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

Similar Messages

Playing movies through front row from ext HD

I recently bought Lacie HD firewire 800 1 terabyte and was thinking of loading all my movie files into the new HD and run from it. I've tried aliasing in movies directory in my Imac main HD but it still taking up space in my main HD. Can anyone help ?

I use Front Row to play movies from a different hard drive. Put the movies (they can be organized in sub-folders) in a folder on the external drive and Command-Option-drag that folder to the Movies folder in your home folder. When you choose "Movies" in Front Row, select "Movies Folder", then the folder on the external drive.
If the movies are still using space on your boot drive, it means you didn't delete them from the boot drive (and empty the trash) after copying them to the external drive.

Remove certain movies from Front Row

Hi guys!
I appreciate any advice or guidance on the issue; thank you in advance.
I have my movies in iTunes; they play fine in FR. A good chunk of them have terrible resolution from being compressed over and over with bad setting choices, mainly digitized vhs footage from home movies. Anyways, these movies look pretty bad.
Luckily, I have the originals on a external hd. They are mostly .avi and are in a better quality. I've realized I can just bring these into my "movies" folder, and they work fine, thanks to Perian. I do not do this though because I don't want to occupy space on my main hd, so I just make aliases and bring them into the "movies" folder.
Now, this is okay with me, but I'm a picky guy, and I like my style...
I want to change the metadata so that I can show "artwork" rather that a frame from the movie, plus have a description etc. On a side note if anyone knows of a better way then I am doing it, I am all ears!
So, I open the movies in Quicktime, and save as a reference movie. I then bring the reference movie into MetaX (which lets me add artwork, etc...) Then I can just pop those into iTunes.
Now, this is where it gets tricky/weird. I realize that:
1. I can drop these files in Itunes.
2. This takes up space on my main hd (which I do not want if I do not have to)
3. I now have duplicates (a low rez and a good quality version)
4. Syncing my iPod will bring the reference moves along "for the ride"
ok, so I can just choose which movies to sync to my ipod by checking which movies I want in the setting menu, so no worry about the reference files coming with.
I was wondering is there a way to make an alias of the reference file so that it doesn't take up any space on my main hd?
Irregardless of that situation, I am still stuck with 2 versions of my movies in iTunes.
I want the poorer quality movies on my iPod and iTunes, but only my good quality movies in Front Row. Is there a way to remove the poor quality moves from Front Row while still keeping them in iTunes?
Okay, one last question, which probably should have been the first one. What is the difference between a reference movie and an alias, outside of being able to change meta data? Is a reference movie the equivalent to the "box" that a dvd comes in? You know, it has some pictures on it, cast, description etc...?
If I bring a reference file onto my iPod, will it bring the original (good quality) movie instead? Or have I now got some sort of super awesome compressed version of the movie without any quality loss (or is this some sort of fantastic dream)?
Thank you for any advice. I'm sorry that this is a little long-winded.
I expect someone to replay with "No." as the answer. LOL
Thanks everybody,
Ethan

You're kind of on your way with the solution.
I would like to have posters for my good quality film in itunes+FR, but not on my ipod.
I want the low quality ones on my ipod, but not in my front row.
I've come up with a semi-solution so far.
I've brought the good ones into itunes, with the "copy files to itunes music folder" unchecked. I changed all the info in itunes, and posters etc.... Then I marked all of my low rez movies as tv shows, in a show called "movies"
it is not an ideal solution, but what I am really after is having a "clean" look in itunes when you choose "movies". This might be as close as I can get.
I would prefer something better if at all possible. But I can live with this if I have to. My main concern is that my "tv shows" folder is overflowing with shows. Luckily, they are grouped together by show, and not just in random order.
One thing that would really help, I do not know if this is possible. This would be the ideal solution: if you could create a "show name" folder in the "movies"tab (in itunes/FR)(not to be confused w/ the "movies" in finder) as you can in the "tv shows" tab in itunes.
I've found that because front row has a lack of preferences, and itunes's preferences do not give you enough control; this just turns into a mess.
iLife should be simple, hence the "i" in iLife. LOL
Ethan

Unable to play any music after updating FRONT ROW TO 1.2.2

Please help, my Front Row refuse to play any music, after updating to 1.2.2 a day ago.
it shows all the folders in the iTune and the playlists but none of the songs in the folder, you keep pressing play and pause button and it TAKE YOU TO A shufle and the n ext one massage says "A PROBLEM HAS OCCURED".
It play the music videos and movies fron Front Row.
Please anyone enlighten me with your wisdom.
L. Namgyal
iMac inTel Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Hi
I have the excact same problem, however the problem is in my case not the upgrade in Frontrow, as the trouble was present before aswell. Everything works fine for me ONCE, but if i return to my desktop after having activated frontrow, and then reactivate it, i get the same error as you. I can solve the problem by Quiting FR and then relaunching it again, but this is not acceptable.

Movies on front row

i have some movie files in my external hard disk, my external hard disk is in ntfs format....
im just wondering how can i see these movies in front row???
thanks

Create a folder in you external HD and put the movies in it.
Create an alias of this folder (right-click on the folder and select Make Alias)
Put the alias in the Movies folder within your home folder.
This way whatever movies you put inside that folder in your external HD will be available in Front Row.
You can also create an alias for each movie you have in the external HD and put those alias in your Movies folder but I think it is easier doing it the other way because you do not have to keep creating aliases.

Mac mini turns off after watching movie in front row

we were watching movies through front row on my mac mini (intel core duo from 2004, 1 gb processor) and it turned off a few times, all within about 15-30 minutes of each other. I just upgraded to leopard a few months back but have not had any issues until now. the mac mini is also connected to a hard drive where we store our movies.
Has this happened to anybody else?

I have the same problem. It's pretty annoying and renders the app useless. For now I solved the problem by preventing my Macbook going to sleep via the power settings. Since this is a waste of energy, I would appreciate any suggestions.

Playing movies in Front Row one after another automatically?

I have a number of short video clips that I can watch with Front Row. However, every time a clip ends, I have to go and click “play” on the next clip and this is annoying. I am wondering if there is a way to make movies play one after another without stopping. Thanks for the help!

David,
Thanks for the help. I'm still thinking there must be SOME way to pull this off. It seems like Mac's can do just about anything if you take the time to figure it out. Why wouldn't the people who designed Front Row not add this feature? It doesn't make any sense. There has to be a way. Anybody else have any ideas?

Playing rental movies with front row

Is there any way that they can upgrade front row so that i can watch rented movies through it? I'm a very lazy person and i want to watch my rented movies from my bed without moving. I can use the remote to watch most things but it won't let me play rented movies with it.

Unfortunately, rental movies do not appear in Front Row. I believe this is because of the inability of Front Row to alert you (and have you click "okay") to the rental agreement requirements. It may also be because Front Row does not give iTunes feedback about when you started playing the movie and/or when you're done. If you would like to see rental movies in iTunes, as do quite a few people who post in this forum, I would suggest you send Apple some Mac OS X feedback (since there's no form specifically for Front Row):
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
-Doug

Which movies will front row play.

My itunes library is on an external disc, however some large movies are put into my itunes libraries as QT reference files to movies held on another external HD. This all works very well in itunes, although sometimes there is a slight delay while itunes searches for the files or the other external HD wakes up.
Front row won't play these reference files, or it won't for me and seems to cause some issues when I try.
Is this something I should expect or can I fix it.
If this is to be expected, is it because the files are on another external HD (although all my itunes files are on an ext HD anyway) or is it because the files they are referenced to are not mp4's (think they are .dv or .mov)

They simply don't play and when I press menu or escape I get a message saying that itunes has quit or had problems. I rather suspect any problems I'm having are down to sharing with front row 1.2.2. it seems I get differing results every-time I try to share some video. Actually 1.2.2 seems very dodgy at sharing.
The .mov and .dv are on a desktop G5 (no front row) so I am unable to test them directly without sharing or copying to anther mac. But I have never had one play yet with sharing. I have had mp4's not play sometimes and then play the next time I try, so I'm tending to believe it's a sharing issue, especially when I play the mp4's from the same mac (no sharing) they work every-time.
I suppose the next thing to do is to copy one of the .mov's to a mac with front row, but they're all so big, anyhow I'll give it a go.

Aliases of movie files in ~Movies/ for Front Row usage

Hi everyone.
In the first place I apologise for my bad English.
I want one applescript for folder action wich will make an aliases of all movie files (.mov, .avi, .mpeg, .mpeg, .divx ,etc.) in freshly mounted CD/DVD/HD in ~Movies/ folder because I want to play those files in Front Row.
Another Script is needed for deleting unwanted aliases upon unmounting that CD/DVD/HD.
I figured out that all CD/DVD/HD are mounted in /Volumes folder, and I created such two scripts:
On mounting drive:
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
try
tell application "Finder"
make new alias file to these_items at "Macintosh HD:Users:USERNAME:Movies:" with properties {name:"Movie"}
end tell
end try
end adding folder items to
On unmounting drive:
on removing folder items from this_folder after losing these_items
try
tell application "Finder"
delete alias file "Macintosh HD:Users:USERNAME:Movies:Movie"
end tell
end try
end removing folder items from
I attached those two scripts as /Volumes folder action and they are working good, but there is a problem.
When I mount CD, and then when I connect my iPod, alias of CD is moving to trash and new alias to iPod is created with same name. Also, when I connect iPod, and then CD and then I disconnect iPod alias to CD is moving to trash. ****, that's not quite what I am looking for.
Apparently I have and idea, but I lack experience with applescript.
Creating alias script should work like that:
on mounting drive in filesystem
1) Scanning about 2 levels for QT supported files
2) Making alias to each movie file in those 2 levels in ~Movies/
3) Adding constant Spotlight comment (for alias removing purposes in other script) to those alias files in ~Movies/
Removing unwanted Aliases:
on unmounting drive from filesystem
1) Scanning ~Movies/ For alias files with constant spotlight comment
2) removing those alias files (moving to trash preferably, for security purposes)
This way script would make only good aliases, and there could be multiple drives mounting into system. Apparently, after unmounting any drive aliases with constant spotlight comment will be moved to trash, but I don't have any idea for that.
Can someone help me?

Hello imrik,
Firstly, I don't use OSX myself, so the rest of this post is based upon my experience under OS9 and some knowledge from OSX documentations, etc.
Folder Actions suite (terms for Folder Action's handler) is defined in StandardAdditions.osax, that is located at (probably):
/Library/ScriptingAdditions/StandardAdditions.osax
In brief, the dictionary states (under OS9):
on adding folder items to fda after receiving aa
-- fda is alias of the folder that receives new item(s)
-- aa is list of aliase(s) the folder fda received
end adding folder items to
on removing folder items from fda after losing nn
-- fda is alias of the folder that loses item(s)
-- nn is list of aliase(s) or list of item name(s) the folder fda loses.
end removing folder items from
* Open the dictionary of the OSAX in Script Editor for more details.
As far as I can tell (under OS9.1, AS1.8.3), 'removing folder items' handler always provides list of names that the folder loses, in spite of the description in OSAX dicitonary.
I don't know the reason why 'removing folder items' handler provides {} in 'after losing' argument in your environment. It should provide list of names of unmounted volumes (unless '/Volumes/' directory is something so special as to deceive Folder Action Server in some way.)
(Possibly your method to check the handler's arguments is not appropriate.)
If you want to check the class of value/object in AppleScript, the proper way is to use a code such as SCRIPT1:
-- SCRIPT1
set x to (path to desktop) -- alias
--set x to {1,2,3} -- list
set c to class of x
display dialog ("" & c) -- this will show class name string of x.
return c -- this will return class of x in result window (when run in Script Editor).
-- END OF SCRIPT1
And to check the contents of value/object, you may try SCRIPT2 (for AppleScript's native value/object):
-- SCRIPT2
-- in target script (run in e.g. Applet or Folder Actions)
set x to {1, 2, 3}
tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
activate
set the clipboard to x
end tell
-- in checker script (run in Script Editor)
set y to the clipboard
return y -- y is given in result window of Script Editor.
-- END OF SCRIPT2
So as a whole, you may try something like SCRIPT3 as your test Folder Action and SCRIPT3A as its corresponding checker:
-- SCRIPT3
on adding folder items to fda after receiving aa
tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
activate
set the clipboard to {fda, aa}
display dialog ("" & (class of aa) & return & (class of (aa's item 1)))
end tell
end adding folder items to
on removing folder items from fda after losing nn
tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
activate
set the clipboard to {fda, nn}
display dialog ("" & (class of nn) & return & (class of (nn's item 1)))
end tell
end removing folder items from
-- END OF SCRIPT3
-- SCRIPT3A (to be run in Script Editor)
set y to the clipboard
return y -- clipboard contents is displayed in result window of Script Editor.
-- END OF SCRIPT3A
That's all for now.
Good luck,
H
Mac OS 9.1.x

Unable to view movies in Front Row

Hello all
I have been having some issues since updating front row to the latest version when I attempt to view movies I have downloaded from the net. I save the files in the right location under Movies and when I navigate via Front Row I can actually see the files displayed correctly however as soon as I try and play them front row just exits out...
I honestly have no clue what is wrong and would thus apprciate any help on troubleshooting this issue.
Thanks
-Pavan
iMac 20' Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 256GB RAM ATI x1600 Mac OS X (10.4.7) Logitech s530 Mac wireless laser keyboard and mouse

This tends to happen when Front Row encounters a file format it is not familiar with. If it is a Divx file you need to have the quicktime divx components installed. Front Row uses quicktime to read the files so in general as long as quicktime can open it Front Row can. If the file has AC3 audio it may also crash if the proper codecs are not installed.

Iphones 3gs movies in Front Row

I can watch the movies I take on my iphone 3gs fine from within Quicktime; however, when I try to view them in Front Row all I get is the audio. My guess is because the aspect ratio of the movie is weird (basically the width is narrower than the height). Is there any quick way to fix this problem?

If you know that you have watched the movie, you could deselect it in iTunes - this should prevent it showing in Front Row
Go to the list view in iTunes, and then uncheck the ticked box next to the movie's name. You can use this for songs etc too...

Hiding Movies from Front Row

I have a couple of 'adult' themed .mp4 and they show up in front row regardless of where I move their folder location. The names of the files are generic however a thumbnail of the content shows up and very much gives away what they are.
Is there anyway to place these .mp4 somewhere that is more private?
thanks

Front Row looks in three places for videos: You iTunes, your user's "Movies" folder and in the "Sources" option that looks for other computers with iTunes sharing turned on. If you movies aren't in iTunes, you can move them from your "Movies" folder and put them somewhere like your "Documents" folder. They'll still play with the QuickTime Player application (or other video player utility). If you have QuickTime Pro you could add one last frame that's different and set that as the "Poster frame". Then the preview would be that frame and not something else...
-Doug

Need to add movies to Front Row

I have *.avi files that I've added to an external LaCie hard drive. Front Row does not show these movies, only ones in the Movie folder on the main drive. How do I get movies on the external drive to be available in Front Row?

I have movies on an external drive and watch them via front row on my Mac Mini.
Front row recognizes aliases so what you need to do is creat an alias for the folder your files are in and then move that alias to your movies folder. Front row will then recognize the files and you should be able to play them.

Soft subtitles in movies and Front Row problem solved

Hi,
Sorry for this long post but I hope this will help other users of Front Row.
This is how I create a testmovie.mov file from an DVD, TS_FOLDER or other source and the subtitles (soft) will work in Front Row, Quicktime, iTunes, without Perian or other special plugin. In my case the subtitle is NOT burn into the video. It is a track in the testmovie.mov file.
Also I use Elgato turbo h.264 HD to speed up coding. Not necessary.
1. Create a .m4v movie file (h.264 codec)
In my case I start the application that comes with Elgato turbo h.264 HD device, called Turbo.264.HD
2. Drop the DVD, TS_FOLDER or other video to convert, onto Turbo.264.HD application or other video converting application.
3. Click on the little "i" info symbol and the select Audio. The source maybe contains different languages. Click OK.
4. Select Format. In my case "Apple TV" format (I will use this video on my Mac Mini). Click Start. After a while the video is finished. In this example I call it testmovie.m4v
5. Download subtitles from Internet. Google: subtitles download
6. Open the testmovie.m4v in RoadMovie application. This application works for me, but there may be others. http://www.bitfield.se/roadmovie
7. In RoadMovie, click on Subtitles button and then open the downloaded subtitle file. In this example called testmovie.srt Also, click on the "little eye" Preview. In this view you can adjust the time offset for the subtitle to sync with the video.
8. In RoadMovie select "Export for: Flattened". This will create a testmovie.mov file with a new subtitle track in it, without ecoding the video.
9. Open testmovie.mov in, in my case, Quicktime Pro and the select Show Movie Properties.
10. Select the video track and set the Transparency to Composition. Layer 0
11. Select the subtitle track and set Transparency to Straight Alpha. Layer 0
12. Save changes and close Quicktime Pro
13. Move the testmovie.mov to Movies folder
14. Start Front Row and select Movies->Movies Folder->testmovie.mov
Voila!
/rob

So, as far as I can tell, it's a one-or-the-other situation. Either Front Row doesn't display subtitles (actually, no video at all), or it does (with this workaround). Can't seem to toggle them. If anyone knows of a better way...
So, good job in finding a (multi-step, multi-application, convoluted) way to get this to work, but I'd hardly call this "solved." Don't get me wrong, I'd have never figured this out in a million years. Just...not quite ideal, is it?
I gave Plex a spin, and while it does offer the ability, in theory, to toggle subtitles, I haven't been able to get it to work, either with with this trick or without. I can't believe this is so hard to get right...Apple, if you're listening, there are people who use Front Row. Keep working on it! How about using that middle button of the remote for bringing up an options menu for the currently playing track, rather than duplicating the play/pause button?
Sorry, just frustrated; I finally got a Mac Mini for hooking up to the TV, and now I'm discovering how hard this is.

Making play list of movies in front row

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