How to View .FLV as Thumbnails in a Windows XP Folder

Flv video files are a very popular video file type used throughout the internet. In fact probaly 80 percent of all video viewed online are svaed in the flv format

The problem comes when you download an FLV video file to your computers folder and you open a folder full of FLV’s in Windows Explorer only to find they all look the same, just a simple icon

It would be much easier if you could see a small image of what the contents are, and this post will expalin the method of how you can do it.

The first thing to do is ensure when you open the folder that contains an FLV video file or any image/video file for that matter, and that you have actually selected Thumbnail from the selection. . . Otherwise you will not see an image no matter what !. . . . . . See below.

The second thing to realise so you can see an image of the flv video file in windows explorer, is that you have the codec for that file installed on your computer, don’t worry if you don’t know what a codec is, a simple installation is all that’s required

RECOMENDATION: I would recomend you install the K-light codec pack, this will not only provide you with the flv codec but many others as well, and once installed you will have the function to see all popular file types that are available today.

You can download it from here : -Download K-Lite Codec Pack

just make sure you download the one as shown below 4.9.5 FULL

UPDATE : – Just ensure you download the latest FULL version, if after a while it stops working, it’s probably because a windows update has changed something. Just download the latest version again, and it will then work as before !

There are 2 simple methods

Method 1

The first method is acheved by installing the k-lite codec pack as above, but when you install you need to select Make thumbnail possible for the following file types.

With this installed you should now see the thumbnail of the flv video file, sometimes this does not work, see the second method.

Method 2

This involves making a REG file to write to the registry. . . . . . . . .

Copy the code below, and paste it into notepad, then save the file onto your desktop as a reg file, just name it something like flv.reg and save. 

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.flv\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@=”{c5a40261-cd64-4ccf-84cb-c394da41d590}”

With the reg file on the desktop simply double click and follow the instructions and your done.

Or

Simply download the reg file to your desktop, and use that.
Download Here

How to use this method for others -

The code as shown below will not only write to the registry to display FLV thumbnails it will also display thumbnails for .MOV and . MP4 . . . As before copy and paste or download the prepared reg file.

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.flv\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@=”{c5a40261-cd64-4ccf-84cb-c394da41d590}”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mov\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@=”{c5a40261-cd64-4ccf-84cb-c394da41d590}”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mp4\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@=”{c5a40261-cd64-4ccf-84cb-c394da41d590}”

Download here

Hope that helps,

any questions, please feel free to leave a comment

I have other Fixes for common windows XP problems – click here