Solution: Black thumbnails on MPG files

[kenny]

For some mysterious reason I started getting black thumbnails on most of the
mpg files I had on my computer... however I remember this was not the case
some time ago.
I thought perhaps that the first frame of the mpg video was just black...
but I used another computer that had XP freshly installed to view the same
mpg files
I was was seeing normal thumbnails on that machine!
So I concluded that some third party codec must have messed up the thumbnail
generation of the mpgs.

I downloaded and ran this small free application from nirsoft:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mmview.html (download link on the bottm)
and disabled some of the codecs that where not from microsoft and seemed
suspecious because they also handled the mpg files.

Without a restart I selected an mpg file in thumbnail view and righclicked
and selected refresh thumbnails and behold: the thumbnail was back to
normal.

Then I went and checked which codec was the problem... and I found it!

It was a codec probably installed from the CLASSIC MEDIA PLAYER from GABEST
or from an avi splitter I had installe also from gabest!

with the following information:

Mpeg2Dec Filter
MPEG-1/2 Decoder Filter for DirectShow
1, 0, 0, 0
Gabest
C:\WINDOWS\system32\Mpeg2DecFilter.ax
Mpeg2Dec Filter
ActiveX Filter
225,280
25/4/2005 10:12:24 ii

I dont know if the current versions of the gabest software have solved this
problem.. however because it may be causing lots of people to pull their
hair
trying to make their mpg thumbs work I posted this for people searching on
google groups.

If you found this info helpful take a look at my site www.computerboom.com

Kenny

--
--
HOPE -- Desire and expectation rolled into one.
Ambrose Bierce1842-1914