Change the thumbnail icon for a video in my library

When I add a video to my library, it automatically selects some scene from
the video as the thumbnail icon. How can I pick the scene I want as the
thumbnail or in fact can I make a custom icon as per with songs album art can
be custom-made?

 

I've trying to do the same you are asking. No luck so far.

There is a thread that says that WMP uses the first frame of each movie for
creating its thumbnail, but I disagree. I am using WMP11 and it uses a movie
frame as thumbnail but this frames is not the first one.

I would like to use a JPEG image as thumbnail. In Xbox 360 I just drop in
the movie folder a JPG with the exact same name as the movie and voilá!

AS soon as I find a solution I let you know thru this thread. Please let me
know if you find a solution.

Thanks, mao.

 

Thanks for your response and yes I agree - it doesn't take the first scene.
In my case it has chosen as the icon a scene that I didn't want - not
important for the icon per se but when you go to show the movie to people
this is what appears on the screen first prior to starting the movie.

If it was the first scene of the movie then you could just put in what you
wanted for the icon as the first scene.

I have a feeling that it can't be done. There is no reference to it anywhere
but there is on how to do it with album art for songs, so the absence of
instruction and the absence of any buttons in the program with that option
suggests to me that it can't be done :-(

Will let you know if I find out anything for sure.

 

Actually I should clarify that the icon in the folder on my computer is the
first scene from the movie, but when I add it to the WMP library that's where
for some strange reason it changes to anther scene. I intend to play this
movie on our playstation/large screen TV and the whole impact of the movie is
lost if they see the scene that is being put up for display before the movie
starts.

 

Warning: Something happened and when I noticed, this message was too long.

I reviewed what you mentioned about the folder thumbnail before add the
files to WMP library. That is right, WMP changes the first frame thumbnail.

If you want to see your movies thru your Pc, I have not found a way to
change the Thumbnails, but there is another method that seems you are using.

You may want to see your movies in your Large TV thru your PS. In this case
you could try what I do with my Xbox 360. (I am not sure if it will work on
PS)

1. I store all my movie files in a External Hard Drive (USB port).
2. I hooked this HDrive to my PC.
3. I have my PC and Xbox in the same network.
4. I share my WMP library with Xbox360.
5. Then I access my movie files from Xbox360 and watch them in my 42" LCD TV.
At this point the thumbnails in my Xbox 360 are retrieved from WMP, which I
didn't like and brought me here in first place.

Alternative:
1. Instead of streaming my movie files from my PC to Xbox360.
2. I hooked the External Hdrive directly to my Xbox360 Usb port.
3. I googled all the movie poster's images that matched the movies I own.
4. I save these images in the same folder where the movies are located using
the very same name to the corresponding movie, but JPG extension.
5. Then I looked for the movie folder in Xbox 360 and showed me the movie
list using the movie poster as thumbnail with a bigger image of the movie
selected. Pretty nice.

- If you want to go further (nicer), like I did.
I embedded each movie poster image in a "Theater like" Poster Display image
(that I googled), and saved them together as an image. Then when you scroll
thru the movie list in the Xbox360 it looks like the poster display is fixed
and the movie poster is changing in it. Looks terrific !!!

The inconvenience (for me). Since I have more that Movies in the External
HDrive I have to hook it back and forth between my PC and the Xbox360. I am
thinking in buy another External Hdrive for movies only and hook it to the
xbox360 for good.

Meanwhile I will continue looking for a solution to the WMP thumbnails.

Sorry for the long message, I should start thinking about creating my own
blog.


P.S.
I you want to see what I did, let me know to my email and I will send you
back some samples and the sources that I used.


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This works

I tried TagScanner and it worked fine

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