But I find it hard to understand the connection of KB2670838 making dllhost go haywire.
See the post by Microsoft talking about this update.
The update has these in its updated component list:
Windows Imaging Component
H.264 Video Decoder
JPEG XR codec
To create a thumbnail, windows has to open the file and decode some stills. My best guess is, there is an optimization wich fails to compress the thumbnail or fails to decode stills from the mp4. Side by Side 3D is almost two identical images inside one image and should compress very well.
Since I hear no complains about being unable to play 3D mp4, the h.264 might be fine, but the file wich is processed is locked, so this indicates, dllhost is still trying to read still images from it.