This can be checked easily by trying to play the video with Windows Media Player or any other media player that does not use binary codecs. Five output sets are available that define all sorts of parameters like the number of thumbnails per row, the background color and the width and / or height of the thumbnails.

Everything in there can be changed and there is much to explore including several options that I have not mentioned.

Several videos can be added to the program queue by either selecting a folder or files from the system. Two output settings exist. The first creates an image for every thumbnail while the second combines all thumbnails into an image.

The creation process itself is fast and works flawlessly as long as a supported codec is installed. I ran into a bit of problems with several video files because I use SMPlayer as my main video player which uses binary codecs that other applications cannot use. This meant that I received quite a few “failed” messages because of missing codecs.

Installing the codec would naturally resolve the problem.

I tend to use a program that was developed just for the purpose of creating lots of thumbnails. The name of the software is EZThumbs and it can be freely downloaded from the developers homepage. The most important feature is of course batch processing which means that you can process hundreds of images at once and select how and where they should be saved on your system.

It is for instance possible to add a prefix or suffix to the thumbnail and save it in the same directory as the original images. All important image formats are supported and EZThumbs offers additional features like filters that might be interesting for some users.

I like it because it is not complicated at all and saves me a lot of work.