Thumbnails not genarating for iTunes ACC audio file (.m4a)

Hello Sir, My OS is windows 8.1 single language with Bing 64 bit.
thumbnails are not generating for .m4a audio files. But artworks are available in the files. Can you help me?


Installed K-LITE codec pack is 11.2.0 mega with the update 11.2.7 20150707

The standard thumbnailing functionality of Windows is used in case of .m4a files. Next version of the codec pack may allow using Icaros for it. That would probably solve your problem.

thanks sir.... please include that in next version.

Hi guys, I stumbled upon this thread whilst desperately trying to google a solution for many hours. On my Windows 10 machine I have hundreds of m4a iTunes music files. Similar to the OP all my m4a thumbnails do not show the embedded album artwork/thumbnail in windows explorer. Strangely they do show up for m4p protected files! Should Windows 10 be capable of displaying them in explorer. If I open the files up in iTunes or Windows Media Player to play them I can see the associated album artwork just fine. It's just the explorer view that shows the default Windows music file icon.

Now I do not have any extra codecs installed. It's a new computer received a few days ago with a new fresh install of Windows 10. Should I be looking to download/install some codecs to provide this support? I do have an older Windows 7 laptop and this has no issues displaying the thumbnails for m4a files. Trouble is it's years old so I cannot remember if it natively displayed them from the word go or whether codecs somewhere along the line got installed to make it work.

Maybe the lack of Quicktime being installed on the new Windows 10 is a critical factor? I didn't install it as iTunes no longer requires QuickTime to play videos so thought that's one less thing to clutter the hard drive with by leaving it out. I am sorry, I just need some advice on how to go about fixing it so I can see the m4a thumbnails. A caveat to the issue, is if I look at a folder containing m4a files I can see the album art preview displayed ontop of the folder itself. But it's when I double click in to look at the contents of the folder the default icons only display. I have checked my settings to ensure thumbnails are allowed and my view is set to large so all good in that respect

Many thanks,
Wayne

Windows can thumbnail .m4a files, but it fails for certain files. It doesn't use QuickTime or any other external codecs.

The Icaros shell extension that is included with the K-Lite Codec Pack should work will all your m4a files.

Ok thank you for the suggestion. So by installing the K Lite codec pack it takes responsibility away from Windows 10 for generating the thumbnail for m4a? I am nervous about my iTunes music library and my other mp4 files that already have thumbnails displaying perfectly. It won't interfere with these in anyway?

Many thanks,
Wayne

Icaros works very good for .mp4 and many other files types as well. You don't have to worry. And if you do come across a file that doesn't thumbnail properly, just come here and we will get it fixed. Icaros and the rest of the codec pack will not have any effect on playback in Itunes. That will continue to work as it does now.

I am so grateful for your helpful suggestions. Just one last question. Can I just download icaros stand alone rather than the full codec pack? My main aim is to get those thumbnails to generate for m4a audio files in explorer. As everything else works really well I kind of am inclined to try and leave it alone

Cheers,
Wayne

Here is Icaros installer:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/x495824w1zpy3kd/Icaros_v3.0.0_rc2.exe