Cover Flow Video Icons

Is it at all possible to have icons instead of clips from movies for the coverflow view. I have tried putting high res images in the Get Info icon box but they are given a small resolution in cover flow that looks pretty awful. is there anything else i can do.

I finally was able to correct this issue by resetting the "Get Info" information for the music video. Had to do it a few times but iTunes finally got it right. Seems like iTunes can be picky for whatever reason.

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Cover Flow - preview image for videos and folders

Hello,
Is there any way to change the still image used as a preview for a video file in Cover Flow in the Finder? I've found that browsing through folders full of video files, it mostly shows me black previews, or previews containing bits of text (opening credits).
It would be useful if I could select a still frame to use as the preview, so that I can actually tell at a glance which video I'm looking at -- the filenames are not particularly useful in this regard. I have all the files tagged for use with spotlight so that I can search them easily, but would still like to be able to find the files visually as well.
Similarly, I have folders full of images. Is it possible to replace the generic folder icon with one of the images contained in that folder, so that I can see which set of photos is in that folder?
I haven't been able to find anything about this, so I'll assume for now it's not possible. Any ideas if this might be a future feature?
Thanks,
Johannes.

bump

Icons in Cover Flow

Hi, I'm new to Leopard so please excuse me if this question has already been posted.
Cover Flow in Finder displays ICONS. I'd like to use Cover Flow to display my DVD COVERS.
In iTunes this isn't a problem. I simply add Artwork in Get Info. But I don't want to put all my DVDs into iTunes because I have to convert them to a lower resolution format to do it. I want to keep my DVD files in high resolution and use Cover Flow in Finder as a library for my movie collection.
Unfortunately Cover Flow in Finder does not have an add Artwork option because it just displays the Quicktime or other movie format Icons.
I think the only way around this is to convert my DVD covers to Icons. But they come out very poor quality.
Is there another way of doing this?
If not, is there a good Icon creator out there that will enable me to convert my high res. .jpg DVD covers into equally high res. Icons?
It's odd Cover Flow in Finder doesn't seem to work the same way as Cover Flow in iTunes. Surely they're both built on the same platform. In fact, Cover Flow in Finder isn't really COVER Flow at all, since I can't add Artwork (covers) to it! It should be called ICON flow.
Thanks.

MartinJapan2007 wrote:
With no Get Info/Add Artwork option in Finder's Cover Flow (unlike iTunes) I cannot change these base icons to the cover art, which is what I7d like to do.
As you note in your follow up post, you can add custom icons (up to 512 X 512 pixels) via Finder's Get Info but this is apparently not what you want. iTunes doesn't actually change the icons either; as mentioned earlier, it associates the music files with separate artwork files that Cover Flow (a display technology that both iTunes & Finder use) displays in place of the file's actual icon.
Cover Flow also supports displaying some embedded artwork -- images in the file itself. Media file types like mp4 are "containers" in that they hold a variety of data types, including video tracks, audio tracks, metadata information (like author, copyrights, or recording date), or even still images. Each file type has some scheme for identifying the various data types it supports.
Neither Cover Flow nor Finder (nor, for the most part, iTunes) supports embedding data in these file types. For that, you need an editor that can parse the container's data scheme & add or modify data in the proper format. A simple example is QuickTime Pro, with which you can set the "poster frame" to any frame of "mov" files. (This is actually metadata that just identifies the frame, not a separate image.) Cover Flow will look for this & if present will display the poster frame instead of the icon.
MPEG file types use different but somewhat similar schemes. (ITunes partially supports the mp3 MPEG scheme, thus the comment above about it.) To embed images or metadata in MPEG files you will need an editor with that capability. Currently, all that I know of are based on AtomicParsley, (so named because the MPEG scheme uses "atoms" to identify data types).
The AtomicParsley link explains this much better than I can; it is worth a read to get some idea of how this works & the relationship between iTunes & embedded MPEG data. At the end of the page you will find links to apps that use it to edit MPEG metadata. I know of no "all in one" editor for all MPEG file types; each is purposed for different uses. vID Infiltr8 metadata video tagger probably comes closest to what you want, since it can set artwork in MPEG 4 files.
For the other file types you mention, I do not know of a good editor. I believe VLC is capable of embedding some data types, but not in a user-friendly way -- you pretty much have to do everything manually.
If you use appropriate editors, you should be able to accomplish what you want, but I believe you will soon see that this is much more complex than it appears at first glance & may sometimes require rewriting the entire media file or have other consequences you were not expecting.

Changing Cover Flow images for a video

Is there a way to change the image of a video in Cover Flow? For instance, I have a mp4 video of my little cousin on his birthday as we all sing Happy Birthday to him. When I am using finder, in the folder with the video, and I switch to Cover Flow mode, the preview is a still image of the video. Instead, I want it to show a jpg photo I have of him blowing out his candles. I've changed the icon to the jpg, but I can't figure out how to change the image in Cover Flow.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. It would be a fun way to organize a lot of family videos I have.

You need to trim the clip in a video editor and then add it to the slideshow.

Possible video problems in iTunes 8.1 [no grid or cover flow views]

I had posted this problem under iTunes, but mentors there suggested instead I connect it to a video problem
*"...my video drivers or other related problems I've had over the last two months with the iPhoto...*
*Ah, didn't know about that. Try re-posting it as a video problem in one of the other forums. It begins to look less like an iTunes problem."*
So, the problem is that I cannot get any other view in iTunes other than LIST. The grid view is completely non functional and is grayed out. The cover flow only shows as a black screen without any logo (such as the familiar music symbol). I never had this problem in iTunes until I upgraded to 8.1.
It is curious that when I select tunes from my **own playlists*, the grid view appears both in the "view choices" and its respective icon is NOT grayed out. That does not happen when I select genious playlist: then the icon is grayed out and there is a grayed out "View choice" in the pull down menu. The same problem exists in my own playlists whenever I select cover flow, however. It is always black without any images or logos displayed. It's an active choice in the pull down menu, and you can click on its icon...but nothing appears.
Message was edited by: Bronco 01
Message was edited by: Bronco 01

Carolyn Samit wrote:
HI Bronco,
Go here and make sure your Mac meets the minimum requirements for iTunes 8.1
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ <--- left side of the page</div>
*Macintosh Hardware*
*Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, G4, or G3 processor*
*Screen resolution of 1024x768 or greater*
*Playing videos purchased on the iTunes Store requires a Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or _1.0GHz PowerPC G4 or faster processor_*
*Playing HD-quality videos purchased on the iTunes Store requires a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo or faster processor*
*512MB of RAM; 1GB is required to play HD-quality videos*
*Playing videos also requires at least 16MB of video RAM*
*A broadband Internet connection is required to use the iTunes Store*
*Macintosh Software*
*Mac OS X version 10.4.10 or later*
*QuickTime 7.5.5 or later*
*200MB of available disk space*
As best I can tell, my iMac meets all criteria. However, it is not clear to me that it meets the criteria for playing videos (processor speed). I can't tell what this processor speed is; where do I discover that? Under "About this Mac," it says I have *_512 MB SDRAM_*; is that the answer that denies this functionality?
*"The grid view is completely non functional and is grayed out. The cover flow only shows as a black screen without any logo (such as the familiar music symbol)."* Your video card may not support cover flow.
Carolyn
Perhaps, but this is not obvious to me. As I posted earlier, iTunes demonstrated cover flow capability in its prior version. Did it change once 8.1 and now 8.1.1 came out?
Message was edited by: Bronco 01

Cover Flow: Can I Change Video Clips' First Frame?

Hi,
I've got a bunch of video files that I'm viewing in cover flow. However, seeing their first frames doesn't help much in giving me a clue about their contents.
Is it possible to select an middle frame in the video clip and have that be the image that pops up in cover flow? How?
Thanks,
Duck

Whenever I get a movie I always play it in QT Pro 7, select a typical frame, copy it and then paste it as the icon for the movie using GetInfo. Cover Flow respects these added icons, and that is what it displays.
If you only have QT X the process is a bit more problematic, since I have not discovered a way to select and copy an individual frame. You can't even do a decent screen shot, since if you pause the movie to take a picture of the movie, the idiotic control bar is inside the movie frame. However, if you pause it, then move the mouse off the control bar and click once inside the frame, the control bar will disappear and you can then do a clean screenshot. Open the screenshot in Preview, select all and copy, then select the movie file in Finder, GetInfo, select the wee little icon at the top and paste. Your movie will now have your custom icon displayed in Cover Flow, Icon view, and so on.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Lack of UI and No Cover Flow for Videos?

Why is there no cover flow in the iPod touch/iPhone/any iPods for movies and videos? I don't even remember seeing a menu bar at the bottom of the screen to view videos in different categories.
Has anyone else noticed the lack of a good UI in the Video section of the iPod touch? I ask because this option is available in iTunes, and frankly, cover flow one of the coolest features, that is, whizzing through all your DVD covers.

Your remarks are falling on deaf ears here no one works for apple here. PLease post your comments for enhancements at the link below.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html
THese forums are for technical questions you may have with your ipod touch. Not for general discussions. product enhancements, and speculation.
GFF

Cover Flow won't show JPG preview, only generic JPG icon

Hello,
For some reasons, I don't see JPGs in Cover Flow mode. I can see them in Quick Finder no problem.
I tried the following and toggle the on/off the feature without success: Go to Finder, open a window, and click View>Show View Options. From there, CHECK "Show Item Preview," then click "Use as Defaults."
I exported photos from iPhoto into my desktop but I get the same result. Only generic jpg icon.
BTW, PDFs are fine, excel, word are all fine....
Any idea?

A reboot solved the problem.
I guess this is the workaround for now...

Cover Flow, Finder, Get Info icon dilemma

I was using Cover Flow to look at some photos. I clicked Cmd-I to Get Info in order to use the drop down menu there to change the default application to open one of the images from Preview to Photoshop. Once I did this the photo no longer displayed in Cover Flow. What I saw instead was a default jpeg icon. The icon of the image also changed in the Finder from an icon of the actual image to a default jpeg icon.
Seems like there are some glitches here. Can anybody duplicate this problem. Is there a known fix? Thanks.

Well, that is certainly strange! I tried it and sure enough I got exactly the same results. Which is truly weird because I have many Photoshop jpegs that do not have custom icons, and they display an icon in Finder perfectly well. And, of course, so do generic jpegs. But if you change a generic jpeg to open in Photoshop Finder stops drawing the icon. Furthermore, when I changed it back to open in Preview it did not recover--it continued to display the generic Photoshop jpec icon. Nothing I did would make Finder display a custom icon for the file. I even quit and relaunched Finder to no avail. The only thing that worked was to use my Automator workflow to give it a custom icon. Looks like a bug to me. Send feedback to Apple:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html/
Truly odd behavior.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

No icon for Cover Flow in Finder

I have recently upgraded my ibook G4 to Leopard. The cover flow option with quick look in the finder is wonderful. Unfortunately, I seem to be missing the little eyeball icon in the Finder window toolbar. I can access Quick Look by hitting the space bar, but I'm wondering why the icon is missing? Did I get a defective version of Leopard?!?!?

1) That's the quicklook tool, not cover flow. Cover flow is a black rectangle with two parallel lines along each side.
2) Finder->View->Customize toolbar->drag the quicklook icon to the toolbar.

Cover Flow displays generic icon only for small JPEG files

I recently used the excellent CocoThumbX to strip off all the Adobe preview icons from my Photoshop-created images (a mixture of JPEG, TIFF, and PSD files). That neatly solved the low-res "fuzzy" Cover Flow thumbnail problem lots of users have complained about.
However, now I have a problem that I haven't seen addressed elsewhere. Lots of my JPEG files still appear as generic JPEG icons in Cover Flow. They are all Adobe Photoshop JPEG files, and they are all no larger than 150KB in size. There's nothing wrong with the files as Quick Look displays them without a hitch, and I can open them in Photoshop no problem.
Any idea how to get Cover Flow to render their thumbnails properly?
Resaving them from Photoshop fixes the problem, but I have thousands of such images and don't want to resave all of them even with a batch action if there's some other simple way of fixing this.
Message was edited by: Owen Linzmayer

I have the same problem except with ALL jpegs, not just small ones. Other file types (pdfs, eg) preview just fine in cover flow, and I am able to open all the jpgs by themselves in any program, they just don't render in cover flow.
I think this happened in conjunction with the upgrade to 10.5.1.
Any help would be most appreciated!

Jpeg Icons Instead of Images in Cover Flow

First time poster, not sure if this is the right place. Anyway...
For the past few days, when I'm opening folders of images, in Cover Flow mode, instead of seeing the images, all I see is the jpeg icon.
Q1: Did I do something to cause the change?
Q2: How do I restore it?
Thank you, in advance, for any advice!
Don

Welcome to Apple forums, Don.
Q1 No, I doubt yopu did anything.
Q2 Go to Users/yourname/Library/Preferences and trash these two files:
com.apple.finder.plist
com.apple.sidebarlists.plist
Then, restart.
(You will have to reset a few finder prefs the way you like them.)
Let us know if that helps.
-mj

Finder slow to show items in column, icon views (OK in list, cover flow)

I'm seeing new perplexing slow behavior on our three-month old iMac running 10.5.5: when in column view and selecting (or in icon view and double-clicking) a folder, there is an initial five-second lag before items will appear in the next column or window; meanwhile, the bottom of the window will only show the space available until items appear and only then will it list the number of items along with space available. It's enough to make you wonder if there actually is anything in the folder while you wait. I say "initial" lag because on subsequent selection, the listing is instantaneous. However, if you log out and in again, it's back to the delay while waiting for initial listings. None of this behavior happens in list or cover flow views, but column view is my routine, so I'd like to make it snappier.
I've gone through some basic troubleshooting steps (repairing permissions, checking Console and Activity Monitor) to no avail. I haven't run into this behavior on my 2-yr. old MBP, so I'm not sure what to look for. Any thoughts?

Get a utility such as TinkerTool System, Onyx, etc. that has a feature to remove all .DS_Store files. If they get corrupted this could cause the problem you describe. I would also consider disabling the View preference to Show Icon Preview. Use the Show View Options in the Finder's View menu. With Leopard you may need to do this for each new Finder window you open (press COMMAND-J to open the preference dialog for the active window.) Do the same for the Desktop. Show Icon Preview can slow down the content display in the Finder initially. Once the information is cached it displays much quicker. Hence the observation that you described.
It also may not hurt to delete the /Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist file in case there's problem with it. Then relaunch the Finder - open the task manager (COMMAND-OPTION-ESC,) select the Finder task and click on the Relaunch button.

The preview and cover flow don't show thumbnails of the quicktime videos. How to fix?, The preview and cover flow don't show thumbnails of the quicktime videos. How to fix?

When I upgraded to Mavericks the cover flow or the preview pane in finder don't show a thumbnail of an uncompressed quicktime movie. I use this to search for the correct clip so it was very useful in prior versions of OS X but appears to be left off in Mavericks. If anyone knows a work around I would appreciate it since I work with thousands of video clips. To click each one seems very tedious.
Also, when I click on an uncompressed video, quicktime "converts" the video to some different format. Why doesn't it just play the video instead of converting? Is there a way to stop this? I hate have to say - no I don't want to save this file.
Arrgh!

Does anyone in the community have insite into this issue (same with animation compressed QT's). Is this just the way it is moving forward (a terrible thing) or is it a bug that will be fixed in the near future. Apples silince on if this is a "feature" or a "bug" is frustrating.
Thanks.
Lawrence

Low-rez or no thumbnails in Cover Flow & Icon views!

Cover Flow used to display sharp and clear high-resolution jpeg previews, but now it display either low-rez previews for most or nothing at all for some. In Icon view, the Finder used to be able to generate thumbnails for jpeg files that don't have icons, but now many jpeg files are just blank in Icon view.
Does this have anything to do with the newer updates?

This problem hit me suddenly about two days ago. Can't seem to fix it. Haven't tried rebuilding Spotlight index yet, trying to avoid it, but that might solve the issue. Perhaps before I leave for the day that's what I'll do, and see how things are in the morning.
FYI, others have this issue as well:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6677811
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7144284
I'm sure there are more around...

Cover Flow Video Icons

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