnail still didn't show: https://www.matroska.org/technical/attachments.html

Also if you're able to get it working, is there a way to add an FFMPEG command or something to my script to remux the MKV with a thumbnail while still keeping the separate thumbnail file?

Attached is the downloaded thumbnail which is 1280 x 720. I would like the aspect ratio to remain the same when the thumbnail is embedded.
[Attachment 54554 - Click to enlarge]

[jagabo]

Do thumbnails show up on your system for any mkv files? Win7 doesn't know what MKV files are and can't show thumbnails for them unless you install a Shell Extension for MKV.

[AndersonJames]

No. Got thousands of MKVs and there's no thumbnails for any of them. Do you have a link to the Shell extension for MKV please? It won't mess up my system like K-Lite Codec Packs will it?

[jagabo]

Try Icaros: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/icaros.html

[AndersonJames]

Thanks. That worked perfectly. Annoyingly YouTube-DL says it can't embed a thumbnail in the video however now I've installed Icaros, I can see that the downloaded video does have a thumbnail embedded in it but it's not the thumbnail that shows in YouTube search results so it's useless. I assume that thumbnail was made when the creator of the video made the video rather than being added by YouTube?

Anyway, the real thumbnail is still downloaded as a separate file so I still need to remux the video with the correct thumbnail in MKV Toolnix. Is there any way to automate that remuxing of the thumbnail into the MKV file? What would I need to add to my script to be able to do that?

[johns0]

In your folder options make sure 'always show icons,never thumbnails' is unchecked.

[laz305]

Are Samsung TV’s capable of showing the thumbnail pic? And what is the size of the image supposed to be?