Hi Terry,

My files from my camera are all AVCHD files with the extension .mts. I posted a query in Photo Manager because it does not recognize the .mts format for some reason. I checked this with Magix and they could not figure out why. The reason that I want to see the files is to categorize them, and it definitely helps to see the thumbnail.

As for your problem,your clip starts with a fade-in from black and the thumbnail is created at the beginning of the file. I checked my files imported from my video camera in the preview and thumbnails in Windows Explorer and I noticed that the thumbnail is not an image taken from the beginning of the clip, but is part way along. I tried to replicate your problem by creating a short video in MEP containing 2 short clips with a fade-in from black at the beginning and creating an MP4 file. In Windows Explorer, the thumbnail that appeared was not at the beginning of the video, but actually at about 5 seconds in. I tried a few times and added a clip to see if there was any impact. None. So it seems that your thumbnail is being taken from the beginning of the file whereas mine are at about 5 seconds. See below for more technical info that may help. It seems that you need an upgrade to the codec pack.

I found the following Q/A on: http://codecguide.com/faq_thumbnails.htm

Q: Why are some of the generated thumbnails completely black?
A: The black image that you see is the first frame of the video.

The legacy shell extension from Microsoft that is responsible for generating the thumbnails simply works this way for formats that Windows does not support natively. It is unfortunately not possible to change that behavior. The behavior of the Microsoft shell extension is different for file formats that are natively supported by Windows, such as AVI, MPEG, and WMV. With those formats it will try to find the first frame the in the video that is not mostly black and not mostly white.

Recent versions of the codec pack contain the Media Preview and Icaros thumbnail plugins as an alternative for Microsoft's shell extension. These shell extensions will extract a frame from a configurable position in the video (by default at 25% of total video duration) and will give proper thumbnails. So if you are using an older version of the pack, you should consider upgrading.

If you have any solution to my Photo Manager problem please let me know.

BTW, how do you paste screen shots in a message? I tried without success.

Good luck,

John

Hi John,

No, nothing to do with file association. The black thumbnailis are due to the cause I mentioned.

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi John,

Thanks, very helpful. I rather thought that would be the disappointing answer! Pity, as I work mainly with MP4, which that page implies is one of those 'unsupported' by the shell.

To add a screenshot to your post, position the text cursor at the required position and then click the Image icon shown.

Then browse to your screenshot and click 'Send it to the server'. When the URL appears, click OK to finish.
Alternatively, for better quality, upload your screenshot to a host site (I use Dropbox) and use the Link icon instead.

Or for better quality: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/Magix.info-Screenshots.jpg

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Here are a couple I investigated after further research:

Media Preview:
http://www.snapfiles.com/downloads/mediapreview/dlmediapreview.html

Thumbnailer Lite
http://www.captrue.com/thumbnailerlite.html#download

Media Preview seems to be doing just what I want. Allows me to choose a position within the video, expressed as a percentage. Default was about 33% which I changed to 1%.

All those black thumbnails are gone!

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry,

Good work!

I too found Media Preview while searching for a solution but did not download it. Instead, I went to Windows Media Player and added a bunch of folders with my .mts files and it created thumbnails for all of them. The image used never seemed to be at the beginning, so maybe it uses the 33% position that you mention. Now the thumbnails do not show up.

Magix replied again to my query about not being able to see the .mts files in Photo Manager. They realized that they were mistakenly looking at Photo Story because they rarely get questions about Photo Manager. They agreed that the file format was not supported and would pass the message along to their technicians. Strange that they do not support the native format of AVCHD files. 

I tried Windows Media Player, but it does not do what I want, which is to categorize the video clips to help find them later by subject. Photo Manager makes this simple (except for the .mts format). All files are downloaded from my cameras (photos and videos separately) by date, with a folder created for each date. I could add a subject to the folder names, but sometimes I have more than one subject (or category). So, I guess I will just have to wait for Magix to update Photo Manager.

In case you have not tried Photo Manager, I suggest that you do. You can categorize your media files in Photo Manager. The file stays in its original location, but shows up under the category. When you want to create a video by subject or category, you can just open the category and select the files (thumbnails) that you want. This is especially convenient since the files may be in many different folders and disk drives and you would have to search around for the right file from Media Pool. In case you did not notice, Magix has linked Photo Manager categories with MEP, making the process simple. In the Media Pool in MEP, Magix Tools, Database, Audio/My photo albums/Photos/Playlists/Videos all have Categories as a heading. As per page 50 in the MEP manual, the database has to be created first in Photo Manager. This was a Eureka moment for me when I figured this out.

Thank you for your help about adding screen shots to a post. I was hoping for a simpler method than creating a jpeg, like Alt-PrtScr and a paste in message. I noticed that one cannot upload *.MP4 video files, as they are not on the list.

Thanks,

John

I followed the instructions to make a slide of the thumbnail I wanted and added a long segment to the end of the movie, uploaded, and it came up as an option for the thumbnail. So far so good.

All my videos are MTS. Is there a plan to support MTS on Magix Photo Manager?