Media Preview

Some Windows Vista and 7 users have noticed the fact that sometimes, thumbnails for certain file types are not displayed correctly in the Windows Explorer. This problem refers particularly to certain video formats. Microsoft hasn't yet developed a reliable fix for this problem, but fortunately, there is an application which can restore the thumbnails for video files in Windows Explorer and can also customize their appearance. The program I am talking about is called Media Preview.

This simple Windows application can restore thumbnails for a wide range of video files, including 3GP, MKV, MP4, Flash videos and so on. The installation wizard of the program is the same as the one of other Windows applications, taking little time to complete and requiring a few clicks for this. After installing the program, a program configuration icon will be displayed on the desktop. Clicking on it will display a tabbed interface, in which the user can select the type of files that should have their thumbnails refreshed. Besides that, the user can customize the quality of thumbnails, by using a simple slider. This slider can choose whether thumbnails should be optimized for speed or for performance.

Optimizing thumbnails for quality will make them look better but will have an influence over the overall performance of the operating system. After making all the necessary changes, for making sure that everything is in order, the user can take advantage of the special tab of the program, which allows testing every thumbnail. For this, one should drag and drop a video file over the program's interface, in order to have the thumbnail displayed correctly in the Windows Explorer.