Video thumbs for .avi & .wmv only

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Aristophenes
Posts: 7
Joined: 09 Feb 2012 05:02

Video thumbs for .avi & .wmv only

Post by Aristophenes »

Hi Folks,

Firstly,sincere thanks to Donald,and anyone else who may assist him,for a truly remarkable work,though I've only just begun to scratch the surface of what it can achieve,but already discovered it's superior to Windows Explorer for photographic content.

My little problem concerns thumbs for video content.I have read forum content regarding this matter,and done the recommended regedit stuff,but it's made no difference whatsoever.

Currently using Windows Home Premium 64 bit,with everything up to date afaik.

In Windows explorer,I get thumbs for every video format I'm ever likely to be interested in,these being:-

.avi
.flv
.mp4
.m4v
.wmv
.mpg/.mpeg
.mkv
.h264

However,in XYplorer,the only ones to show thumbs are:-

.wmv
.avi

all others simply show the generic vlc icon.

The only codec pack I use these days is Sharks codecs,both 32bit & 64 bit,which includes ffdshow,and would prefer not to install any bloatware I'm never likely to really need.

I convert everything viable to high quality .mp4 using XMedia Recode,and so far they all play just fine through a standalone Blu-Ray player,connected to the TV via HDMI,to an Onkyo TX-NR 609 av-receiver.

So far,I've added mp4,flv & mpg to the list of supported thumbnails in XYplorer,but they still don't appear.

My world won't collapse around me if I have to use different Explorers for separate content,but I'd prefer to use XYplorer for everything if possible.

Any assistance would be gratefully received.
GAOTD Recipient

admin
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Posts: 60357
Joined: 22 May 2004 16:48
Location: Win8.1 @100%, Win10 @100%
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Re: Video thumbs for .avi & .wmv only

Post by admin »

Hi and welcome!

On my system (XP 32bit) Explorer and XY show identical video thumbs (incl. all formats you listed).

It might be a bitness thing. I *think* it is possible to run the 32-bit version of Explorer.exe under Win64; if you succeed doing this, you could see whether 32-bit Explorer fails at the same formats. In that case your 32-bit CODECS have not installed correctly.

Don

Aristophenes
Posts: 7
Joined: 09 Feb 2012 05:02

Re: Video thumbs for .avi & .wmv only

Post by Aristophenes »

Many thanks for the welcome Don,

Sorry I didn't reply earlier,been away for a long w/e.

I'll have a delve into the possibilities of your suggestions,and see if I can manage it without smashing windows.

Oh yes,nearly forgot,some .mp4's started showing thumbs this morning,so I must be doing something right......at long last after 54 years on the planet :idea:

I'm still a happy user,especially for photographic images.

Will return to report my findings in a few days.
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ale
Posts: 127
Joined: 19 Feb 2009 23:23
Location: Italy

Re: Video thumbs for .avi & .wmv only

Post by ale »

Not to hijack another thread but this is recent and seems to fit :)
I never used thumbnails before but today I decided to fight with codecs and related stuff, anyway whatever I try, I am not able to produce thumbnails for the .flv format in XYplorer (I didn't move testing other formats yet). The OS is Windows 7 64 bit, I know Windows Explorer is 64 bit so I tried to test alternative 32 bit file managers. FreeCommander behaves like XYplorer but when I was ready to put blame on the system configuration, I tried Q-Dir which in both the 32 bit and the 64 bit version manages to show them (see screenshot). So might it be an XYplorer problem? or might it be codec/configuration related?

But most of all, does anybody have working thumbnails for .flv in XYplorer on 64 bit Windows?
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ale
Posts: 127
Joined: 19 Feb 2009 23:23
Location: Italy

Re: Video thumbs for .avi & .wmv only

Post by ale »

After hours of experiments...
this registry modification gave me thumbnails

Code: Select all

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.flv\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11D1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{c5a40261-cd64-4ccf-84cb-c394da41d590}"
I don't know if it's a workaround for a real problem. I think what happened is not about bitness but about methods for extracting thumbs which are valid on XP and later methods which are Vista+
I also would like to add that instead of destroying a system with codec packs :( for .flv we might just use:

LAV splitter
http://code.google.com/p/lavfilters/

ffdshow video decoder
http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/

admin
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Posts: 60357
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Location: Win8.1 @100%, Win10 @100%
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Re: Video thumbs for .avi & .wmv only

Post by admin »

Thanks for the info!

Any idea what this registry modification actually does?

ale
Posts: 127
Joined: 19 Feb 2009 23:23
Location: Italy

Re: Video thumbs for .avi & .wmv only

Post by ale »

Don this seems to me a kind of black magic at the moment because I'm not an expert at all.

I'll recap what I did. I set up an absolutely fresh Windows 7 64 bit virtual machine with nothing inside. The goal was to reproduce .flv files (actually this may be inaccurate to say because .flv is a kind of container format I think).

Windows does not reproduce .flv natively and needs third party components. I wanted the bare minimum, no codec packs or bundle of million of things. After some experiments I found that my files were reproduced with the following: LAV splitter + LAV video decoder or LAV splitter + ffdshow video decoder (I tried both solutions).

Now for the thumbnail part with these codecs... I read some messages on the LAV Filters thread on the doom9.org forum such as this and there were an hint to use the "Codec Tweak Tool". The Tweak Tool has a setting about thumbnails, I observed what it did and I extracted the bare minimum modification that was needed. So it was a trial and error process. A search for {BB2E617C-0920-11D1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1} leads here: 1, 2 on MSDN

admin
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Posts: 60357
Joined: 22 May 2004 16:48
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Re: Video thumbs for .avi & .wmv only

Post by admin »

Wow, congratulations! The wonders of Windows...

Twisten
Posts: 204
Joined: 27 Apr 2008 10:30

Re: Video thumbs for .avi & .wmv only

Post by Twisten »

Nice, I mainly remember this kind of trick from when we had to remove a similar entry to disable the .avi file shell handler because it would run amok whenever you open a folder containing incomplete files.

Aristophenes
Posts: 7
Joined: 09 Feb 2012 05:02

Re: Video thumbs for .avi & .wmv only

Post by Aristophenes »

Brilliant,ale's reference to the codec tweak app. bought it all flooding back to my inconsistent memory.

About 75% of .flv's now showing thumbs,and all others 100%.

Gonna make a new post regarding still images (.jpg etc.) rather than take this one waaaaay off topic.

Thanks again folks for the invaluable help.
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