Thumbnail view not working for MPEGs

Bushido Philosopher · Post by **Bushido Philosopher** » Sat Apr 03, 2004 1:32 pm

Seems like a rather trivial problem but when I go to Thumbnail view in Windows Explorer, for all my MPEG files it stays a boring looking WMP icon. For my AVIs however they're all fine since I can see the first frame.

Anyone have an idea as to how I can get my MPEG thumbnails back?
(I know its possible too.... my desktop does it. This is for my notebook.)

Lyrs · Post by **Lyrs** » Sat Apr 03, 2004 11:42 pm

The following link will provide you with the answers you seek:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operati ... 50151.html

Bushido Philosopher · Post by **Bushido Philosopher** » Sun Apr 04, 2004 2:11 am

Hehe... I can't see it unless I'm signed up.... and I don't wanna sign up for something that I'm only gonna look at once.

But for those interested I found two steps to a solution:

(Note that if the file you want thumbnailed has "Refresh Thumbnail" on its right click menu then you can skip this step as it's already in the registry.) Enter the following from below dotted line to above dotted line in Notepad.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mpeg\ShellEx]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mpeg\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{c5a40261-cd64-4ccf-84cb-c394da41d590}"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copy that same script and replace .mpeg for any other file extension you want thumbnailed (as MPEG can read as .mpeg, .mpe, .m2v, .mpg, etc etc). Save the final script as a .reg file. Right click the file and you should see a Merge option. This should allow you to be able to see the thumbnail in the first place.

Also, the thumbnail will only show if you have the proper decoder. For AVIs, you simply have to have the right codec (DivX or whatnot). For MPEGs however, it's a bit tricky. In my case, only MPEG-1 files had a thumbnail. It turns out that my MPEG-2 decoder didn't support Thumbnailing (or at least I assumed that). So I went to my good friend <a href="http://www.doom9.net/">Doom9.net</a> and downloaded Elecard MPEG Video Decoder (on full software page). Installed that and I saw my thumbnails clear as day. Yataa!!

(Funny.... I always seem to fine the answer my own questions. Maybe I should put the brakes on posting and wait a bit... or is posting it in a forum the first step to finding it for me.... hmmm....)

Lyrs · Post by **Lyrs** » Sun Apr 04, 2004 3:04 pm

You just had to scroll down past the advertisements.

Bushido Philosopher · Post by **Bushido Philosopher** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 8:17 pm

Ah..... damn....

Oh well problem fixed anyway.