Welcome back to Hack7MC’s Reader Q&A! For those just joining us each Monday we take time to answer a few questions from the readers that wouldn’t necessarily require an entire article or guide to cover. Questions are taken from the comments sections, off Twitter or through the Reader Q & A form following each Reader Q & A post.

Question #1 from Patrick

Ever since I switched over to Win7MC (build 7077), my recordings in .wtv format no longer show a thumbnail view in the "recorded tv" windows. The older recordings that were still in dvr-ms format are fine, but all the newer ones just show a blue square instead of a screenshot of the recording. Any idea how to show a screenshot again?

Answer

This is a common problem in certain versions of the Windows 7 beta including the RC version (7100). There are reports that it has been fixed in later versions. The consensus is that the issue is caused by codecs not playing well with the thumbnail generation method used in Windows 7. The issue is definitely being addressed by Microsoft and should be fixed before final release. For even more information you can follow this thread on The Green Button Forums.

Question #2 from Clayton

This guide was great and I got everything working on my Win7 64 bit machine with one problem. When I play MKV files with multiple soundtracks (for example the MKV file has the English movie sound track and the Director commentary sound track) through Windows Media Player or Media Center they both play at the same time. I can’t figure out how to turn one off so I can just switch between them.

Answer

When using FFDShow to playback your movies with multiple audio tracks you’ll need to enable the audio stream switcher. In FFDShow’s audio settings select Stream Switcher on the left and enable it by checking the checkbox.

Now you’ll be able to switch between multiple audio streams. Unfortunately, Media Center doesn’t have support for switching streams from inside the interface however and in most cases you’ll simply be presented with the default stream. The only way to change the audio stream currently is to use the FFDShow audio tray icon. Right click the icon to bring up a menu that will list all the streams allowing you to select the one you’d like to hear.

Have a question for a future Reader Q & A? Send it in below! Remember, your question may take some time to track down the answer to and quite a few users submit their questions each week so don’t worry if your question doesn’t get answered right away!