Force front row to play video on 16:9 aspect ratio

Hello, I would like to know if there is a way to force front row to play a 3:4 video in 16:9 aspect ratio.
As you can imagine, I have a 16:9 TV and I would like to see it, better in 16:9.
This can be done very well by Quicktime, I don't know why it seems not to be possible to do on Front Row.
Look forward to reading some answer.
thanks,
pvazquez

No, Front Row just plays them as they are flagged.
Even if you could, the video would be stretched and people would be short and fat!

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Front row cannot play video on my shared network? not recognized? HELP!

When i launch my front row on my macbook it informs me that there are no videos being shared on my mini. But when i review the mini inside itunes i clearly see all the content and can play it. Any ideas why itunes and front row would not work together? It worked fine in the past, but the last two upgrades knocked it out. Both units are fully updated.

That is strange, it sounds like it should be working. I might try to create a new user with the Accounts System Preferences on the MacBook, log out and log in as the new user. Can the new user find the shared videos in Front Row? If not, then you have some kind of system-wide problem. If they can find the shared videos, then your original user has a preference or configuration issue.
-Doug

Forcing Front Row into Rosetta (For 3ivx and a52 codecs)

I've been very happy with my Mac Mini so far and my only complaint is that Front Row will not allow me to play movies encoded with 3ivx and a 52 codecs. I have found a way to get them to work in Quicktime (by forcing it into Rosetta) and I have figured out how to force Front Row into Rosetta but it still doesn't work. One of the other forums I consulted suggested that the problem is that Front Row uses Itunes with embedded Quicktime movies. I was hoping that it would be as simple as forcing Itunes to open with Rosetta but I have not been able to figure out how to do this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Please do not point me to the Apple file telling you how to force apps into rosetta. It does not work for Itunes.
Thanks!
G

Well you may want to convert the said videos and audio files into a format Front Row does support. http://www.versiontracker.com/ and http://www.macupdate.com/ list many solutions for playing and working with those file formats.
I see you have already found the Front Row forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1164
Maybe some people there may have additional answers if you can't find them in this one.

Front Row: problems playing WMV files

I’m running a Macbookpro OSX 10.5.7, and have been working to config Front Row to play the movies on my hard drive (not in iTunes). I’ve installed both flip4mac and Perian in order to play all file types. This works great for QuickTime and the web. Front Row, however, has a problem playing my wmv files (all others play fine). When a wmv file is selected in FR, it only plays for a few seconds, then stops and returns to the movie list. I researched the solution provided by VideoDrive, which works, but I prefer to organize my videos into subfolders by category, rather than all in an alpha list in iTunes.
If I play a wmv in it’s entirety in Quicktime, it will then play in Front Row. This tells me it’s some sort of cache issue? My attempt to test this theory has been inconclusive, prob due to my ignorance.
Troubleshooting to date has been:
Quitting FR from the Activity Monitor
Deleting user/library/preferences/com.apple.frontrow.plist
Uninstalling and reinstalling flip4mac
Installing Perian
Would prefer not to have to rip all of my video to mp4 (I use iSquint), but I’m out of ideas.
Apologies in advance if this is covered elsewhere.

Hi konzo
As for converters try SUPER, it's one of the best and can convert pretty much anything you throw at it to any format you wish, best of all its FREE:
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
Happy to have helped forum in a small way with a Support Ratio = 37.0

Front Row not playing Trailers or Top 10 iTunes Movies

Hoping someone might be able to help me out with this weird problem I have had for a few months (since before Leopard, but it persists since updating to 10.5.1.)
My Front Row wont play the Theatrical Trailers or iTunes Top 10 movies previews.
It happily updates the list. But whenever I click on one I get:
"The Selected Video Could Not Be Played, The Format Was Not Recognised".
I have no problems playing TV Show previews, Music Videos and my own ripped movies.
I get the same results on my Apple TV and my 18 month old intel iMac.
Any ideas ? Much appreciated.

I'm having this same problem. The only solution I've found, scouring both the forum and internet, is to wait until it figures itself out, which is completely unacceptable. I recently updated my software and still no joy.

Get Front Row to play from HVDVD_TS folder

How can I get Front Row to play content from a HVDVD_TS folder. It works great with standard VIDEO_TS folders (under Leopard/Snow Leopard) but it doesn't seem to recognise my DVD Studio Pro generated HVDVD_TS folder.
Thx!
Cojcolds

I have the same problem with remote control device (infrared) and FrontRow as many other users, see links below.
And yes, I have tried all the described "remedies", but the problem is still there.
The problem is that after boot, FrontRow reacts to the remote ok (about 10-15 minutes), but then
FrontRow stops responding to remote control commands. However, FrontRow can be controlled by keyboard
commands all the time. If iMac is now booted, the problem is still there. The only way I have had FrontRow
and remote work ok (for 10-15 mins) is shutting down iMac, waiting an hour or so, and then booting it. I'm just
wondering is this hardware problem (related to e.g. temperature ?), problem with FrontRow itself, or problem with
related daemons. Anyway, I hope that this is sw problem, and Apple could fix quite soon in next FrontRow or Mac OS X
update. Otherwise, I'm 100% sure to replace my iMac because of this stupid little bug (that seemed to be the only
working remedy).
- Kari
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1264312&#1264312
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=287078&tstart=15
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1438431&#1438431
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=309333&tstart=15
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1439228&#1439228
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1003149&#1003149
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1004692&#1004692
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1317018&#1317018
IMAC G5/2.1GHz, 20" iSight Mac OS X (10.4.3) 512MB, 250GB

Can Front Row continue playing the next video? (continuous playing)

Hey everybody,
I tried searching the forum, but no hits, so I thought: let's post something
I got lots of small (get-a-mac) video's in my Movies folder, and I want to play them on my TV through Front Row. But after every video I have to select the next one and press play...
That can't be the way to go...?!
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Dirkuijt, Netherlands

This question has come up before. Unfortunately, there's no way to make a "playlist" of videos as you might in iTunes for music. The videos are played with the QuickTime Player application, not iTunes. The QuickTime Player application has no ability to read/play a list of videos.
If you choose an iTunes playlist that includes movies, you'll only hear the sound and you won't see any video.
Since Apple considers Front Row a part of Mac OS X, I'd send Apple some Mac OS X feedback and let them know you'd like to see this option:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/
-Doug

Front Row not marking video as watched properly

I kept hoping that this issue would be resolved with one of the point releases, but here we are at 10.6.3 and it's still the same for me, so here's the problem.
Before installing 10.6 I was running 10.5.8 and when using Front Row to watch a video (say a TV show I downloaded on iTunes) I'd watch it all the way to the end and the status circle next to it would show that it's been watched. iTunes would report the same status.
Since installing 10.6 when I watch a video in Front Row all the way, the status shows up as if it's only partially watched instead of completely watched. I'm sure the video was over since I let it play all the way through until it comes back to Front Row.
This is very annoying. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there some way to fix it? If not, I hope Apple can address this in 10.6.4.

Bump.
I have tried multiple solutions and non have solved this issue. I am rather disappointed that watching content on my AppleTV or via FrontRow does not mark the show as "watched" in iTunes. FrontRow will mark it part watched and AppleTV does not effect the watched status flag at all.
I do believe this is an iTunes 10 issue though as I only saw it after upgrading to iTunes 10.
Can anyone point me to a solution?

Stom Mac Mini from sleeping when iTunes/Front Row is playing

Just like the title says ..
When I play music through front row/iTunes, the computer still sleeps. This is not the case when playing videos. I've looked everywhere for setting to change this, but can't seem to find it.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Blue

It's not the computer but the monitor that falls asleep when using iTunes.
You can change this in syspreferences, energy saving.
Sleeping of monitors is suppressed when you watch videos in full screen mode.

Stop Mac from Sleeping when iTunes/Front Row is playing

Just like the title says ..
When I play music through front row/iTunes, the computer still sleeps. This is not the case when playing videos. I've looked everywhere for setting to change this, but can't seem to find it.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Blue

New version of osx seemed to fix the problem for me.

Using Front Row to access Video, etc. on other networked Macs.

The ability to use the new version of Front Row and Bonjour to access viedo, photos, and music on other networked Macs seems very interesting, but I have a question.
Suppose for example, I buy the new Mac Mini and set it up with my audiovisual system ... and I have other Macs in my home network (e.g.,a G4, iBook, and G5). Do the other computers have to be able to run Front Row in order for their video/photo/audio files to be accessed by the new Mac Mini and played thru my AV system?
In my case, for example, my G4, G5 (Quad) and iBook (G3) don't have Front Row and at the present time Front Row is not available for these Macs.
G4, G5, iBook Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Phillip,
When I was trying out FrontRow on my computer, I got access to video on my PC by simply creating an alias for the files and dropping them into the Movies folder on the mac. FrontRow will show the aliases fine and when you select them will conect to the server (if not already connected) and start playing. This is totally cool! So... you don't really need the video to be in an iTunes shared library if you dont want to go that way.
Nevermind
PS. Of course ZeroConf is pretty cool too!

Force Front Row To Use Rosetta?

Hi,
i can get my wmv encoded avi's to run in quicktime without pixelated distortions using rosetta, but how do i get front row to use rosetta when playing back the files as without rosetta i've found flip4mac to be quite useless. (Latest version btw)
Any help from one of the many mac geniuses that lurk on the forum would be great.

I wish I had an answer for your Goldin. Front Row itself is a Universal Binary and cannot be told to run under Rosetta. There might be a way to force it to under unix.
Are the file types actually WMV? How about just converting them to something a bit more friendly like MPEG-4 or MOV?
Cheers!

Leopard Upgrade - Front Row 2.0 Video Playback Choppy

Hi Everyone,
I just upgraded from Tiger to Leopard and all is well except for video playback via Front Row. I'm playing video_ts files - which play back fine if I use the Apple DVD player application. In the new version of Front Row they tend to 'studder' and are choppy from time to time. I have 1GB of RAM installed, and I'm wondering if that is enough??
Another note about video playback... I was watching the Dallas vs. Greenbay game last night via a live stream on the Internet using my Mini on a hard wired connection. Unfortunately, it was choppy for both audio and video. My G4 Powerbook did a perfect job. It also has 1GB of RAM, it's running Leopard - and I was watching the game over a wireless connection. Audio and video were almost perfect.
Do you think that Leopard requires more memory than Tiger on my dual core Mini? I'm wondering if I should upgrade to 2GB's of RAM - or maybe re-install Leopard from scratch. (I did an upgrade install the first time.)
(Also - My Mini is connected to a 37" 1080p Sharp LCD display via DVI.)
Thanks for the help and advice!

Thanks for the response Boece...
My startup drive has 15GB of free space. The files are playing from an external Lacie HD (via USB 2.0) that has 20GB of free space.
It's odd that all files will play perfectly when using the DVD app to view the movies. Front Row 2.0 will have intermittent problems when viewing the same file.
Nothing else is running on the Mini when I am using Front Row.
The only other time that I have seen choppy video playback is with the screen saver. I really like the new 'Mosiac' option for pictures - but with this display the Mini can't zoom from one picture to the next at all without being all choppy. It's almost like the graphics card is having trouble. The other options for 'Collage' and 'Slideshow' work fine - with smooth flowing playback.
I'm planning on hooking the Mini up to a 19" monitor today to see if the problems go away.
I'll report back with the results.

Any way to get Front Row to show video playlists such as TV shows?

I can get AppleTV now to show the TV show playlists in iTunes as their own menu items. However, I can't seem to get Front Row in 10.6 to do the same thing.
I currently have iTunes 8.2.1 in 10.6.0. Is this something either upgrading to 10.6.1 or iTunes 9 will enable?

Front Row users have been waiting for this option since video playlists first appeared in iTunes quite some time ago. Unfortunately, I've never been able to make it work. Why Apple can't enable what seems like a simple options is beyond me. My iPod nano can do it but Front Row on my Mac can't. I'd advise you to send Apple some Mac OS X feedback since there's no specific form for Front Row itself:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
-Doug

Front row with mpeg2 video

evening board
i have a ppc mini with an "enabler" version of front row.
I have many gigs of mpeg2 streams recorded from an eyetv session that play fine in eyetv, VLC and mplayer however i get horizonal lines appear when I play it in quicktime or frontrow.
It seems to happen most when lost of screen activity is happening e.g. a panning camera or an explosion.
As I alread said this does'nt happen in eyetv or VLC or even mplayer, just frontrow and quicktime.
I can play divx encoded movies in frontrow fine, no problems and things like podcasts are fine also it just seems to be mpeg2.
any ideas?
is it a interlace-deinterlace problem? I have a plasma telly I am using as the display (VGA in) however this is the first time I have ever had an issue (games are fine as are all other apps).
I think its a quicktime codec issue but can't find where to fiddle.
Any help would be great, as I'm not relishing the fact that I may have to divx encode 300Gig of mpeg2 just to view it in frontrow.
cheers
Steve

i have come to the conclusion that it is the mpeg2 codec for QT.
converting the mpeg2 to DV and playing using QT allows the de-interlace option to work as the DV codec seems to support this.
however not for mpeg2
at the moment I am using VLC player, but this has no nice user front end like front row making my mini a less than elegant media centre.
VLC manages de-interlacing fine, various options blend/bob progressive etc etc all produce nice results.
its possibel, so why doesn;t QT do what it says on the tin?
any suggestions from anyone?
very disapointed.........
Steve

Force front row to play video on 16:9 aspect ratio

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