.avi Thumbnail Preview

When I view video files with windows explorer I no longer see a thumbnail
preview, just an icon. I have the correct box unchecked in "folder and
serach options" with regard to thumbnails. My fear is that I may have
inadvertantly changed a registry setting a while back when I was working on
another issue or trying to increase speed. (I am by no means an expert at
regedit.) I do see thumbnail previews for other file types. I believe the
problem is isolated to just .avi and possibly .mpg files. An help would be
greatly appreciated.

There could be a number of causes that will result in this problem.

The simplest is this: Is the folder customized to display "Pictures and
Videos"? Do this by right-clicking on the folder, then selct
_Customize_. Under _Use_this_folder_type_as_a_template_, select
-Pictures and Videos-.

Another possible cause are codecs. Have you recently
installed/uninstalled codec packages? I've had the experience also that
even if the file can play in Media Player, I didn't always get
thumbnails. I rooted my experience down to codecs, and when I removed
all codec packages, and re-installed a single package (for x64), my
thumbnails returned.

I currently use this codec package: 'Vista Codec Package Homepage'

My folder is customized to display "pictures and videos" I do have codec
packages installed, however I do not think I made any recent changes or
installed any different ones. I will try as you suggested however and
uninstall all of them and then install 1 single package.

I still believe my problem lies in the registry. I do see thumbnails for
existing avi files that were present in the folder for a lengthy time.
However, all new files that I download do not generate thumbnails. I think
this may be linked to an indexing problem. Even though the folder location
is an indexed location and the file type is checked, if i search for the
title of a know avi file from the start menu I get no results. I have
already tried rebuilding the index

While anything is possible, I don't think it'll be indexing that is the
problem here.

Existing files show thumbnails, but new ones don't? The more you
mention, the less it's a registry problem and more of codecs.

I'll check for other possibilities too, and will keep you up to speed.
In the meantime, let me know how the codec change works out?
____________________________________
Peter Alexander Dzomlija
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[arch9mikel]

I have found this usually happens when you have an over abundance of pictures or videos . Yes this is the sad truth about the preview pic as it just comes down to memory of how many pics it can store so if you get rid of a number of unwanted pics or burn them off to a disc you will find that the preview pic for a mpeg or avi will now display. Having said that as a definite solution I have also noticed the annoying thing that sometimes avi & mpegs preview pics will behave differently i.e. the moment I get the damn mpegs to display suddenly the AVIs wont etc but again this i have found is a memory problem & so windows thinks it can only display some so it will choose whether its AVIs or mpegs to show. SO clear out your pics & videos.