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[Tadao]

For my music videos I want to change the thumbnails to a different frame to best show which video it is.
Can we designate the time for this frame capture for the thumbnails?

I did a quick check and couldn't find this topic...
Thanks!

[Yaobing]

You can change the following settings:

Tools > Options > Tree & View > Thumbnails > Capture video thumbnails at x seconds

and

Tools > Options > Tree & View > Thumbnails > Capture television recording thumbnails at x seconds

After changing the settings, manually run "Rebuild thumbnail".

[blgentry]

The above is definitely correct.  However, it's rather in convenient if you know what you want to see, but you don't know the exact time it's at in the file.  I use the above method to make "thumbnail guesses".  If they are good enough, I leave them.  If they are not, I do:

1.  I have a menu item under "send to > external" to open videos in VLC media player.  I select the video, then select that item.
2.  Navigate in VLC to find the shot I want to be the thumbnail.
3.  In VLC select "snapshot".  This saves it to a specific directory configured within VLC.
4.  Go back to MC, select the video, right click > cover art > add from file.
5.  Navigate to the just saved VLC snapshot (which is a JPG) and select it.

Now the shot I found in VLC is the thumbnail in MC. It's also the saved cover art (jpg), so it should never be lost or regenerated at a different spot in the video.

This is sort of "too long" to do on very many files, so I don't do it much.  It would be really cool if we could do this from within MC itself, since it's a video player too.  In fact, I think there is a Core Command that's supposed to do this:  10055 .  But I can't get it to work.  Maybe because I use the Mac version of MC?

Brian.

[tls62dk]

I think there is an even simpler way if you want an exact frame as your cover art. Play the video and pause at the frame you want as your cover art. Right click the video and select Window. In this menu you can select "Use Screengrab for Thumbnail".

[blgentry]

^ It's nice to know that's there.  But it seems to be a Window only feature.  Darn.  Maybe it will get added to the Mac (and Linux) version eventually.

Brian.

[tls62dk]

Ah, sorry. Yes I am running the Windows version that offers all the bells and whistles. 

[Yaobing]

For what its worth, we just added this feature in MC22:

3. NEW: A new database field "Thumbnail position" (in milliseconds) for video files, so that the thumbnails for individual files can be recaptured at specified locations.

When you edit the field on a video file, the old thumbnail is erased and a new one should be generated in a few seconds.

[Tadao]

Many thanks!

Very helpful and I used the screengrab for Thumbnail to capture.
Easy and exactly when I want the thumbnail.

Thanks again everyone!