Customizing the Windows 7 Details Pane

So let's say you have a bunch of videos, and you want to start tagging them to make finding certain ones a bit easier. The problem is Windows 7, by default, doesn't make video tagging all that easy. To tag a video you have to right click the file, click properties, click details, edit the tag, and click OK. That's a lot of steps, but luckily there is an easier way to edit tags: by using Windows Explorer's details pane.

The details pane

You've probably seen the details pane plenty of times, unless you've disabled it (it can be easily re-enabled by going to Organize at the top left, clicking Layout, and checking Details pane). It's that panel at the bottom of Windows Explorer that, well, gives details on the currently selected file. This is, ideally, the place where we'd like to edit our videos' tags, but the tag detail is not there, luckily with a bit of registry tweaking we can get the tags detail to show up on video files.

!!! OBLIGATORY WARNING: MODIFYING YOUR REGISTRY CAN HARM YOUR COMPUTER !!!

That said, don't be scared to edit your registry. As long as you do so carefully, nothing bad will happen.

STEP 1: To edit your registry hit the start button, and type run. When the run box pops up type "regedit" (no quotes) and hit enter. This will bring up the registry editor.

STEP 2: Next, we're going to navigate to where the preview details for specific file types are stored. Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Classes > SystemFileAssociations

If you're having trouble finding the SystemFileAssociations folder just do a search for it by hitting Ctrl+F.

STEP 3: When you've gotten to that folder you'll see a list of every possible file type. We're not interested in most of them at the moment, just the video ones. So first to go to .mp4, right click PreviewDetails, and click Modify.

STEP 4: A box will open with a long list of values separated by semicolons. This is an ordered list of all the details you're shown in the details pane when you select a mp4 file. Find "*System.Keywords" (it will be toward the front), and remove the asterisk. The asterisk is basically saying if there is a value, show that value in the details pane, and if there is no value show nothing. We're removing the asterisk because we want to see the tag detail all the time even if its value is empty. When you've deleted the asterisk click OK.

Delete that asterisk!

The effect should be instantaneous. Next time you click a .mp4 file you should see the tag detail.

Now you can edit tags from the detail pane! Success!

You can also follow the steps above for .wmw, which is another video file type that allows tags. Not all video files allow you to tag them, however. flv, avi, and mpg are examples of video file types that don't allow tags, so editing those would be useless.
 
So now we can easily edit the tags of most of our video files. Hooray! Also, with this knowledge you have complete control of what shows up in the details pane. You can change any detail for any file type if you so wish. For this tutorial we simply removed an asterisk, but you can straight up delete details, or add them as well. Just remember to keep the syntax correct by keeping a semicolon between each value.

Hopefully you found this tutorial helpful. If you had trouble getting it to work please leave a comment and I'll see what I can do. Also, this is my first tutorial on this blog, so if you have any feedback feel free to leave a comment with that as well.

My Setup:

MP4: prop:*System.Title;*System.Media.Duration;*System.Size;*System.Video.FrameWidth;*System.Video.FrameHeight;*System.Music.Artist;*System.Music.Genre;*System.SharedWith;*System.Media.SubTitle;*System.Media.Year;*System.Video.FrameRate;*System.Video.EncodingBitrate;*System.Video.TotalBitrate;*System.Rating;*System.Comment;System.Keywords