Displaying Video Thumbnails

[Compositor]

First off, I'm not talking about the array of thumbnails you can get some video players to generate. Rather, two or three years ago, I was able to get Windows to display video files as thumbnails instead of default icons. I am sure it was an option I turned on somewhere, because I remember thinking, "this could be cool" and enabling it. But I can't seem to find it again among the most likely suspects, Mediainfo, Windows and MPC-HC.

Most of those thumbnails just disappeared over a year ago, but not all. One or two videos in a folder would still have them, videos over a decade old (and not even mkvs) on an external drive would have them when I plugged it into my machine. Some new videos I got would have thumbnails, but not others.

Recently, I've also discovered I can make them reappear for a specific video if I remuxed an mkv without chapters and then create or import chapters into the new mkv.

Can anyone more familiar with video thumbnails tell me where the option to properly enable or disable them is?

I would also like to know how to designate which frame of a video to be used as a thumbnail. I can see the thumbnails aren't always the first frame of the video. I'm assuming it's designated in the encoding process somehow?

[Budman1]

If the Explorer folder in the upper right hand corner is a dropdown box where you select details or icons. Large icons show a thumbnail such as shown below for such as MP4 and JPG. Any videos with a codec that will play on your machine should show a thumbnail.

[Attachment 48173 - Click to enlarge]

[Cornucopia]

Other size icons will also display thumbnails, or not.

There is a setting, IIRC, in Explorer folder view options that specifically says, "always show icon & not thumbnails" which must be unchecked (or vice-versa). If it is set as it should, perhaps changing the setting & changing back will refresh things properly. Also, this all depends on what your thumbnail rendering engine shell handler is chosen as - stock Windows, or some 3rd party tool.

Scott

[Compositor]

Reapplying that setting didn't seem to work, but it gave me a thought. Aren't these thumbnails kept in a database by the system? Is there some way to reset it?

I'm using Windows 10 by the way. And, as I said, I think only mediainfo or mpc-hc could have control over the icons on my system, but I can't find any options regarding that on them.

[gonca]

Try this
https://www.videohelp.com/software/Icaros

[amaipaipai]

Reapplying that setting didn't seem to work, but it gave me a thought. Aren't these thumbnails kept in a database by the system? Is there some way to reset it?

Delete the file thumb.db inside the folder you are looking at, this will reset the picture/image cache to default. You need to change the folder settings to be able to see invisible and system files.

[Compositor]

I'm already showing hidden and system files and those directories don't have thumb.db. Do newer Windows even use that for thumbnails anymore?

I have been able to discern a commonaility among the old files that displayed thumbnails, old video files that aren't mkvs are displaying thumbnails. Unfortunately, almost all my videos in the past decade are mkvs.

[amaipaipai]

I'm already showing hidden and system files and those directories don't have thumb.db. Do newer Windows even use that for thumbnails anymore?

It depends, in general Microsoft disable it in Vista but some computer companies enable this back by local policy, HP, some Dell's hard to tell. A non OEM Windows 10 store this at the folder:

%APPDATA%\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

Try clearing that out.

[Budman1]

Easiest way to show all thumbs is as gonca mentioned above. Certain players like potplayer will also set the registry to use its program to decode the file into thumbs.

Later windows versions store all thumbnails of certain sizes in a certain directory. Thumbs.db will show up if you copy to some external media but deleting won't do much good unless you have some codec somewhere that decodes thumbs.

[Compositor]

Been a while, thought I should provide an update since I addressed the problem.

Some poking around brought to my attention that a Windows Update may have broken mkv thumbnailing in Windows10 and that fixes may not be forthcoming.

I have therefore gone with using Icaros.