Importing video file to laptop creates unwanted JPG/thumbnail - A7IV and Windows 11

[amyandmark3]

Hi all. Total video newbie here. I've recently bought a Sony A7IV and am going to shoot a little video here and there for family stuff. When I go to import the videos from my SD card to my PC/laptop (Windows 11) via a card reader, there's a very low quality JPG included alongside the video. It appears to be a thumbnail of the video. I will attach a screenshot of what I'm trying to describe. I do not want those JPGs to even show up when I'm importing because it drastically slows down workflow when I need to select each video 1 by 1 for import instead of just being able to Select All. The same issue happens with my son's Sony ZV-1F that we got him for Christmas. I suspect this is a Windows setting, but I can't figure it out and was hoping someone here could tell me how to fix/disable this setting (whether it's a Windows or Sony setting).

edit/add: When I put the SD card back in the camera, the JPGs do not show up but the videos are still there. The JPGs only show up as described above.

Any idea how to make it so those JPGs don't show up in the import window? Thanks for any help.

Mark

 

[Hank]

It sounds and looks like W11 is generating those thumbnails. What happens if you open the SD card in file explorer instead of the photos app? The video files are in PRIVATE>M4ROOT>CLIP folder.

I haven't upgraded to W11 and don't use photos as my import tool and I can't make the Photos app reproduce in W10. Maybe there's a "Generate thumbnail previews for video files" in settings somewhere.

Did you just record Heaton's latest video? LOL I just wtched it.

 

[amyandmark3]

Thanks for the reply, Hank. When I open the SD card in file explorer, the CLIP folder shows both the video and jpg files. But, when I put the card back in the camera and hit the Review button, I only see the videos (no jpg's). I was thinking, same as you mentioned, that there's a Generate Thumbnail option that could be disabled, but I can't find anything like that. I was hoping someone on here was having the same issue and figured it out.

I did watch Heaton's video today, lol. I made a 5 second long clip to help with trying to figure out this problem.

 

[Hank]

That's weird (or intended behaviour), the thumbnails are actually stored in the THMBNL folder so file explorer is indexing and displaying all media files inside the M4ROOT folder. Maybe you can just sort files by type, grouping the mp4 files, making them easier to select.

 

[amyandmark3]

Thanks again for the help Hank. The simplest solution seems to be to NOT auto-import the videos (like I do photos) and, instead, use File Explorer to import the videos from the M4ROOT folder. It's not the perfect solution I was hoping for, but it's much better than what I was doing before!

 

[Brownie]

A while back I sorted out that using MS photos to import is a bad idea. For instance, it seems to automatically import jpegs @72 DPI.

I ended up changing the way I import when Windows stopped creating its own folders for you. It used have the option of creating a folder with that date as the name, and copying the files automatically. Now I create a folder, go to the card, hit select all, and drag/drop. Turns out it's a lot faster too.

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

Thanks again for the help Hank. The simplest solution seems to be to NOT auto-import the videos (like I do photos) and, instead, use File Explorer to import the videos from the M4ROOT folder. It's not the perfect solution I was hoping for, but it's much better than what I was doing before!

THIS is exactly what I do (or used to do) when I was taking video to make youtube vids. I would go to file explorer, my setting there was view details (not thumbnails) and I would either CTRL+A to select all and copy them to my hard drive, or drag and drop. This way the PC doesn't spend resources to try and preview the files.