Front row track listing

Is there any way to configure Front Row to ignore ID3 tags and sort my music by directory hierarchy? I keep all my media in an NFS share on another machine, and I have been sorting my MP3 files this way for years, very few of them even have id3 tags and this makes it difficult to find anything using front row. I managed to do this with videos by making a symbolic link to the NFS share in ~/Movies, but it doesn't seem to work the same way for music. Any help would be appriciated.

Doug's script worked, as I thought it might, but I am also continuing to pursue an "official" solution from Apple, because i absolutely HATE it when a company is aware of a problem, but refuses to officially acknowledge it and offer a solution.
The first thing out of the support engineer's mouth after we spoke about the problem, was "I'll escalate this to our applications group, but we really don't support TV Show content other than those you download from the Apple Store, and Front Row is kind of a dead issue now that Lion is out." And I was like, "Huh? What about the hundreds of thousands of people who do NOT upgrade to Lion and who RELY on Front Row as a key component of our media management and usage solution?" He didn't have an answer and I didn't really expect that he would. Apple doesn't give a crap about it's customers, any more than ANY big company does. Once they have your money, the love affair is over. Reading these forums and other online Apple support discussions, so many people had no idea that they would LOSE Front Row by upgrading to Lion. I can't believe that Apple would kill off something that is clearly providing value to so many customers - especially without offering an alternative (i.e., Front Row is dead, but you can use Orchestra Center" (or whatever) to get the same functionality, with these enhancements).
Someone very much smarter than me coined the phrase "Sales makes friends, but Service keeps them!" Definitely not something that Apple is using as an operating paradigm. Apple only loves you if you get on the money wagon and keep buying the new sh*t!

Similar Messages

Front Row is listing particular TV Shows as Movies, even though the "Type" attribute is correctly set to "TV Show" in iTunes.

Here's the whole story:
My friend gave me access to a whole season of one of my favorite TV shows, with all the commericals removed! Lucky me! I imported them into iTunes using File, Add To Library, and at first they all showed up in Movies. I then edited the file info to add episode title, number, season, date, rating - all the metadata - and then iTunes successfully moved the episodes from Movies to TV Shows. HOwever, Front Row is STILL listing these episodes (and ONLY these episodes) under Movies AS WELL AS TV Shows!
I have tried Consolidating the files (no effect), eidting all the "Get Info" data again to force an update (no effect), and I even went so far as to locate the episode files in Finder (they are corectly located under TV Shows, and NOT Movies), and then I manually selected the file, hit "Get Info", and changed the associated application from Quicktime to iTunes (the file extension is MP4 for all these episodes). This also had no effect on the problem.
The files play equally well from either Movies or TV Shows, but that is besides the point. I cannot find documentation on WHERE Front Row stores it's data and/or how I can "force" Front Row to update it's information so it is accurate. I have toggled iTunes open and closed, Shutdown and Restarted the machine and even run Disk Utility to make sure the permissions are all okay - and they are. None of this has any effect on the problem, which persists.
I am at my wits end with this problem. I have loggged a hardware issue with Apple over it, and they are due to phone me tomorrow, but if anyone has a quick and easy solution to this issue that DOESN'T involve deleting and reimporting all my movies, which really shouldn't be necessary, I'd love to have your feedback and assistance. We pay upwards of $1,000 and then some for these confounded machines, they should not require 'work arounds' - applications provided with the OS should be documented and supported!
Thanks for your help!

Doug's script worked, as I thought it might, but I am also continuing to pursue an "official" solution from Apple, because i absolutely HATE it when a company is aware of a problem, but refuses to officially acknowledge it and offer a solution.
The first thing out of the support engineer's mouth after we spoke about the problem, was "I'll escalate this to our applications group, but we really don't support TV Show content other than those you download from the Apple Store, and Front Row is kind of a dead issue now that Lion is out." And I was like, "Huh? What about the hundreds of thousands of people who do NOT upgrade to Lion and who RELY on Front Row as a key component of our media management and usage solution?" He didn't have an answer and I didn't really expect that he would. Apple doesn't give a crap about it's customers, any more than ANY big company does. Once they have your money, the love affair is over. Reading these forums and other online Apple support discussions, so many people had no idea that they would LOSE Front Row by upgrading to Lion. I can't believe that Apple would kill off something that is clearly providing value to so many customers - especially without offering an alternative (i.e., Front Row is dead, but you can use Orchestra Center" (or whatever) to get the same functionality, with these enhancements).
Someone very much smarter than me coined the phrase "Sales makes friends, but Service keeps them!" Definitely not something that Apple is using as an operating paradigm. Apple only loves you if you get on the money wagon and keep buying the new sh*t!

Where does Front Row get its list of Videos?

Where does Front Row get its list of Videos? And how do I purge this list? Front Row is listing Videos that no longer exist on my computer and when selected do nothing.
I tried by trashing my prefs, but the same missing files are still in the list.

ok, worked on it a little bit more... the only thing left was an entry in the library file, when you opened the xml file in safari you could find the entry. I didn't dare playing around with the file itself, but found a script called: "super remove dead tracks" on this website, which does the trick: http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/scripts01.php?page=1#removedeadsuper
it worked great, nothing is showing up in front row any.

Front Row lists Podcasts in Movies?

For some reason my Front Row is listing some of my podcasts (early Diggnation and AOTS) in the movies directory. I only have like 5 .mov files (random clips from the net) in that folder and it's anoying that there is all those extra podcasts in that section?
Any help?

Are these podcasts that you signed up for via iTunes?
Are they all old podcasts?
Front Row looks for certain meta-data tagged with videos from iTunes. It sounds like these may have been mis-tagged (or early versions) and aren't being recognized by Front Row as podcasts. Unfortunately at the moment none of that meta-data is user changeable so you won't be able to fix where these show up.
Can you re-download them? Maybe re-aquireing these podcasts will properly tag them

Front Row Theatrical Trailers Icons Blank

Hi,
I currently have all the latest released updates (itunes 7, qt update, front row update, etc) released september 12. Everything functions correctly except the preview icons for theatrical trailers.
Prior to todays updates I would see a picture of a DVD cover as the artwork for a trailer. Now I see a rectangle with the QuickTime symbol and a question mark below. The titles of the trailers still show when I move from box to box and the previews start loading normally.
I tried removing my front row property list and the front row cache. I also created a new user and had no luck with that account. I've restarted my machine, disconnected all devices (macbook black) and tried repairing permissions. No luck.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
-j

Update: I've just installed again QT 7.1.3 using
Software Update and now the trailers thumbnails look
fine.
I suspect the cause of this problem to be the fact
that I upgraded to 7.1.3 using the QT installer from
apple.com, not the Software Update.
Mine has the problem and I used Software Update first. I tried installing again with no luck.
Where can you get the downgrade to 7.0.1? I may try that.
Dual G5, iMac G5, PowerBook G4, IBook G4, G3, 604e Mac OS X (10.4.7) Mac OS X (10.3.8) Mac OS 9 Mac OS 8

Front Row is taking a LOOOONG time to open movie lists.

Hello
I have a Mac Mini Core Duo 1.66 with 512MB RAM.
I have an external hard drive for my video files, and the Mini is connected to my 1920x1080 Sharp LCD TV as a monitor. My movie files are located on the external drive, and I have an alias in my "Movies" folder, per advice from another forum posting.
When I launch Front Row, it takes almost 10 minutes to open my movie list - sometimes front row just freezes. I have perhaps 50 items in folders and sub-folders on my movie list, and they are all located on the external drive. When they were on the local drive, it also took a VERY long time just to open the movie list in Front Row (that's just opening the movie list, not even playing the movies!)
What's going on here? It's unusable as it is - how can I speed things up?
Thanks,
-----------S

I have a mini with an external drive containing a library of movie files and front row is also very slow with that - though in my case around a minute to pull up the list rather than 10.
Part of the problem may be the type of external. In my case, I have an enclosure which supports both Firewire and USB 2.0, and when connected by FW, immediately I select the movies option in front row, the drive is woken and the activity light starts blinking. After it has read the contents of the folder, front row then displays the list with a brief pause as the preview for the first movie in the list appears.
When connected by USB, the drive doesn't start responding for several seconds, and when it does the access light blinks at a much slower rate. That would be expected since USB doesn't have a dedicated controller, so data flow is dependent on how busy the system is with other things. FW on the other hand has a constant data rate due it it's dedicated controller, which means that while it is in theory slower than USB2.0, in practice it is generally faster to use.
Thus, if not already connected by FW, if your drive has that option, connect it that way. Also open the energy saver preference pane and make sure there is no checkmark against 'put hard drive to sleep when possible'.

Front Row has ALL video files in "Movies" list. WHY?

This is ridiculous! I have never had this problem before, but now it is out of hand. In Front Row under the "Movies" list, along with the movies that I have purchased from the iTunes store, every single video help file from various applications on my iMac are now in that list. What the heck is going on? Why is that happening? How can I make the list go back to just including movies that I have purchased from the iTunes store? PLEASE HELP! PLEASE!

Front Row looks in three places for movie files: iTunes in your user's account, iTunes libraries that are shared on the network and inside your user's "Movies" folder. If the movies are in your user's "Movies" folder, they'll appear in Front Row. This is the way that Front Row has worked from the beginning, it's not new. Are all the video help files inside your "Movies" folder? If so, I don't think there's a way to make them go away. Your applications may need them to be there, but I've never heard of any video help files like that before.
-Doug

Refresh content list in Front Row?

I'm using Front Row on a Mac Mini as a mediacenter for my LCD-TV. This Mac is only turned on as soon as I'm actually using it for listening to music, watching movies and video podcasts, etc.. When turned on it automatically starts Front Row and iTunes. Via iTunes I subscribed to various video podcasts which are downloaded as soon as a new episode is available.
The problem is that when new podcasts are available, iTunes actually starts downloading but they are not displayed in Front Row until I quit both Front Row and iTunes and restart Front Row. If I don't do this Front Row either says that there are no podcasts at all (even not the old ones) or it just doesn't display the new ones although they are finished downloading.
Is there a way to refresh the content list (eg for podcasts) in Front Row, either automatically or manual, without performing the sequence above? Or is it possible to make Front Row download the new episodes of the subscribed podcasts by itself without using iTunes?
Thanks.

first question:
are your movies in itunes also, thus appearing in front row with all the proper meta data? If so, you'll have to delete them from itunes also. Deleting just the movie from the HDD isn't enough

Switching to different Audio-Language-Tracks in Front Row

I have made a video documentary that has three audio tracks, which are *German, French and English.* The video container is m4v.
*I set German as the default track*. So far so good. It works on iTunes, on my iPod and on Quicktime. On each of these devices and players the German Audio Track is played by default. I can optionally choose between English and French. That's actually fantastic.
But there are some strange issues with Front Row. Front Row on my MacBook plays the video as expected with the German audio track. That's great, but Front Row on my iMac plays the English audio track by default. It's exactly the same Snow Leopard Installation on both systems, so why does Front Row on my iMac plays the *English Audio Track by default?*
The Front Row Menu is German on both systems.
One thing I noticed is that I had to change the *default Audio Track languange on my iTunes* to German, that wasn't the case on my MacBook, but anyway it had no effect.
Can anyone help me out with this issue?

we have several of our kids movies ripped with both original audio (mostly english) and danish.
until one of the latest updates to snow leopard and itunes (not sure whether it was THE last ones) the audiotrack played in front row, was the one chosen for the movie in itunes.
after ripping the movie, the default language would be english, but that could be changed by starting a movie in itunes and then choose 'danish' in the language 'bubble' in the on-screen menu. then i would quit the movie and itunes and start it in front row - now with the language chosen in itunes as default...
that is sadly not the case anymore and our kids can now only watch their movies with danish audio in itunes and not in front row, where all movies suddenly have english audio with no possiblity of change
is deleting the english audio track the only way to get the danish audio back into front row?

Front Row claims no music, but iTunes has all my music listed

I'm new to the Mac OS so completely in your hands to help with an issue I am having with trying to get Front Row going... here is what I am observing and my environment:
Situation
- All my music is listed in iTunes (videos as well)
- When using Front Row and looking at the library it states there is no music and that I need to purchase music from the iTunes store
- My MacBook from work (2.0GHz Intel with 10.5.6) has the iTunes library also from my exernal drive... BUT has all the music listed! :/
Environment
- Mac Mini (2.0GHz Intel)
- OS X v10.5.6
- Front Row v2.0 (229)
- All my music is on an external Buffalo TeraStation 1TB disk-array
- Music totals about 300GB (+/-)
- All my music is DRM-free and are 'ripped' from my CDs before getting the Mac... or mixes I have downloaded online from various sites such as Podomatic, etc.
What I've tried
* In looking at various sites online (including here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1826723&tstart=0) I have tried the solution of taking the default music location in iTunes and putting an alias to my external disk-array... and then rebuilt the library and rebooted... still Front Row claims nothing there.
* It was mentioned in another posting on Apple (I believe) about looking at the Front Row 'library file' and deleting it and then let it get re-created by the software... nothing.
Anyhow I'd love to use Front Row but really frustrated as to why it wont reflect all the music I already have in iTunes! Any suggestions? I'm new to the Mac OS, but by far not a newbie to computers so feel free to ask any in-depth questions which might help... I just might also need the path on how to find the information being asked.
Again, my Macbook does list everything in Front Row from the iTunes library and from my limited knowledge the only difference is that my laptop is solely connected wirelessly and the Mac Mini is via RJ45... but I would be shocked if that played into this. Suggestions?
Hopefully this will also help others as I've asked many of my 'Mac friends' and they are also stumped as to why Front Row wont show what is in my library.
Message was edited by: DrDtroit

1) No - downloaded a free song and it plays in iTunes, but claims nothing in Front Row. Also Front Row states there are no podcasts, even though I have at least 6 podcasts in iTunes all with a lot of content
2) I shared the Macbook library and I -can- view it with Front Row on the Mac Mini... so that worked.
2b) Front Row on the Macbook is able to work with not only my Macbook iTunes, but also loads the Mac Mini library and works with it. :/
2c) Switch source back to the Mac Mini, and nothing...
So is this as simple as a corrupt install or something? Seems something local to Front Row on the Mac Mini itself...

Making play list of movies in front row

In iTunes I created playlists for music videos I downloaded from youtube. I can play them just fine on my iPod. How can I do that with Front Row? The videos show up in the "movies" section. The playlist I created in iTunes shows up, but there are no files showing in them. Can this be done or is this something an update needs to address. I hope this is an easy fix. Something tells me it may not be. Any help would be great.
Thank you.

Right now Front Row does not support video playlists. I think we can expect this in the future, as some of Apple's hardware (like the third generation iPod nano) support video playlists. I would suggest you send Apple some Mac OS X feedback and let them know this feature is important to you.
-Doug

Two problems with Front Row

Hello.
I have all my music on my iMac and I am streaming it to my Mac Mini connected to my TV and stereo. What I have noticed is that the cover art on my music tracks don't show when I play any of the shared tracks or playlists, just the default picture with the two notes. Is there something I can do that will display it? I have tried to start iTunes and connect the shared library there before starting Front Row but that didn't help.
I also have a problem with listing my pictures in Front Row. I have an external drive connected to my Mini that has all my pictures and movies. I have no trouble playing the movies (I created an alias in the Movies catalog to the Movies catalog on the external drive), but if I create an alias in the Pictures catalog to the Pictures catalog on the external drive the catalog isn't shown in Front Row. Do I have to import all the pictures into iPhoto? I don't use iPhoto at all because I always use the program that came with my Nikon camera that shows all the picture information, such as focal length, what lens I used, white balance setting, etc. (or Adobe Photoshop Elements it I want to make some changes). Is there something I can do to fix this too?
Thanks,
Erik Aleksander Moe

Bernd, since your comp is still under warranty you may wish to give the online tech support a try -->HERE<--</a>. Click on the "Chat with a support agent" link.
If you don't want to go that route, then I suggest that you call them over the phone. Hopefully, you have the AppleCare Protection Plan if your 90 day warranty ran out.
Good Luck.
G5 20' iMac w/iSight/Remote, 2.5GB RAM, 250GB HD Mac OS X (10.4) OS 10.4.3

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.

Using front row, in reality

I have finally got front row to appear on my TV screen in the sitting room, this has involved quite a bit of faffing around having to mirror the display etc etc. It is primarily to play music from the iMac to my hifi which is also connected into the sitting room.
Never the less I am there but now I find that actually using the application is a real pain.
I have a reasonably sized library with around 9000 tunes. This leads to lots of artists and lots of albums, even at full scroll getting to the later parts of the alphabet takes ages, also you can't start from the other way, you always have to go A>Z, so if you want something at Y or what ever then you have a lot of scrolling to do.
If you accidentally page back then you are right back to the beginning.
I just think of front row is to be even slightly serious they need to enable it properly on a separate screen and they need to sort out these quite serious speed selection issues, way before worrying about Bonjour compatibility.
Does anyone have work arounds for my difficulties?

Any play lists will only show songs straight away.
This is a severe limitation so if I were to set a playlist by Genre>Electronica of which I have around 4000 tunes all you get is Genre>Songs
No hint of artists or albums.
I would have expected genre>artists>albums>songs I just can't guess what album one of 4000 tracks comes from!
One good bit of news is the latest update has significantly increased the speed of scrolling.
No proper external monitor support though

Rented movies don't appear in Front Row

There are archived posts on this from a year ago but nothing recent. I use a projector with a Mac for a home entertainment system and Front Row works well most of the time.
I just downloaded a rented movie which then appear in the Rented Movies folder of iTunes. When I start Front Row purchased movies appear in the Movies list but there is no sign of the rented movie. Front Row does not seem to be able to play rented movies. If this is the case then there is no point in me renting movies because I need to play them in iTunes, which gives poorer quality ("full screen" mode actually reduces the picture size to about one quarter of the screen).
iTunes 8.2.1, Front Row 2.1.7

I can play rented movies from iTunes on my iMac G5 screen but, as I reported, in "full screen" mode it is a quarter size - maybe a G5 quirk
Again, I would recommend you post in the iTunes forum. My iTunes does NOT display differently. You may be right, it may be a G5 thing, but you should find out for sure.
My solution is simple - I will not be renting any more movies from the iTunes Store.
You are not the first to request the ability to view rented iTunes movies in Front Row here in the Apple Discussions. I would suggest you send feedback to Apple. They do keep track of the requests:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
-Doug

Front row track listing

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for