> When creating thumbnails it seems that the complete file (.mts) is being read just to create a thumb from the first frame (this is what it is set to but other settings like percentage do the same.
Strange, that's not what I'm seeing: 7 seconds to thumbnail the first frame of 14 movies, and 47 seconds to thumbnail the last non-black frame. I didn't look for memory usage, but I think these process times already suggest that TP isn't reading more than required to do the job.
Some suggestions:
[*] Disable ThumbsPlus' private virtual memory manager:
http://forums.cerious.com/forum/index.php?id=17[*] If that doesn't help, see if you can white-list *.mts files in your antivirus software (or just test again with A/V temporarily disabled).
[*] If the files are on a network drive, see if they process faster (and w/ less resources) from a local drive.
[*] If none of this helps, maybe you can see if SysInternals' Process Monitor offers additional cues as to what's happening:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processmonitor[/list]