[MacGuffin]

I have used xbmc on OSX and it automatically shows a video preview thumbnail for all my video files when I scroll through them, however now I am setting up XBMC on an old XP laptop to hook up to a TV and these previews don't show up, just a generic filmstrip icon. Can't seem to find anything on this in settings and no mention of it in the documentation, other than something about how to manually make video preview thumbnails using ffmpeg and the dos command line. Thanks if you can help me get the video preview thumbnails to automatically show up in XP.

[Ned Scott]

By default it should generate a thumbnail eventually. I believe XBMC gives thumbnail generation a low priority or something like that, as to not bring everything to a halt, so it might take it a few minutes (or more, depending on how powerful the computer is and how many files you have).

So basically just open a folder and wait. Once they're generated then they'll be cached and you won't have to wait the next time.

[MacGuffin]

Thanks but I can't get the program to scan anything at all. It just hangs after a few seconds of scanning.Can't build a library or do much of anything other than just launch everything through the files menu.

[Ned Scott]

Are the files named correctly? See Adding videos to the library (wiki), which will show you the file name formats that XBMC needs to correctly scan media in.