How to enable thumbnail previews for my non-standard (mp4 avi mov mkv) video files in Windows 8?

I've installed the default VLC player to decode my .mp4 files but I'd like to enable a thumbnail view in the explorer. All I see at the moment is the traffic cone (the default icon for files associated with VLC).

Possibly related are these Windows 7 questions, but I'm not sure what carries over:

How can I generate thumbnail previews for FLV files in Windows 7?

How to generate thumbnails for less common video containers (mkv, ogm, mp4, flv, rmvb and mov) in windows 7 explorer?

Solution 1:

This Software claims to support Windows 8 and do what you need.

• 32-bit editions of Windows XP SP2, Vista, 7, 8 CP or later

• 64-bit editions of Windows XP SP2, Vista, 7, 8 CP or later require the 64-bit installer

• Small footprint and does not install codecs

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How To article here and comments from the author

• I’d also like to mention that this software does not require codecs and as such is vastly more stable than others

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Solution 2:

The Shark007 page looked a bit fishy to be (no pun intended) and I couldn't figure out which version I needed (advanced, standard, do I need the 64 bit addon?). So I installed the good old K-Lite codec pack. The advantage is that it not only instantly gives you thumbnails, you can play basically every media file you find with every media player (including WMP). Another benefit for me is that there is nothing you have to configure. I have never found any instability or crashes with it, and I have been using it on and off since the days it was called "KaZaA Lite Codec Pack" :-)

If you have Chocolatey, which is an awesome package manager for windows, its just cinst k-litecodecpackbasic.