WinXP Thumbnail Change

[Anakha]

I'm almost positive that this post will go here;

I bought some hardrives totaling about 2 terabyes. I have a lengthy DVD collection and wish to backup my dvd onto them, just incase they get scratched, damaged etc. I also want to be able to watch a dvd on my computer without tying up the dvd drive. Anyways, I have devoted 1.3TB to the full backups of the dvds, and I am devoting the remaining space to AVIs of the dvds. (For Example; my Hellboy dvd, I'd backup the full dvd, but also rip the main movie part out, then convert to avi) And it's worked beautifully. The only issue is that I like to go through the movies on Window Explorer, and in thumbnail view, and unfortuently, Windows XP will show the first frame of the video, which is usually black or another useless thumbnail. I know how to change the offset to show a different frame, the only issue with that is it left me with some videos having useful thumbnails and others having equalling irriating and useless ones.

I want to put in a frame of my choice for the thumbnails.

I have been successful doing this through VirtualDub, By selecting the frame of choice, replacing frame 0 with the new frame and it would, after the process is complete, leave me with a video with the thumbnail I chose. Unfortunately, this takes time for a full sized movie, and backing up a full DVD and then ripping the main part also takes time in itself and I'd really rather not take forever doing my whole collection! (it's looking like a very lengthy task already)

So in a nutshell, what I'm asking is:

What is the best way to get a frame that I choose (whether it be a custom image I can make or a frame of the movie, either works) to act as the thumbnail in windows explorer, without hugely time consuming methods as re-compressing files that range from 700 to 1400mb in VirtualDub.

Cheers in advance! If I didn't explain very clearly, let me know and I'll edit or make it clearer.

[AlanHK]

Turn off the Thumbnail view and choose the icons manually.

Use an icon editor to create your icons from your selected frames.
Several free ones are around.
You can put all your custom icons in one dll file.

then select your video's icon:
r-click/properties/shortcut/change icon/browse and find your icon or dll archive.