By default, Windows shows thumbnails of videos and pictures in Windows Explorer when you open a folder containing them. But Windows avoids creating the thumbnail previews of video files that are not in popular video formats. It shows thumbnails of video formats from only Microsoft or Apple Quicktime and ignores the rest. But you can use Media Preview add-on for Windows Explorer to view the thumbnails of unsupported video formats.
Here are some of the features of Media Preview addon for Windows Explorer:
- Supports all media formats left out by Windows like MKV and FLV.
- Creates unique thumbnails for all media files.
- Works in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows.
- Avoids generating black thumbnails and skips to next video frame for thumbnails.
- Does not lock your media files – you can rename files even when Media Preview is working on them.
You can download Media Preview from Babelsoft website. The download is around 6 megabytes in size, available separately for 32-bit and 64-bit systems and is in form of an installer. After the installation, you would be presented with a configuration window. Here you can select the files for which Media Preview should generate thumbnails.
It supports all the media formats under categories like 3G, AVI, Flash video, Matroska video, MPEG-1/2/4, Ogg video, Quicktime, Realmedia and Windows Media. You can select all the supported formats by clicking on the Select All button. If you want to start over then you can de-select all the formats by clicking on the Select None button. You have to click on the Apply button to apply the selected options.
Under the Settings tab, you can customize how the thumbnails are generated for your video files. You can adjust the slider on the top to adjust between speed and quality of the thumbnails. You can also adjust Luminance, Entropy and other miscellaneous settings that may affect thumbnail generation for media files. Again you have to click on the Apply button to save the settings.
After choosing all the settings to your taste, you can close the Media Preview configuration utility by clicking on the Exit button. Now if you browse the folders that contain your media files, you can view the preview thumbnails of all the videos which were not showing previously.
If you collect media files on your computer (and who does not these days, when video cameras are so cheap), then you must install this free tool from Babelsoft. It generates unique thumbnails for all your media files so you do not have to open a video file in order to see what it contains. Media Preview is a smart and fast application for all your media thumbnail preview requirements.
You can download Babelsoft Media Preview from http://www.babelsoft.net/products.htm.