On Windows, TvT installs from one small file, ThisVideoThingInstaller-Licensed.exe, which you get from your downloads page. It asks where to put the application, downloads the application itself, and offers to start it. Nothing needs administrator rights: the application and its data live in your own user profile.
This guide covers the installer, the first start, starting and stopping, reaching TvT from the other devices in your home, where your data lives, updating, and removing it again.
Before you start
- Windows 10 or Windows 11, 64-bit. Any edition.
- Disk space. About 1 GB for the application itself, plus the download while it runs, plus room for the streams TvT makes from your videos, which can be as large as the videos themselves. Step 6 says where those go and how to move them to another drive.
- A browser. Edge, Chrome or Firefox. TvT has no window of its own; the browser is the application.
- The installer file, downloaded from your downloads page.
1. Run the installer
Double-click ThisVideoThingInstaller-Licensed.exe. If Windows shows a SmartScreen notice about an unrecognised app, click More info, then Run anyway.
The installer window has one folder field and two checkboxes:
- Choose installation folder. The default is your own AppData folder, C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\ThisVideoThing. Browse to pick another place, for example a drive with more room; the application takes about 1 GB.
- Create desktop shortcut, on by default. This is the normal way to start TvT later.
- Start automatically with Windows, off by default. Turn it on for a computer that acts as the household's media server, so TvT is up whenever the computer is signed in.
Click Install. The status line under the button walks through three stages: Downloading the application archive from the download server, Verifying it against a checksum built into the installer, and Extracting it into the folder. A few minutes on a typical connection.
When it finishes, the installer asks Start it now? Either answer closes the installer; Yes also starts TvT.
2. The first start
TvT starts in the background and, a second later, opens your default browser at its own address on your network, something like http://192.168.1.20:5000. That address is the same one every other device in the house will use.
Two things can happen on the very first start:
- Windows Defender Firewall usually asks whether to allow the application to accept connections. Tick Private networks and click Allow access. Without this, TvT works on this computer but no phone or second computer can reach it. If you clicked Cancel, step 5 has the fix.
- The page opens on the Who's Watching screen with one administrator profile. Open it, then go to Video Locations from the profile menu in the bottom left corner of the sidebar and add the folders your videos are in. TvT reads them where they are; nothing is copied or moved.
3. Starting and stopping
There is no window and no tray icon. TvT runs in the background until the computer is shut down or signed out, or until you stop it from the Advanced page with Terminate application. To start it again, use the desktop shortcut, or ThisVideoThingLicensed.exe inside the ThisVideoThingLicensed folder of the place you installed it.
If you start it while it is already running, a small message says ThisVideoThing is already running on port 5000 and the second copy closes; the first one is unaffected. With Start automatically with Windows on, TvT comes back every time you sign in.
4. Adding your videos
On Video Locations, add a watch folder for each place your videos live, on this computer or on a drive attached to it. The automation switches on each folder decide what happens to new videos: transcoding for smooth playback in any browser, captions, thumbnails, organizing. The Automatic Organization guide covers each switch. A first import of a large library takes a while; System Activity shows the work as it happens.
5. Other computers, phones and TVs in your home
Open the Advanced page. The card at the top, This server's address, lists the address other devices use, marked "this network", the computer's name for other Windows computers, and the address you are using now, each with a Copy button. Type the address into a browser on any device on your network.
If they cannot connect while this computer can, the firewall is almost always the reason. Open Windows Security, Firewall and network protection, Allow an app through firewall, find ThisVideoThingLicensed and tick Private. Also check that your network is set to Private rather than Public under Settings, Network and internet. A reservation in your router keeps the address from changing.
6. Where your data lives
Everything TvT makes is in your roaming AppData folder, C:\Users\you\AppData\Roaming\ThisVideoThing (type %APPDATA%\ThisVideoThing into File Explorer's address bar to get there):
- media.db, the library: profiles, categories, tags, watch history and settings.
- transcoded_videos, the streams made from your videos, and downloads, the offline MP4 copies. This is where the space goes. To keep them on another drive, add a transcode destination on Video Locations and TvT fills the one with the most free space.
- backups, from the Backup and Restore page; whisper_models and ocr_models, the caption models you download; flask.log, the application log the Advanced page shows live.
Your videos themselves stay in their own folders and are never moved by installing, updating or removing TvT.
7. Hardware encoding
TvT checks at every start which video encoders the computer really has: NVIDIA, Intel Quick Sync, and AMD. It uses the best one it finds for transcodes, edits, mashups and offline downloads, and falls back to the processor for anything the card cannot do, or for everything on a computer without one. The Background work panel on the System Activity page shows what was found and has an Off switch if you would rather use the processor.
8. Updating
Download the newer installer and run it. Stop TvT first from the Advanced page so no files are in use, keep the same installation folder, and answer Yes to Reinstall or upgrade? Only the application's own folder is replaced. The library, transcodes, captions, watch history and settings are stored separately, as the prompt says, and are exactly where you left them when the new version starts.
9. Removing TvT
There is no uninstaller; removal is three deletions.
- Stop TvT: Terminate application on the Advanced page, or end ThisVideoThingLicensed in Task Manager.
- Delete the installation folder, by default C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\ThisVideoThing, and the desktop shortcut.
- If auto-start was on, open Task Manager, Startup apps, and disable ThisVideoThing.
Your library and the streams TvT made stay in %APPDATA%\ThisVideoThing in case you come back; delete that folder too if you want everything gone. Your videos are not touched either way.
Good to know
- Something else uses port 5000. Give TvT another one: Settings, System, About, Advanced system settings, Environment Variables, then a new user variable named TVT_PORT with a value such as 5001. Start TvT again and use the new port in every address.
- The browser did not open. Open http://localhost:5000 yourself; TvT is running whether or not the browser appeared.
- The page says "Waiting for the server". TvT is not running. Start it from the shortcut.
- Reading the log. The Advanced page shows it live and can download it; the file is %APPDATA%\ThisVideoThing\flask.log. Its first lines say which data folder and which encoder are in use.