HOW-TO create video preview thumbnails automatically

Okay, I just found out about one of these and the other one I wrote. If you have seen them before, then don't complain. They are new to me.

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Creating XBMC Thumbnails Automatically
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I wanted to have thumbnails for all my television episodes. (All my episodes are on my windows PC, sheared over my network.) Instead of downloading each file individually, I found a tip on the XBMC wiki page.

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/inde...thumbnails

1. Download this file:
http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/ffmpeg...ev10908.7z

2. Extract that file (Including the DLL) into your \\Windows\System32 folder.

3. Open up a command prompt window in the root folder of your television shows and then type this command

for /r %i in (*.avi) do ffmpeg -i "%i" -f mjpeg -t 0.001 -ss 5 -y "%~di%~pi%~ni.tbn"

You can replace the (*.avi) with different file formats, including mp4, divx, rmvb, ogm and rm.

This will open up your episodes, skip 5 seconds in, take a screen shot, rename it to *.tbn and then go to the next file. It will also do any sub folder.

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Seeing *.tbn files in Windows Explorer
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I bet that you know that you can go into a folder in Windows XP, switch to Thumbnail view, and be presented with an icon of the first screen from a movie. It works for images as well. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for *.tbn files. Until now, that is.

1. Create a new text document.

2. Paste the following block of text into it.

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.tbn\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{3F30C968-480A-4C6C-862D-EFC0897BB84B}"

3. Rename the file so that the extension is .reg (I named mine "tbn thumbnails.reg")

4. Double-click the file and you are all set. Windows XP will now see TBN thumbnails as images and create a windows thumbnail for them. You can see them in your folders on your computer.

Well done! I'm going to have to try this out, it looks awesome!

Also, thanks for the .tbn preview in Windows.

jaredharley Wrote:Well done! I'm going to have to try this out, it looks awesome!

Also, thanks for the .tbn preview in Windows.

Both are awesome! Thanks!

Remember to share your thumbnails with others by uploading them to http://www.thetvdb.com

TheTVDB is the database and scraper that XBMC uses and it is wiki based.

By the users, for the users

Very nice, thank you.
I've been using Frameshots to make my thumbs, I'll give yours a go and see how it works.

Wasnt this in the wiki? Well I know I saw it but I guess its been removed.

Quote:Wasnt this in the wiki? Well I know I saw it but I guess its been removed.

No, it's still there, Calmiche linked to it in his post. I've been all over the wiki and had never come across this tip.

Calmiche Wrote:Instead of downloading each file individually, I found a tip on the XBMC wiki page.

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/inde...thumbnails

I tried it for a time and worked great... 6 seasons of smallville etc. but after a time just got to be bothersom.

HarshReality Wrote:I tried it for a time and worked great... 6 seasons of smallville etc. but after a time just got to be bothersom.

The command Calmiche uses
does a recursive scan on folders. If you've got a directory called "TV Shows", you could simply navigate to that folder in a cmd window, and then run the command. It will look in all folders and sub-folders for video files matching the parameters (in this case, .avi files).

I can see how it would get irritating to do this with each new episode you download (or create, however you get them). Now that I've done the initial work, I plan on only doing it when a season is complete.

I saw the first tutorial before but I couldn't exicute it for whatever reason so I went with frameshots. I'll try it again, as far as the tbn viewer is concerned, I don't think it works in vista, can someone else confirm. I'll try it on my main XP server where I'm sure it will work...

Thanks,