Front Row becoming scrambled

When Front Row has been playing for a while the display becomes scrambled. The text looses characters and the album art becomes posterised and generally indeciferable.
Is anyone else having this issue? I'm worried it could be a hardware problem although it only seems to occur with Front Row.

yes i have this problem too. no biggie, just annoying having to restart front row now and then.

Similar Messages

Front Row: Becomes runaway process after using

Perhaps someone can verify if this is a wide spread problem, or just my machine.
I use FR to playback video files and music in my home office; however, after "closing" FR, the "Front Row" process runs away. Comsuming 100% of a processor and generally slowing down the system.
I end up force quitting the FR app and the system returns to normal -- I've rebooted without effect.
But even after quitting the FR app, pressing "Menu" on the remote will bring it back up and work normally, until you close it again.
Any ideas?
Tried all the usual fix, permissions, plist, reboot...
iMac 20" Intel 2.0GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hi Kevin Arnold, thanks for the tip on force-quitting through Activity Monitor. It worked and freed the CPU resources -- Plus I can get back into Front Row and it seems to work (until the next crash...) so maybe now I won't have to restart everytime this happens!
When I say Front Row crashes, I mean that it hammers the CPU in the background. It never actually crashes with an error message, it just fails to quit sometimes (often) when going back to the desktop. Also on occassion, FrontRow HAS started 'hammering the CPU' while still running in the foreground and I get stuck inside FrontRow unable to return to the desktop; but in this case, apple-Q WILL work within Front Row to kill the app and return everything to normal.
My FrontRow just crashed again a minute ago, so I ran the % sample Front\ Row 5 terminal command you posted earlier for someone else, and the result said 'bash: no such process'. **yes, I ran the command before force-quitting through application monitor**
Here are the last few lines from FrontRow.Crash.Log:
Versions/A/Libraries/libGLSystem.dylib
0x97355000 - 0x97362fff com.apple.agl 2.5.6 (AGL-2.5.6) /System/Library/Frameworks/AGL.framework/Versions/A/AGL
0x97463000 - 0x9747dfff com.apple.AppleVAFramework 2.4.24 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AppleVA.framework/Versions/A/AppleVA
0x976ab000 - 0x976c1fff com.apple.AppleShareClient 1.5.1 /System/Library/Frameworks/AppleShareClient.framework/Versions/A/AppleShareClie nt
0x976cb000 - 0x97709fff com.apple.AppleShareClientCore 1.5.1 /System/Library/Frameworks/AppleShareClientCore.framework/Versions/A/AppleShare ClientCore
0x9781b000 - 0x97a01fff com.apple.dvdplayback 4.6.6 (4660) /System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A/DVDPlayback
0x985a2000 - 0x9864cfff com.apple.applescript 1.10.6 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AppleScript.framework/Versions/A/AppleScript
0x987e1000 - 0x987e3fff com.apple.BezelServicesFW 1.3.7 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BezelServices.framework/Versions/A/BezelServi ces
0x9908e000 - 0x99190fff com.apple.audio.units.Components 1.4.1 /System/Library/Components/CoreAudio.component/Contents/MacOS/CoreAudio
I hope you can make sense of all that crash log mumbo jumbo.

ITunes Playlists scrambled in Front Row

I use a MacMini for an audio server. The playlists I have set up in iTunes (and which work fine in iTunes) bear no resemblance to the original when I attempt to use them in Front Row. For instance, a smart playlist to select items with 4 star ratings or higher picks up items with no ratings at all when used in Front Row. Tried deleting Front Row plist, but no change. Thought this might have to do with outdated software as I'm using Front Row 1.1. When I attempted to update to 1.3.1, the installer refuses to install it on any of my 3 macs (all of which are running snow leopard & current versions of iPhoto & iTunes)... whats up with that?

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried this one (2.1.7) as well with the same result: "Front Row can't be installed on this disk. This software update is not required". I believe the reason is that 2.1.7 is not 64-bit (for Intel Macs) while 1.1 is. Based on the create dates for the packages, I think 2.17 is an update to 1.31 (though I can't get a copy of 1.31 to examine), and 1.31 is not an update to the 1.1 (64bit) version which has the newest create date. If true, it looks like Apple needs to update the software. But in the interim, I can't use any of the smart playlists created in iTunes in Front Row. Playlists which were created using specific songs rather than groups defined by rules work just fine, with the Front Row playlist matching the one created in iTunes.
Any other possible fixes?

Why won't Front Row play movies located in my iPhoto Library?

I currently have a little over 300 short movies from my digital cameras. I keep them in subfolders located at /Users/shared/Shared Movies/digital camera movies/ and Front Row plays them just fine under each user account since each user has an alias to /Users/shared/Shared Movies/ located in their "movies" folder within their home folder.
Recently a buddy convinced me to import my short digicam movies into iPhoto as an easier way to organize the short .mov and .avi files. I have over 14K image files in my library so I liked the idea of browsing my video shorts using iPhoto. I created a smart album in iPhoto for all file names ending with .avi or .mov and that works great to quickly locate the relatively few video files in the sea of digital stills.
BUT... WHY won't Front Row locate or play the movies that are located inside of iPhoto's Library? Did they just forget this functionality? Front Row's Video player displays Video Podcasts located in iTunes why wouldn't there also be an automagic category that appears in Front Row for movies located in your iPhoto Library?!
Front Row chokes if I attempt to play the smart "movies" album I created in iPhoto. It just keeps spinning the little "train tracks" progress thingy and never shows a movie. I finally just hit the menu button on the remote to "back out" of that selection.
The other work around I tried to play these movies located in iPhoto was a smart folder located at /Users/shared/Shared Movies/ that displays filenames that contain .mov and .avi located in my iPhoto library folder. This doesn't work. Front Row's Video player will not display the movies found by a smart folder the same way it does for an alias to a folder or file.
I don't want to keep duplicate copies of these movie files on my HD. I'll have to keep them located outside of iPhoto so I can enjoy browsing and watching them "on demand" using Front Row.
What is the fix? Work around?

Thanks for the suggestion but that isn't an option. Think about how iPhoto stores images and movies you import into the photo library. It will import files originally located in one folder and scatter them by storing all the files in hundreds of folders and subfolders based on date. Originally I had my movies in my home movie folder and even used an alias to the shared movies. That all works fine and it isn't the issue. The issue is when you try to use the only tool Apple provides to organize your digital images, both still and moving pictures. Once you import your movies into the iPhoto Library they become invisible to Front Row's video player.
Once iPhoto imports my 300+ files and scatters them into hundreds of subfolders based on the date -how in the world would you even begin to maintain aliases in a folder that point to these files. That is NOT an option, who would do that?! That is why I decided to try the smart folder since it would dynamically locate all the files with .mov and .avi in the file name located within the iPhoto library. Good idea but Front Row will not play these files listed in the result set of a smart folder. It will follow an alias but not play the contents of a smart folder.
Front Row should handle movie files within the iPhoto library the same way it deals with videos within the iTunes library. Poor design, oversight, bug, whatever -it should be fixed. There should be an automatic category that appears under the Front Row video player for "Movies in iPhoto" and if you have no movies in your library it displays something like it does when you have no video podcasts, or no TV shows, or no music videos in iTunes. Come on, how many users have those items vs. an iPhoto library with movies from their digital cameras? I bet more users have movies from their digital cameras that currently drop through a gaping hole in the design of Front Row if they use iPhoto to manage their digicam movie files.

Front Row Update

When wil front row be updated, it was ok when iTunes first started to sell movies and TV shows but now libraries are reaching hundreds of gigabytes and hundreds of movies navigating through them all is becoming quite difficult. Is there anything that can change this, i still want to just press menu on the remote as i use my mac mini as a media centre.
It would be nice if apple could update what i think is an integral part of the operating system, especially when they are trying to sell HD movies and TV shows.

My general strategy on this was to create a folder Categories and beneath
this make subfolders which each of the movie categories I cared about.
I put a short cut to this folder in my Movies folder. Then for each movie I had
I created a short-cut and placed it into the category I feel the movie belongs to.
If it belongs to more than one category I create more than one short cut.
In Front Row if I then go to Movies > Movies Folder I see my Categories folder and I can navigate to movies that way.

Front row - black screen with audio

I recently installed Leopard on my old iBook.
When i start Front row, I can see the menus , trailer list, movie list etc., but when i play anything, the screen goes blank, i can see a progress bar moving(which auto-hides), and audio is also OK, but there is no video.the screen just goes blank and remains that way.
I have perian installed on my machine and all videos work OK in quicktime, VLC etc.
any possible solutions for this? has anyone else also faced this issue ?
thanks.

I can get a picture with Quicktime...but if I try to get enlarge the screen, the picture often becomes corrupted. I'm just rather annoyed that I spent $40 on this series and am having these issues. I only downloaded iTunes because there was no other option of getting this show. I've waited 24 years to see the entire "Liberty Stone" Mini-series (there was a problem with the tapes DIC released and they were missing eps)...so this just feels like a taunt.
I'm hoping this gets fixed quickly. It sounds like there is a lack of standardization with the DRM being used on these files.

Front Row really slow browsing movies

I just upgraded my RAM to 4GB and my HDD to 500GB 7200RPM Seagate (clone made with Disk Utility) and noticed something that never happened before.While browsing movies in Front Row it becomes unresponsive for 10 to 30 secs.This does NOT happen with music,podcasts,photos or everything else in front row where everything is working great.I've always been using front row with no problems at all and have been really satisfied.
What is happening?I tried with iTunes turned on and off but makes no difference.Also running Leopard,did not upgrade to Snow yet.It's really annoying cause Front Row is really cool and I use it all the time.
Thanks in advance.

I've also noticed that after exiting Front Row the program actually continues to run in the background.Using Activity Monitor I can see it using 1GB virtual ram.I don't know whta that means or if it 's normal.
Thanks

I need sherlock and Front Row 1.3.1 Back! New Front Row is USELESS!

I need sherlock back, I used it all the time, now its missing!
, also the old Front Row 1.3.1 was AMAZING, the new one looks really bad and the fonts are too small to use from far away (as what it was intended for) I used it before now its just to hard to read from my bed and looks ugly too. I like the 4 animated Icons when you start front row, and also liked the animated preview of a movie instead of a frozen frame.
Apple downgraded a major part of what I use for $129
Please help me get the old front row and sherlock back from my tiger DVD's.

Computeradam wrote:
I need sherlock back, I used it all the time, now its missing!
, also the old Front Row 1.3.1 was AMAZING, the new one looks really bad and the fonts are too small to use from far away (as what it was intended for) I used it before now its just to hard to read from my bed and looks ugly too. I like the 4 animated Icons when you start front row, and also liked the animated preview of a movie instead of a frozen frame.
Apple downgraded a major part of what I use for $129
Please help me get the old front row and sherlock back from my tiger DVD's.
Well, you can install Tiger on an external drive and boot into it when you need to. I am NOT being sarcastic. I use Sherlock all the time and was disappointed to find him "retired" and back to bee keeping. Even MS still has Watson, don't they?
My G5 is dual boot - I planned it that way. One internal drive is Tiger, the other Leopard.
I will partition my external LaCie drives so that one partition will be a bootable Tiger clone, the rest of the partition for Leopard's TM.
The best of both worlds is to have both worlds, right? Then the decision becomes moot. Keep "Plan A" and "Plan B" and you can't lose.

Front Row Shared Photos unusably slow!

I have about 36,000 photos in iPhoto. When I share the library, and open it under Front Row, Shared Photos, it is just unusably slow! I have to wait about 5 minutes for the list to come up, even if I opened Front Row on the same machine as the iPhoto library. While this is happening, iPhoto is beach balled, and never becomes usable again, so I have to Force Quit it every time.
Any suggestions? I've already tried trashing the preferences file.

Follow iPhoto 6 and later: Rebuilding the iPhoto library and use the bottom 3 repair options.
It might also be helpful to remove Home > Library > Caches to the trash and restarting the computer.
~ Mr. Madison
Do you have a backup?
Mac OS X v10.5, v10.6: How to back up and restore your files

Front Row preferences: I think it's about time

My experience with Front Row is limited, as I've only had my iMac for a few months now. However, in the short amount of time I have spent with it I find myself wondering why Front Row wasn't built with the notion that users may just want to have control over their experience. A few of the options I've found myself wanting:
*Turn on/off file scrolling*
- I've spent many hours creating cover art for my movies, so if I only want it to display the icon I've replaced for the folder icon, then I should have that option. I don't want to see the contents of that folder.
*Ability to target a different source folder, disk, or computer*
- I realize there are workarounds to this, but it should be much simpler than it currently is to do this. Most people in this day and age have external drives, or additional computers within a single household. It shouldn't be assumed that everyone prefers to store their media in those predetermined folders.
*Option to resume movie*
- This one seems so obvious that I have to assume that I've simply overlooked this option somewhere. Shouldn't one have the ability to resume playback of a movie where they left off if the movie is interrupted?
*Keyboard shortcut and/or remote command that exits Front Row*
- Again, I feel like I'm missing something here. Is there really no way to exit Front Row with one key/button stroke? I find myself having to back out of several screens before I can finally get back to my desktop. I've tried several logical keyboard shortcuts and tried holding down the 'menu' button on the remote and got no response. I realize we're only talking about a matter of seconds here, but it does become an inconvenience over time.
*ID3 tags for movies*
- I realize this is asking a bit more than just adding a couple of checkboxes, but it would really enhance the user experience if you could give your movies ID3 tags (or equivalent) so that the process of finding cover art, previews, synopsis, cast/crew info, etc. would be automated. Currently it takes about 5 minutes per film to manually download/optimize this content. Honestly, if I didn't have OCD I probably wouldn't waste the time.
Consider this a running list of requests to Apple, if anyone out there is listening. The more I use the program the longer this list will undoubtedly get. It's an amazing feature which makes the Mac platform stand alone, but it's time to take this application to the next level. I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to usability, and right now this product has fallen short in my opinion.
I'd be interested in hearing others thoughts on this. I'm sure I haven't covered everything here.

I would really suggest you send Apple some Mac OS X feedback for each of your suggestions.
Option to resume movie...
Movies/TV Shows/videos inside iTunes will pause and resume. It's only the movies that live outside of iTunes that, currently, won't resume.
-Doug

Mp4 videos on external harddrive in front row

Hi
I wanted to se my movies on my new mac mini, so I had bought 2 750 GB external harddrive. I have used handbreak to convert my dvd to mp4.
I had made a alias, so Front row can find the movie on my external drive, but I can't get it to made a art work as if the file is on the same external harddrive where my Itunes music is.
I have tryed MeTaX, but the same resualt as if i don't use it.

Another option would be have your iTunes library be located on your external drive and import all of your movies into iTunes. Add artwork to each of your movies via iTunes and the artwork would be displayed in Front Row. This could get tedious, though. A since you have two external drives, you'd have to build your library using one existing drive then once it becomes full, change the location of your library to the second drive.
Hopefully this helps! The more I think about it, the more I dislike the idea, though. But whatever works for you.

Front Row Garbles up

Ok, computer as described below in my profile...
Transferred everyting from my old Mac to my new Mac. Worked perfectly.
But...
I activate Front Row and it works great... until I start navigating through the menus. It gets garbled up lines in it. Is this a faulty video card? I thought so at first, but found out that my buddy that has a 20" iMac G5 is having the same issues. Totally different card in that system by the way.
So, is it an OSX 10.4.4 issue? You tell me. Whatever it is I don't like it. I love the new iMac, it's a great machine... just need to fix this issue.
No major complaints from me, this is going to be a transition that will take time, but I see it as "growing pains." The end result is obviously going to be a better product.
Good job Apple. Now fix my d@mn machine!
Joe

Just like the rest of you I have this same problem. And I also upgraded the video card too. But not only do I have the problem in Front Row, I have the same annoying issue in iMovie. Has anyone else checked to see whether they are experiencing this "bug" in iMovie as well. I've also discovered that after downloading 10+ widgets my system becomes VERY unstable...multiple programs crash or freeze up, I can't change my desktop picture without the system going haywire, and many other little annoyances. Although this might be due to a number of non-universal programs I have installed. Not sure yet. But I sure hope Apple can get this all worked out in a reasonable amount of time!

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.

Front Row Incorrectly Reads iTunes Metadata under Snow Leopard?

There is a serious problem with Front Row under Snow Leopard. The program is unable to correctly read the TV metadata from iTunes and does not correctly filter/organize the data. TV episode/season/title data is not read resulting in a completely disorganized library. All files are viewd as "movies" whether they have been tagged as TV shows or not. I had a sizable libray of videos that was perfectly organized under Tiger. Under Snow Leopard my entire database has been blown up- most TV shows appear as "Untitled". I'm sure they are MacMini users who have integrated their computers into their media playback systema s I have and am hoping Apple will provide a fix for this issue which totally undercuts one of the main reasons for integrating the Mini into one's home theatre system. Does any have a fix or simple work around. Come on Apple-- don't turn into Microsoft on me!

I recently purchased a used iMac (from 2006), that the previous owner had upgraded to Snow Leopard. I already have a MacBook Pro. To explain, I purchased the iMac to set it up as a media center computer, connected to my external hard drive and synced with AppleTV. I used Migration Assistant to move my files onto the iMac, but Front Row is now showing all the errors you described.
1. It is VERY slow to open. Clicking Menu on the remote, and you wait 15 seconds or more for Front Row to open.
2. Even though iTunes is directed to my external hard drive, Front Row shows Source as my Macbook Pro.
3. TV shows are out of order. On my Macbook Pro (10.5.8) all shows are listed from first to last, from top to bottom. On the iMac (10.6.4) they are listed last to first, top to bottom.
4. Some TV shows that are clearly in iTunes (purchased from iTunes) do not appear in Front Row at all.
5. The unwatched content blue dot remains even after watching something all the way through to the end. After watching them in Front Row, iTunes does not show them as watched either, but instead has the half blue dot, as if they were unfinished.
6. iTunes is also badly affected: I now have a large number of TV shows in the Movies section, and attempts to reorganize them in the folders on the external where they are store fails. It's a complete mess, and it seems like its deliberate that we cannot reorganize it ourselves.
So what used to be a very lovely program has become a horribly messy, PC like, application. Which made the whole point of setting up a special computer just for media a total waste of time and money with Snow Leopard installed.
If a fix is not forthcoming, I'm probably going to uninstall Snow Leopard, and reinstall Leopard. Everything worked fine there for me.

Odd symbol for "Hide and show Front Row" ⌘⎋

Was just browsing my keyboard shortcuts in System Prefs and came saw the shortcut for "Hide and show Front Row." it was the command symbol and then something that I at first through was the power symbol. When i looked closer, I realized it was a 3/4 circle with an arrow pointing NW. I've never seen this before (as far as I can remember) and I couldn't find the symbol represented in any of the key combinations displayed in Keyboard Viewer. I found it in Character Palette labeled "Broken Circle with Northwest Arrow." Unicode 238B, UTF8: E2 8E 8B. I am pasting the keyboard shortcut below, so it hopefully will show:
⌘⎋
Any thoughts?

Xian Rinpoche wrote:
Haha. I never knew it had a symbol
For the first few months I had a mac, me neither. Only when I started becoming a geek did I realize it.
Thanks for the !

Front Row becoming scrambled

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