Explorer lags in video folders in Content view

When I open a folder that contains videos and the View is Content view, file explorer lags when I scroll and when I try to jump to files by typing on the keyboard.

I would need to scroll all the way down to the bottom and let it "load" all videos for it to stop lagging. If I exit the folder and re-open it again, it lags all over again until I scroll all the way to the button to let it "load" all videos again.

I have tried disabling thumbnails and updated video drivers but nothing seems to work. The issue doesn't seem to be with thumbnails but I can't figure out what it is.

This only happens in Content view, it doesn't happen in any other view.

Any ideas what might be causing this? Is anyone else having this issue? Could it be a bug in W11 or is it just me?

Not that it helps you, but there have been numerous reports on the feedback hub of windows explorer lagging in various circumstances. MS has responded that they are monitoring the issue but no official fix was posted. So they know about it.

Great, thanks for letting me know, I just wanted to know if it's a known issue affecting everyone or it is an issue with my PC which I need to troubleshoot and fix.

mschumacher69 said:

or it is an issue with my PC

Click to expand...

That I cannot say for certain since the complaints I've read are all over the place about explorer lagging. I can say those I read in the feedback hub (and I didn't read them all) didn't specifically address your particular situation regarding videos. From your description, it sounds to me like it could be some sort of indexing issue. Try running the search/indexing troubleshooter. Settings-System-Troubleshoot-Other Troubleshooters. Scroll down to 'search and indexing' click RUN.

I do not have any saved videos or I would attempt to duplicate the problem. Maybe someone else who does will jump in here and test it out on their system.

Thanks, I've already try rebuilding my index and I even tried clearing the thumbnail cache.

In content view doesn't File Explorer have to read all the file info for the videos? If you have a lot of videos, it will take time to read all the info.

It does, but I would assume that it would read them the first time and then cache them, but this happens every time I open a video folder no matter how many videos it has. This also never happened in W7 using the same data and folders.

I also tried switching to Details view and added all the fields that are displayed in Content view such as frame height and width and it doesn't lag in Details view.

I don't have a folder with a lot of videos so I can't test to see how long it takes to list the videos.

Was running into the same thing when I switched to VLC as default video player. Switching back to the "Movies and TV" app fixes the issue when opening folder for the second time. Meaning thumbnails are getting cached. When I revert back to VLC though it rebuilds thumbs every time. Takes a good 12 seconds for 12 large videos and can't even do anything while it's loading each thumb. Not even go back
Hope it gets a patch in the future.

I realize I'm a bit late to this issue... but I believe I have a working solution.

When you open a folder in details view you can see the system filling in the details even after the directory listing finishes. This is multi-threading to load the info. This works well enough for the most part.

What is not apparent is that Content and Tiles view are simply different visual presentations of the Detail view.
Content view lags and sputters because you are asking for information that was not loaded for details view.... Now to get this information it has to open and read each file once for each field to be added. And on large files that's going to take a very long time.

So here's the simple fix ... Add the extra columns to Details view...

For example:
Movies are huge files and very slow to scan... In Content view you have 3 fields "Length", "Frame Height" and "Frame Width" that are not loaded in Detail view ... so add them to the details view.

To do this and make it stick ... (continuing the Movie example)
Starting from outside the folder ... right click on it, select Properties then Customize... set the folder for Movies and apply it to all sub folders.

Now enter the folder and create your columns in Details view. Right click on the column header bar, in the list that pops up check mark" Length", "Frame Width" and "Frame Height" then hit OK.

Refresh the view a couple of times and you will see it back-filling the data.

Now select content view. Refresh the list. It should scroll normally, back filling the data as it goes.

Finally, while still inside the folder, in the top left corner of explorer select "Files" then "Change Folder and search options" ... click over to the View setting tab ... and click on the button to apply this view to all folders of the current type.

In other views such as Music and Photos... do the same thing, make sure the Detail view is loading all the needed fields and then use Content view.

This should fix your problem ... at least it did for me.