How do I delete the video preview cache?

I have deleted the WMP library but the previews are still there....how do I delete all the preview caches for VMC?

Not sure if I understand what you are talking about.  I think selecting all the thumbnails with your mouse and hitting delete will do the trick.  I believe that's what I used to have to do when I would delete the library in the past.  I haven't had to do it in a while....problems went away magically...maybe with SP1.   Give that a try if that's what you are talking about...Q

What I want to do is re-create the thumbnail previews, so I have to delete the original cache of thumbnail previews - I just don't know how to do so.

Like I said just delete them from the library manually and re-run the scan under Add to Library...Q

Done this countless times, same result. Vista Media Center seems to remember the thumbnails, so I am assuming it has its own separate cache?

I think the thumbnail is taken from a time point in the file.  So it's gonna be the same every time....sorry...Q

Lol....i understand that, its hard to explain exactly what I am trying to do, but I am 100000000000000% certain that the thumbnails should be different, but a cache somewhere is keeping them the same.

1. Close Microsoft Media Player for at least 30 seconds
2. Click Start and then Run
3. Type the following into the textbox:

%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player

4. Click OK and a folder showing you your library files will appear
5. Erase all the files that end with .wmdb
6. Open Microsoft Media Player
7. Push F3
8. Select the locations for your music files
9. WMP will reindex your music

 

I know this says music and maybe you already did this but that's as much as I know about libraries in WMP...Q

I googled and found that before I posted here, it didn't work. I also found some other stuff that removes thumbnails from explorer, but none of them worked.

EDIT:

The reason I believe that VMC has its own cache, is because for a particular video, to test, I created an image which i used as its thumbnail in video library (image filename was the same as the video filename)...now I have deleted that image and deleted the file from the library in WMP, but when I add the video again, the image is still being used as the thumbnail.

Found the solution!! - Here is what I did:

1. Start Vista in Safe Mode.
2. Click Start and then Run
3. Type the following into the textbox:

%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player

4. Click OK and a folder showing you your library files will appear
5. Erase all the files and folders. (Select All -> Delete).
6. Cut the movies and the accompanying movie-art* and paste them in a new temporary folder that you create on the same drive (should be an instant cut & paste if you have done this step correctly).
7. Delete the original movies folder.
8. Rename the temporary folder to what you want - in my case it was the same name as the original movies folder named "Movies".
9. Run a disk cleanup on the drive you installed Vista too, de-select all the check boxes apart from the "Thumbnail cache" box and run the cleanup.
10. Restart into Normal Windows.
11. Open Microsoft Media Player
12. Push F3
13. Select the locations for you media files you wish to add.
14. WMP will reindex all your media.

This will create something like this, but without the need for plugins:

(click to enlarge)

*movie-art is basically what will be in the place of the thumbnail preview you usually get in Vista Media Center. To create this you simple put an image (.jpg) in the same folder as the video file with the same filename (except the extension). E.g my-movie.avi & my-movie.jpg, where the latter is the movie-art.

Good find - just following this thread.

Great find... bookmarking this thread.