How to view 10-bit Camera Video Files in Windows
Enable Video Playback
When I bought my Sony FX6 this year, I discovered a problem: my files (.MXF) wouldn’t show thumbnails in the Windows 11 file explorer and I couldn’t watch them either in the photo/video viewer. I discovered that it’s a 10-bit problem, as it’s happening on my Sony a7IV files as well (.MP4). That’s when I discovered this beautiful media player for Windows, supporting ALL video files from ALL the Sony cameras like the Sony a7IV, FX3, FX30, FX6, and FX9. This should work for Canon, Nikon, Fuji, and Panasonic as well.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Both files are clean for me, but for safety, as you should do with all downloads of programs, check through them with your virus scanner before hitting install.
Installation MPV Video Player
Go to the MPV Website
Go to the SourceForge link next to Windows builds by shinchiro (releases and git)
Click on 64bit-v3 or 32-bit based on your operating system
Choose the download on the top of the list or with the most downloads recently
The download should start automatically
To open the file you need something like 7Zip
Enable Video Thumbnails
As all files still have the same vacuous thumbnail, next up we’ll need to add the video thumbnails, so we can tell what we recorded without opening each and every file. To do so, we need to install Icaros. Head to their download page on Github, scroll down to the bottom where it says “Assets” and download the .exe version.
Setup Icaros
You’ll be greeted with the Icaros setup window. Click on the thumbnail filetypes and add “;mxf;mp4” to the list.
Below this, you can prefer a timestamp, which should be displayed as the thumbnail.
The last step is to activate the thumbnails, by pressing on the “thumbnailing deactivated”, which should then switch to “activated”. Congratulations, you’ve done it!
Happy Creating,
Jonas
If you also want to know how to show thumbnails for your RAW photos in just 60 seconds, take a peak at this post.