Windows 7 Thumbnail previews for mp4's no longer showing but all other formats are, need help to restore

I

icekool

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Jul 1, 2011
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Hi Everyone,

I would be really grateful if anyone could suggest something to try and get thumbnail previews for mp4's back. I don't mean taskbar ones & am referring to the icons in folder views or on the desktop or anywhere. All other basic formats such as wmv, avi, mpg are displaying thumbs correctly.

I should mention that mp4's are opening & playing with wmp just fine, so the file association seems ok. i know this is not a major deal, it's just I really like having thumbs show and I have quite a lot of mp4's. The only thing that might have changed registry entries was my recent use of PC Tools Registry Mechanic. I was directed to a registry key/fix on another forum which reset the default registry file association (right click then 'merge') but it still doesn't display the thumb previews. the only other suggestion someone has come up with is to install codecs which I do not need to do as mp4's are playing fine and the thumbs were displaying before without any extra 3rd party codecs, plus, I have the excellent VLC which can handle my mkv's etc. In the following screenshot the 2 mp4's can be seen ('Avatar' & 'Deadly Crossing'). Any help much appreciated. Thank you. (Win 7 Home Premium 32-bit, fully updated & no other system errors)

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HANG ON!!
Well blow me down with a feather, I just re-installed windows Live Movie Maker & Photo Gallery and now all thumbs are back!!

I guess I was wrong in assuming it was something to do with Registry Mechanic, it must have been something to do with me uninstalling Live Essentials as I recently installed Movie Maker 6 and thought I would dump the Live version. upon opening Photo gallery I saw that it went through all multimedia files and displayed thumbnails, even for mp4's.

I then went to the movies folder as displayed in my 1st image attachment, then into the subfolders where there are a lot of mp4 files and they all have their thumbs showing immediately!!

I would like to thank you both, especially Saltgrass for taking...
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Registry Mechanic keeps a backup you can restore, have you tried that?

I will have to do so research and get back otherwise.
 
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Saltgrass said:
Registry Mechanic keeps a backup you can restore, have you tried that?

I will have to do so research and get back otherwise.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for your reply Saltgrass, um, no, I'm a bit stupid in that I uninstalled the program after deciding that I'll just stick to CCleaner in the future as this well regarded free app doesn't go quite as deep into the registry as 'Mechanic'.
 
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I have used Registry Mechanic for a while. As with all Registry Cleaners, they can cause problems and have to watched closely.

Do you know what area of the registry the merging was addressing that you mention?

Are these .mp4 file and not another type of extension?

Do you have any other media programs that might have been given the priority over these files and cannot do thumbnails?
 
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The merging area was a simple restore default file type association, specifically for .mp4, a link to the item is here Default File Type Associations - Restore - Windows 7 Forums the mp4 entry is half way down the page.

Yes, my files are definitely mp4's and not any other file type, I do quite a bit of transcoding and know the differences etc..

No, the only other media players I have are VLC which I use purely for .mkv's (Matroska) and FLV Player used purely for flash playback. If you look in my attached image above you can see the VLC cone icon for a couple of mkv's.

As I also mentioned above, the mp4's are correctly 'associated' in that they open immediately and play perfectly with WMP. So neither of the above VLC or FLV Player are interfering with mp4's. The issue is purely thumbnail previews.
 
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I found this thread at a Microsoft Forum. They mention several things, but the two that seem to get my interest are the codec suggestions and more particular is the one about checking the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mp4\ShellEx entry for the number of entries. Mine show two entries for the .mp4 entry so maybe yours does not.

If you find something, let us know.
 
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Thanks very much for your replies above guys. I am typing this from my Linux desktop and will look into your suggestions later today when I fire up my Win 7 laptop. I'll get back to you, thanks.
 
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Well, I have now gone through all of those fix attempts on the Microsoft forum and noe of them work at all, tried just about everything.

Here are the 2 images I have taken of the 2 registry entries for .mp4 files.

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HANG ON!!
Well blow me down with a feather, I just re-installed windows Live Movie Maker & Photo Gallery and now all thumbs are back!!

I guess I was wrong in assuming it was something to do with Registry Mechanic, it must have been something to do with me uninstalling Live Essentials as I recently installed Movie Maker 6 and thought I would dump the Live version. upon opening Photo gallery I saw that it went through all multimedia files and displayed thumbnails, even for mp4's.

I then went to the movies folder as displayed in my 1st image attachment, then into the subfolders where there are a lot of mp4 files and they all have their thumbs showing immediately!!

I would like to thank you both, especially Saltgrass for taking the time to look into this for me, I really appreciate your efforts. This is obviously a good forum to come to with a problem or issue.
 
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