Some *downloaded* videos from Youtube don't show thumbnails.

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 20H2 19042.804

Hello!

I'd just like to start off by mentioning that I'm pretty good with PCs. I've been using computers since 1983 and I worked in IT for 20 years. So I kind of know what I'm doing. Sometimes. Some of the newer stuff confuses me, though. Get off my lawn, etc...

This is a pretty weird problem and it only started happening a few months ago. So I use video downloaders (Internet Download Manager and 4K Video Downloader mostly) to download videos from Youtube and other sites. I do this so I can keep my own copy of the video, and sometimes extract audio from them. These files are almost always MP4 or MKV.

Always in the past the thumbnails for these videos would display in Windows Explorer. Most video files show thumbnails by default, but for the ones that don't (mkv) I use the Media Preview Configurator to make them work. I've been doing that for years now with no issue.

But recently, some of the videos I download from Youtube (mp4 or mkv) don't display thumbnails in Windows Explorer. Just some of them. And Windows Explorer sort of hangs when browsing a folder in which these videos reside, sometimes to the point that I either have to restart Explorer or reboot. Once even my efforts to fix this screwed up ALL thumbnails and it took some doing to get it all working again.

I've tried converting these files to other formats using various converting tools (ffmpeg and Movavi mostly), but the converted files don't display thumbnails either. The format doesn't matter: avi, wmv, mov, mpg, m4v, etc.

It's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen.

Anyone know how to fix this? Or can tell me why this is happening?

Thanks.

Well... this is pretty embarrassing.

I've been struggling with this problem for months without any success and not once did it occur to me to try Hand Brake.

Which I just did and it fixed the videos no problem.

Clearly, something is wrong with my medulla oblongata functions.

Thanks anyway :)

Xylem Flow said:

Anyone know how to fix this?

Install K-Lite Codec Pack (from codecguide.com) and it should be fixed. The installer of this pack has tons of options, but you can simply run the installer again if you want to add/remove features. Very unlike many other codec packs that can transport you straight to codec hell, this one actually does fix those kinds of problems, as they most often are caused by broken codec installations/configurations.