Improve thumbnail features for video files.

phobos · Post by **phobos** » Tue Jul 26, 2016 1:57 pm

Hi,

I wanted to request an improvement of how videos are displayed as thumbnails. I know XNview is primarily a photo view and editor, but the frame work is already pretty much there.

So a few years ago, the feature got added that thumbnails could be made up of multiple snap shots from the file. That was a great improvement, but has not really moved forwards since then. I think it might be time that this part of the program get a lick of paint and a freshen. The times on the video when the captures are taken are hard coded to be captured at frame 0, then 25% through, 50% and 75%, it looks like.

The first improvement would be to change the first frame to something like 5% as for some videos the first frame is black, so that is 1 of the 4 captures showing nothing.

The next improvement would be to allow users to define the percentages through the video the captures are taken, as happens if the thumbnail is set to single frame capture mode.

After that allowing users to define the amount of captures taken per video. So say if you have enough storage space, processing power, etc. Maybe you would want bigger thumbnails with more captures, like 6, etc.

Like I said I know XNviewers main aim is not for video, but the frame work for the above appears already mostly been put in place. I know there have been comments in the past that this could make XNview more crash prone, but if this is all configurable, it could be left turned off as default and only turned on by the adventurous users who would like to use it / beta test it.

Final stage would be to mimic video sharing sites where an animated gif or something is created for each video that animates on mouse over, but that is just wishful thinking. For myself being someone who gets lots of event video, having a way of having some representation of content of the videos in a preview environment would be super useful to identify what video I am looking for to edit and is not something that most if any video editing software gives you, as far as I am aware.