DNG and Raw Thumbnail Codecs

About a month ago I decided to pick up an Xbox 360, joining the millions of other fools who decided to get sucked into the ultimate time-waster of the year, Modern Warfare 2. I've been unable to put down the sticks for more than 48 hours at a time, but when I do manage to step away from the multiplayer madness, my Xbox 360 also has the added bonus of doubling as an "extender" for Windows Media Center. 

What's that got to do with the price of tea in china you ask? Well, if you're running a PC with a newer version of Windows (I just migrated to Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit) that includes Windows Media Center, you can link all your media content from your computer to your TV that's connected to your Xbox. You'll be able to play your MP3's, browse your pictures, create slideshows and watch movies stored on your PC, right on the TV in your living room. Pretty cool, right?  Yep. Unless you've got a bunch of .CR2, .NEF, or .DNG files you'd like to view.

Getting to the point: Windows Media Center will work with your standard flavor of consumer image files, .jpg's, .gif's, even .png's, I believe… however straight out of the box, it won't be able to read or decode any raw formats or digital negative files you may have stored on your drive(s). And that's where Mr. Axel Rietschin's wonderful "Fast Picture Viewer WIC RAW Codec Pack" comes into play.

From his website, he describes it much better than I ever could:

A free collection of 32 and 64-bit raw image decoders for Windows 7, Vista and XP.

Windows Vista introduced a modern and extensible imaging framework called Windows Imaging Component (WIC). The operating system comes with built-in support for several common image formats including jpeg, bmp, png, gif, tiff and HD Photo. WIC makes it possible for 3rd parties to add first-class support for image formats to Windows, complete with thumbnails in Explorer, preview and slideshow support in Photo Gallery / Photo Viewer and metadata search integration.

The FastPictureViewer WIC RAW Codec Pack provides such platform support for additional formats and turns Windows Explorer into a raw viewer, through read-only image decoders, simultaneously available in both 32 and 64-bit flavor for Win7, Vista and XP SP3.

WIC-enabled image viewers such as Windows Live™ Photo Gallery, Windows 7's Media Center and our own FastPictureViewer Professional "automagically" gain the ability to open and view new image formats, play slideshows etc, so does all .NET 3.x and WPF-based applications.

With the codec pack, you can now view thumbnails and previews of just about any image format (including DNG's) right in Windows Explorer. This makes it possible to create slide shows in your Windows Media Center extenders to watch on your TV. It took about 10 minutes to throw together some incredibly nice slide shows with background music from my media library. It's very rewarding to be able to sit on the couch and share your images with friends and family – even potential clients, although you'd have to be careful about securing the proper rights to any background music if you were intending on using this for official business.

Also, important to note:

The FastPictureViewer WIC RAW Codec Pack can be obtained freely for personal/educational use but is not freeware. We release it as donationware, which means that you are expected to make a donation (of a reasonable amount left to your appreciation) if you elect to keep it.

I opted to donate. Ol' Axel has done right by me, and his codec pack has made my photo experience on my PC just that much better. Installation is quick, easy, (does require a reboot) and does exactly what he advertises. Even if you don't have an Xbox or ever plan on setting up a media center extender, you should check out what this set of decoders can do… it makes browsing folders of raw and dng files in Windows Explorer a hell of a lot easier.

http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/codecs/