Windows – How to get thumbnails in Windows Explorer for .3gp and .webm files

codecvideowindows 7

Basic set up

On my Windows 7 Professional 64-bit system I have installed K-Lite Codec Pack 7.10 and K-Lite Codec Pack 64-bit 4.6 with only the following options (the idea being to only add what's missing and not replace what's already there from Microsoft):

  • Video: H.263, FLV1 + FLV4, VP8
  • Audio: Vorbis
  • Filters: Matroska splitter (Haali), MP4/3GP/MOV splitter (Haali), FLV splitter
  • Other: Preferred Filter Tweaker for Windows 7
  • Thumbnails (64-bit): +flv (3gp was already checked, there was no option for webm)
  • File associations (32-bit): +Matroska (.webm), +Flash Video (.flv)

The result is that .3gp, .flv and .webm files open and play with video and audio in Windows Media Player, and that .flv files show a thumbnail in Windows Explorer.

Tweaks

I followed these guides on configuring thumbnails using the Preferred filter tweaker, by setting ffdshow as the preferred H.264 codec and disabling Media Foundation for .3gp, but as I expected it doesn't work. The guides don't even mention H.263 or .webm (which uses VP8).

The last thing I did was to set the option Enable thumbnail generation to Yes in the Haali Media Splitter properties. And even though that splitter is used for both .3gp and .webm (which is a variant of Matroska), Explorer doesn't show.

I have restarted Windows after every change, and downloaded videos to different Explorer folder so there could be no previous Thumbs.db file.

Question

Using the tools I have at my disposal (ffdshow, the Haali splitter configuration and the preferred filter tweaker for Windows 7), how can I get thumbnails in Windows Explorer 64-bit for .3gp and .webm files?

Best Answer

I use Icaros.

Once installed, you need to enable .webm and .3gp file extensions (things like .mkv are already there by default, no idea why these two are excluded).
Simply run the installed start menu item, hit Deactivate Icaros (so you can edit the options) and append ;.webm;.3gp to the Thumbnail Filetypes Registered input box.

From here you can disable filetypes if you wanted to stick to 'the idea being to only add what's missing and not replace what's already there from Microsoft'

Hit Activate Icaros and open a folder with those files in. Done!

It does some cool things like enables Windows to pull properties of the video, like length and resolution (so that it displays it at the bottom of File Explorer when selected, just like with .wmvs)

I can't quite remember, but I think it also performs things like black-frame-detection. Id est, if it thinks the thumbnail it chose initially is poor, like a really dark image, it will look for another frame to use instead.

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