With the viewer pane enabled, if I select a audio or video file this file automaticaly begins to play.
I can stop this behavior by unchecking the 'Auto-play audio files' and 'Auto-play video files' options in the configuration of the 'Video & Audio' plugin or when I uncheck the 'Video & Audio' pluging altogether.
When I uncheck the 'Video & Audio' pluging, I get a thumbnail in the viewer pane when a video file is selected but I also loose the metadata for audio and video files.
And if I uncheck the auto-play options in the 'Video & Audio' pluging configuration, I do get the metadata but instead of a thumbnail I get a paused audio or video file.
Would it be posible to get an option where I keep the audio and video metadata, but a thumbnail for the selected file in the viewer pane?
I guess we could add that as an option, but I'm not sure I understand: I've never found video thumbnails that useful, since they tend to be a random frame from the start of the video, often an intro sequence or something that doesn't show much about the individual file. Is that really more useful than having the video ready to play/seek? Or is that auto-paused playback causing a problem itself that we could resolve?
The auto-paused isn't causing any problems except for how it looks. I just like the thumbnail look better (preferably with the black/white frame detection Crash mentioned) over the auto-paused look.
Thinking about it again, you can already do this: Configure the plugin and turn off all three playback methods (first three checkboxes in the dialog). It then won't play any video or audio files, but the metadata parts will still work.
I think I misunderstood your previous answer about turning off all three playback methods, but that did do the trick (I had already unchecked the first three options under playback options and thought you meant that).
I only needed to uncheck the first two to get a thumbnail though, unchecking the third also removed the metadata.