IDEA: Random frame thumbnail of movie files in explorer

[Coeluh]

Heya! I'm wondering: The thumbnails of movie files always have the first frame. I would like to get a random frame and be able to set them. Is that possible?

[Shades]

Looks to me that your question results either in huge automatically generated (by Windows) thumbnail file for each movie (at least the size of the original movie) or enormous bite out of the available CPU resources every time you open a folder with these kind of files. And you should hope that those files are not cached else you have one movie (700Mb), one thumbnail file (700Mb) and a cached version (700Mb) on your system, which adds up quickly.

Although I like your idea, it seems a bit impractical (maintenance wise) to me.

[Coeluh]

Looks to me that your question results either in huge automatically generated (by Windows) thumbnail file for each movie (at least the size of the original movie) or enormous bite out of the available CPU resources every time you open a folder with these kind of files. And you should hope that those files are not cached else you have one movie (700Mb), one thumbnail file (700Mb) and a cached version (700Mb) on your system, which adds up quickly.

Although I like your idea, it seems a bit impractical (maintenance wise) to me.

Well I'm still looking for a nice way to browse my tv shows. XBMC or some other thing is way too sophisticated for this purpose.

[Mizraim]

Maybe using the search engine of choice, you can find and download photos of the movie, and get a coder to create a randomize app for the pics listed in a directory, that way you could a) make sure the chosen thumb is appropriate and b) something that you would still recognize as the movie file. Just a thought. 

[lanux128]

you can use a media player like KMPlayer in album art mode. KMPlayer takes random frame to display the album art, although only early part of the videos taken into consideration.