DVD through Front Row locks up first time

Hi,
one of my issues with the new mac mini is that the dvd menu is unresponsive the first time I load a dvd. I need to exit the player (menu button on remote) then play from the beginning again and then the disc will work.
Anyone else also having this issue?

that used to happen on my mac mini...have you tried downloading the most recent version of front row?
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/frontrow122.html
Fun, cheap games! Mac OS X (10.4.6) www.ragdollsoft.com || Intel Mac Mini Core Solo-1 GB RAM-Superdrive

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Aspect Ratio on DVDs through Front Row

I've been quite encouraged by FR's new acceptance of DVDs as a source (place ripped DVD movie folders into your ~movies folder or aliases to DVD folder... they appear and play in FR). I have it set up so I can browse over 600 DVDs on various remote drives along with the preview picture (place DVD cover image named preview.jpg in the DVD folder, not the VIDEO_TS folder).
It works great on my 50" Pioneer Elite hooked up to the networked MacMini, and I appear to get surround sound pass through as well.
The problem is that some DVD's I have are encoded in full screen (but in wide mode) so that the video, while actually in the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio, actually appears smaller than the screen so that there is a black border around the entire video. It plays fine, only smaller.
In DVD player, you can do Video Zoom and fill the screen but FR doesn't seem to offer this functionality. I tried changing the defaults in DVD Player, but that doesn't seem to affect FR.
Anyone know of a workaround for this? Any help would be much appreciated.

macguyincali wrote:
I've been quite encouraged by FR's new acceptance of DVDs as a source (place ripped DVD movie folders into your ~movies folder or aliases to DVD folder... they appear and play in FR). I have it set up so I can browse over 600 DVDs on various remote drives along with the preview picture (place DVD cover image named preview.jpg in the DVD folder, not the VIDEO_TS folder).
It works great on my 50" Pioneer Elite hooked up to the networked MacMini, and I appear to get surround sound pass through as well.
The problem is that some DVD's I have are encoded in full screen (but in wide mode) so that the video, while actually in the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio, actually appears smaller than the screen so that there is a black border around the entire video. It plays fine, only smaller.
What you are describing here is 'letterboxed' widescreen. Personally I loath such DVDs and regard them as a stupid mistake by the movie studio. The correct sort of widescreen DVD is known as 'anamorphic'.
As mentioned, the Leopard DVD player now has the ability to 'zoom' the display to best fit your widescreen TV/Monitor. Unfortunately from what you say Front Row 2.0 (in Leopard) does not remember this or offer the ability to do this. In this case your only current realistic option is to see if your TV has an equivalent mode, my Sony Bravia has a button on the remote that cycles through several zoom options. If your TV has a similar option then it may be the easiest solution.
Otherwise, a less realistic option is to make your own custom DVD. I have in the past taken a letterboxed recording, cropped the image, and converted it to a proper anamorphic widescreen DVD. I used ffmpegX to do this on a Mac. In theory with a huge amount of work, one could also do this and keep the subtitles, multiple audio tracks and DVD extras but it is a huge amount of work and not all of it can be done using Mac tools, it can be done with the assistance of some free Windows tools, e.g. IfoEdit, and PGCEdit.
Note: to convert a letterboxed NTSC recording to an anamorphic NTSC DVD, one crops 60 pixels from the top, and 60 pixels from the bottom. You then re-encode it as a standard NSTC DVD resolution of 720x480 but must also tick the option that sets the anamorphic flag. I have not done this with a PAL recording, it is probable that the number of pixels needing to be cropped is different.

No Audio when playing DVD's backed up on mac through Front Row

I have backed up my DVD library to an external hard drive and created an alias so that I can access them through front row. When I play them in the DVD player I have no problems, but when I play them in Front Row, I don't get any audio. Has anyone experienced this before?

Unfortunately, it's against the Terms of Use to post about "ripping" DVDs. It may be legal in your location, but in the United States (where these forums are hosted) it's illegal so you can't post about it. My advice, would be to post your topic again, including the exact details about the files you've saved (what video format they are) but skip the part about them coming from DVDs... If you've saved some VIDEO_TS folders, this may be a little more complicated, but you could say they were your own DVDs from iDVD. This topic will probably be deleted since it violates the ToU.
-Doug

Using Airport Express to listen DVD via Front Row and Optical Out

I want to find out if this is possible:
I currently have Macbook Black Core 2 Duo. I enjoy watching DVDs using Front Row. The DVI video cable goes to the projector which is at the back of my room. Since the Macbook is close to the projector, I have to run optical audio cable to the 5.1 Dolby Digital home theater sound system at the front of my room.
I am interested in the AirPort Express because it can play iTunes wirelessly and use optical output to hook up the stereo system.
The question I want to know is if it's possible to connect Airport Express optical output into my Dobly Digital sound system so I can watch and listen DVD movies via Front Row? If not, any other alternatives? When searching through topics, it seems the users said Rogue Amoeba has a lag issue. Even I am not sure it can do optical output capabilites. Any thoughts. Thanks!
Mac OS X (10.3.9)

KonradL, Welcome to the discussion area!
To stream non-iTunes music to the AirPort Express (AX) you need Airfoil.

Screen Saver starts while playing DVD in Front Row (Tiger)

Just recently, Screen Saver starts while playing a DVD in Front Row. This never used to happen and I suspect it's due to some software update. I know that Leopard users now have Settings within Front Row to disable the Screen Saver...but why is this just now happening in Tiger? Playing a DVD in Front Row used to override whatever Screen Saver settings there were.
Part of the convenience of using Front Row is now lost for me. I don't want to have to adjust my Energy Saver settings each and every time I want to use Front Row to play a DVD. And I'm not ready to upgrade to Leopard yet.
Any solutions? Any way Tiger users can adjust settings in Front Row?

Not sure if this works on Tiger, but this may be the solution you are looking for
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/caffeine.html

Front Row Locking up

Hello Front Row Support forum!
I recently upgraded to Leopard (Much <3 for the new version of OS X) and I've actually started using Front Row. I really like the new look and it fits into my lifestyle more now to use it.
Unfortunately though, Front Row has been periodically locking up when I listen to music. It becomes completely non-responsive and I can't even force my way out of it. I've actually had to resort to turning my laptop completely off
Any suggestions, fixes, or magic tricks to help me?

I have the same problem with locking up. And the escape key combo doesn't work, I'm sorry to say.
As I wrote in another post ( http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1393270&tstart=0 ) it seems (I know this will sound idiotic) to lock up only when the song name is so long that it must scroll (while the song is playing) to show the whole name (this is mainly classical music, which often has long "song" titles). It is when that annoying "flip" occurs, putting the album and song info on the reverse sides, that these Front Row locks always seem to happen. Though at other times the lock seems to come arbitrarily. Sounds very similar to all the problems described above.

Watching dvds in front row = displays sleeps

hi all - i gots the following problem
watching dvds in front row = displays sleeps - or at least dulls back until i use the trackpad to wake it
i assumed that this would not be issue with front row as it would be obvious that i wanted the dvd shown full screen - any ideas?

Wow, I never found this before. I played the dvd in front row on best performance (battery setting) and the display went black. I closed front row and opened it in dvd player and it played for 15 min and never went black.
Any way I went into energy saver and adjusted custom to never turn off display then opened front row. That seems to have worked.

Iconcertcal will not let you open Itunes through Front Row

Itunes has not been opening through Front Row. I just got off the phone with tech support, and it was because of an Itunes download called iconcertcal. As soon as I removed it, everything worked fine! I don't see it listed on the Apple website anymore, maybe they removed it.

will that delete all of my music, videos, games, etc off of my computer?

How can I read several avi files in single DVD with FRONT ROW?

Hi!
Is it possible to make Front Row read several movie files in a single DVD?
I burned 6/7 avi files in each DVD, but Front Row can't even read the DVD itself!
Thanks!

Hi Imcaet
It sounds as though you have made a Data DVD rather than a Movie DVD. Front Row can only read Movie DVDs. All Data must be in iTunes, or in on of the directories it looks in, such as "Movies" in your home directory.
If you need to combine the movies, you will need something like QuickTime Pro 7, which can be purchased from the Apple website. You need to Select All the movie you wish to Append, Copy, go to the End of the movie you wish to Append to, and Paste. You can then save/export the movie in full.

Playing iMovieHD6 projects through Front Row

I've been using Front Row on various Macs as a handy way to show old home movies saved in iMovieHD6 from original VHS tapes, mini-DV tapes and HD mini-DV tapes. All has been going really well, using an alias on the Mac in question and storing hundreds of GBs of movies as original iMovieProjects with all their clips. It works brilliantly.
However, now moving into more recent tapes with letterbox proportions, these are not always playing in the right frame size on Front Row. So I'm getting the squashed body effect. Does anyone know how to adjust Front Row's frame proportions? Or how I adjust my movie clips (which play perfectly in iMovieHD) so they play correctly through Front Row? And in case anyone's wondering why I'm not saving the clips to a single big .dv file or some other compressed format, it's so that I can go back to them and edit or extract material at a later date.
All suggestions would be really welcomed. I'm pretty new to all this.
Many thanks,
Richard

thanks a ton - all working nicely now. Its pretty common sense but being new to a Mac, theres alot of new menu options to get used to.

Visualizer through front row?

Is there any way or any hope in the near future that I will be able to turn on the visualizer through front row while a song is playing...I mean album art is cool but...

There is a way to approximate this. In iTunes, turn on the visualizer, but only within the iTunes window, not full screen. Make iTunes take up as much of the screen as possible. Navigate thru Front Row to play the song or playlist you want. Then menu out so that you are back at iTunes, showing the visualizer. The downside of this approach is you'll still have a bit of the iTunes interface on screen with the visualizer, but if you use full screen, Front Row won't activate as two apps can't compete for full screen.

IPod not anymore accessible through Front Row?!?

In Tiger I always where able to use Front Row to play anything on my iPod but since I updated to Leopard I cannot see the iPod anymore. Not in Music, nor in Sources.
I bought a 160 GB iPod because on my MacBook I only have a 80 GB HD. All my music is on my iPod because of the space limitation on the MacBook.
How can I restore the functionality of Tigers Front Row?
Please advise!

I can't access my iPod through Front Row either.
Even with the new Front Row update 2.1.2 it doesn't work.

Apple control - Front Row takes a long time to open through the Menu Butto?

I am using a ManMini as a HTPC. Front Row is being used as my Media Choice. When I click the Menu Button Front Row may not open or it may take a very longtime to activate.
lister

If you use the Accounts System Preferences to create a brand new user, log out and log in as the new user, how long does it take the new user to open Front Row with the remote? If it's just as slow, you have a system-wide issue. If Front Row opens quickly for the new user, then your original user may have a movie, song or picture that's taking a long time for your Front Row to access. Let us know what you find out from this troubleshooting step.
-Doug

Big Mini Trouble with DVD and Front Row

Set-Up
I am trying to use my mac mini as a media centre connected to a 42" sharp aquos 1080HD, for sound i use a 5.1 bose speaker set-up, which is irrelevant to my problem, but the mac interfaces with a yamaha rxv661B 7.1 channel digital home theatre receiver, via DVI to HDMI and sound through head phone to RCA set-up that will soon be upgraded to optical. All connected to the appropriate DVD channels on the recevier, video goes to the TV via HDMI. My set-up has no DVD player other than the super drive on the mac mini, the only other input is a Bell ExpressVu 9200 PVR.
My Problem
1. Playing DVDs the brightness on the picture fluctuates in a very regular wave like pulse. What am I doing wrong?
2. Front Row Crashes the computer whenever I try to access any of the movie files. The files play fine when accessed directly or through itunes but crash the system in front row. DVDs play, and the online movie clips play, and music and picture content are no problem.
Any help would be much appreciated
As an aside does anyone know if youtube will be available to non Apple-TV front row users, as well?
Mini 1.83 Mac OS X (10.4.7) 12" Powerbook G4

Everything is plugged into a three pronged plug using a relatively sophisticated surge protecting power bar, but you may be on to something, the power bar has a light to indicate if it is properly grounded and that has not lit up since its been in use, perhaps the outlet isn't properly grounded, I live in a recently renovated 100yr old home.
As for the files they are a mixture of mpg, mov and a number of m4v (that might be my postal not a file format) I mean the ipod format, a lot of the video files I produce I put directly into the ipod ready format.

HDMI video through Front Row

I want to be able to watch my front row videos on my tv through the hdmi cable hooked up to my macbook pro, but all I get when I start to play it is a black screen and the sound from the movie.
How do I get video on my tv?

Hi,
I was just hooking up my laptop the same way and got my desktop screen with nothing on it. I put in the movie and could not see anything. For some reason I moved my mouse off the left side of the computer screen and noticed it showed up on the TV. I held it down and pulled it back to the right and my video came sliding onto the TV screen. In other words, it was playing off to the side of my TV screen. I just pulled it into view. Perhaps this is done so you can watch a movie and use the laptop at the same time..
I hope this is helpful. Perhaps someone has a more precise solution or more accurate description.
Cameron

DVD through Front Row locks up first time

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