Ver. 9 slow messed up Front Row, TV Shows show up missing, display issues

Ever since I've upgraded to iTunes 9 on Snow Leopard, it's been a constant joke.
-Launching it randomly consumes 100% CPU and sometimes I end up having to force quit. This problem did not exist on older versions. I repaired permissions, repaired disk, built a new iTunes library but to no avail. Same beach ball of doom.
-TV Shows in my iTunes database are showing up as Movies in Front Row even though they're correctly categorized and labeled as TV Shows and not Movies.
-When I woke up this morning, TV Shows (I might add, TV Shows not purchased through iTunes Store) are showing up as missing. If I click the file, it plays but I have to go through all 2500+ episodes showing up this way to remove that annoying icon saying the file is missing.
-I have it setup where the TV Show always played on a separate monitor set to fit to screen. Previous versions of iTunes did this with no problem but nope version 9. Not only does each episode restart on the main monitor, it plays as "original size" meaning every time I try to watch a few episodes I have to get up and click the mouse a few times to get it working properly.
Snow Leopard has left a sour taste in my mouth but iTunes 9 is really making me begin to think Apple doesn't care about quality software anymore. They need to get over this NDA nonsense and have a real beta testing program to squash these bugs before they turn millions of users into their beta testers. When Microsoft puts out software that looks stable in comparison to Apple's software as of late, there's a problem going on. Case and point, Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard
Apple: The New Microsoft

So like I said before Apple hasn't made a fix for this but there is a work around...and yes I've tested it but only with one file. Go to http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10443786#10443786 it has a step by step and if you have lot it's going to be kind of time consuming.

Similar Messages

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 using iphoto as core to display photos?

Hi all,
i have a question about leopard front row as i still have not got it yet in asia i wonder if someone could enlighten me about using front row and iphotos.
main thing is that i do not have iLife install in my Macbook at all, but after upgrading to leopard will front row still be using iphotos as its core photos display and slide shows? as i really do not need the use of iLife that's y i do not need that to be on my Macbook.
Would appreciate someone would enlighten me.

Front Row requires you to have iPhoto. The iPhoto library is the only place it looks for pictures. If you don't want to use iPhoto, which comes on your MacBook, you could use a third party utility like .
-Doug

FRONT ROW TV SHOWS HELP!

i currently record tv shows onto my mac. the problem is... when i covert the file to iTunes, i put the genre as TV SHOW and even the SETTINGS as TV SHOW. the file doesn't even show up on the TV show section of FRONT ROW. is there a way to put that video in the TV SHow section? it would really help me if you can answer this very frustrating issue with my few months old iMac.

You didn't say how you get your TV shows into your mac. I use EyeTV so decided to play around with this. I EXPORTED a recorded TV show from EyeTV and chose the "for iTunes" format. The resulting .m4a file, I dragged into my Music folder. From there Frontrow would display it but when I played it (using the Music selection in Frontrow and then looking under "Songs") I only got the sound, no video.
Next I re-EXPORTED from EyeTV, this time in "for iMovie" format and it produced a folder. Inside that folder was another folder labelled "Media" and within that was a file "Clip 01.dv". I dragged that to my Movies folder. From there Frontrow would play it (sound and video) using the Videos selection and then looking under "Movies". Quality wasn't as great as I hoped, but maybe when exporting, you could try one of the other formats in the pulldown. (I tried the Quicktime Movie choice with no obvious improvment but perhaps others would give different results.

Front Row TV Show menu gets confused and jumps back

I recently upgraded my Intel Mac mini to Mac OS X 10.5.5 (Leopard). Front row seems to get confused as I browse through my TV Shows menu. For instance, if I scroll down to "Heroes" (season 2) the select bar seems to jump to "Grey's Anatomy" on it's own. After it does this it also confuses the artwork for the shows.
I've only found one instance of this issue doing a Google search, but nothing here in Apple discussion forums. Has anyone dealt with this successfully.?

Still waiting

Front Row TV Shows in Movie folder!!??

Why are my TV shows showing up in my Movies folder when I use Front row, they are in the TV show Folder when i am in iTunes??
This started with the last itunes update, never had the problem before.
Thanks, Mark

*As fireflip suggested*,
+For 10.5.8 and iTunes 9 at least, select the show(s) and change the media kind to "Podcast" by getting info then going to "Options". Quit iTunes and restart then change media kind back to TV Show and restart again. They will now show up correctly in Front Row...+
joemaurice wrote:
I just did this and now i cannot change them back to TV shows, it will not process them. I can change them to Music and then back to Podcast but not back to TV shows or Movies.
Would approach this tip with caution
Everything fireflip suggested is correct Except that *+each file must be changed indivdually+*, no batch-editing here. I tried that and had to trash them all, then re-import them from my external HD. Also, I don't remember if I needed to close iTunes and reopen it before changing back to TV shows (I think all I had to do is close out the info dialog box, then reopen it to change back to TV). You may want to try it both ways.

Front Row screen shows up randomly

On a pretty regular basis, the Front Row menu takes over my screen. I'm not doing anything that seems to make this happen; the mouse isn't going to some corner and activating it and I'm not pressing some key combo.
It's really annoying. Anyone?

Command-Esc will activate it... there is slight delay, may be it's why you think you're not doing anything.... or could it be another user in the room with a remote that you're mac is picking up?

Front Row not showing playlists

On my MacBook I have my playlists in iTunes in folders. In Front Row all the folders show up under playlists, and when selected they show the playlists in them, EXCEPT for the first folder of playlists - it lists all the songs in all the playlists within that folder instead.
Anyone else had this problem? Any solution?

I have this same problem. My guess is that everyone does, whether they know it or not.
My 'workaround' is to create a folder with a name that will make it always first, and put in some playlists that you don't care are not displayed in sub-playlists in Front Row.
I know, weak workaround, but at least the folders that do matter will show up properly.
Was hoping latest Front Row update (1.3) would fix this, but problem still there.

Front Row versus iTunes

Upgraded my G5 dual 1.8 tower to Leopard. Couldn't wait to use Front Row on the 30" Apple Cinema Display.
Heart-broken to discover that all my movies and tv shows from my iTunes library are practically unwatchable when played through Front Row. The video barely holds itself together, looking as if it were streaming video playing through a slow internet connection, rather than from a file sitting in my internal hard drive's iTunes library.
So why do those same videos play flawlessly in full screen when I play them through iTunes?
It couldn't be the video card... It's an ATI x800, with 256MBs of VRAM.
Could Front Row be such a memory hog that it needs more than the 2.5GBs of RAM I already have just to play video files from my internal drive smoothly?
Could it be that Front Row requires so much processing power that the G5's dual 1.8 processors just aren't fast enough?
Obviously, If the solution is more RAM, my problem can be solved. If it's processing power, I'm screwed.
Does anyone know why Front Row can't play video on my system when iTunes plays it perfectly?
Thanks in advance!

Wow. Good question, Doug. Yes, playing the files through Quicktime full screen produces the same stutter effect. Not as bad as through Front Row, but bad enough to notice. What does that mean?
P.S. Yes, these are all movies & TV shows I bought from the iTunes store. (Lost, Rosemary's Baby, The Office, etc.)

Front Row 2 - Why a standalone application?

Perhaps this thread can consolidate some of the various other complaints against Front Row 2 that seem to stem from the same issue that I, at least, perceive as being a big part of the problem: that FR2 is a standalone application in Leopard rather than a front-end interface for media-handling applications in the background, as it was in Tiger.
So I'm just curious and would like to hear from those who may be more "in the know" why Apple made this move? Why is Front Row "better" as a standalone application? When in Front Row in Tiger, if you watched a movie, QuickTime would be handling it in the background. If you listened to music, it was iTunes that was handling it. If you watched a slideshow, iPhoto was responsible. If you were watching a DVD, DVD Player was doing the work. In Leopard, however, Front Row handles all these media files/types by itself, and I've only seen that as a negative so far.
For example: in Tiger, a custom slideshow I had created in iPhoto would be displayed exactly as I had specified (including custom timings, photo framing, etc.) when viewing that slideshow in Front Row. In Leopard, not all those settings are carried over and the slideshow doesn't display as I've set it up (although it continues to display perfectly in iPhoto). In Tiger, all my album artwork in iTunes was displayed correctly in Front Row. In Leopard, the artwork of several albums will not display even though the album art is visible in iTunes (and via CoverFlow and QuickLook in Finder). And, of course, there's the issue that many report that music playing in FR2 will stop if FR2 is exited, or even when you just exit the music section of FR2. Why the disconnect? By having Front Row be a standalone application, it just opens the door for issues where the files/media isn't being correctly handed over from its proper application to what we see in Front Row.
While I do mostly love the new interface of Front Row (although I miss the desktop fading into the background effect upon launch of FR2), I've seen it take a pretty significant performance hit. Some HD movie trailers that played flawlessly in Front Row on Tiger are sluggish and choppy on FR2 on the same hardware. These same trailers play just fine by themselves in QuickTime, however. Tiger's Front Row properly showed previews for all my slideshows and movies almost instantly, while FR2 takes quite awhile to create previews for everything - and isn't able to create previews at all for some files (Apple's own HD movie trailers, for example).
Since FR2 is trying to handle all the media and filetypes by itself, rather than handing off the tasks to the proper applications in the background that can handle them more efficiently, it seems to become a bloated system hog. After spending about 15 minutes in FR2 going through various media, I noticed it seemed to slow down more and more. I exited to check Activity Monitor, and even though Front Row wasn't even running anymore, it was using almost 1GB of RAM. Evidently, all those previews it has to create (starting over each time you get into FR2, I might add) really start to take a toll over time with heavy use. For someone with a HTPC-Mac who wasn't accustomed to ever having to exit Front Row in Tiger - much less actually restart the machine because of it - it seems like a horrible step backwards.
So again, I'm hoping someone can offer some insights into why Front Row was changed to a standalone application instead of being further enhanced as a front-end UI for the proper media applications running in the background. I understand why they wanted to change the interface to be AppleTV-like, but I don't understand the loss of features and the backwards step in performance.

That's a benefit to the PPC users, of course, but I can't imagine that was a major influence on Apple's decision to do it. Would they really remove features and hinder overall performance just to cater to old hardware? That doesn't seem very Apple-like. Nor does it make much sense to handicap Front Row for everyone who does have a capable Intel Mac just so others can run it on old PPC machines (which likely can't get the best performance out of Front Row anyway, given the way it gobbles up system resources by bearing the burden of dealing with so many forms of media/files by itself all at once).
Maybe the bigger picture - which is harder to see now only a few days after the launch of Leopard - involves better long-term development of Front Row features that will be easier to implement with it being a standalone application rather than a front-end UI. So while it will be great when/if the performance is improved and new features are added, it's little consolation to those who upgraded to Leopard (and I do love most of the rest of 10.5, really) but think we took a major step back with Front Row.
Front Row isn't a big deal to those who use it infrequently, but for those who were somewhat dependent on it as a vital component of HTPC, these "little" issues add up and are pretty frustrating.

Front row in Lion 10.7 issue (-70012) and video_ts not playing issue -solved

Hi all,
thought I just post my solution to the front row issues in 10.7. I looked for a solution for days, and when I found it, I thought it would make other peoples live easier if I combine everything in one post.
I actually had a couple of issues:
PROBLEM:
first front row stopped playing VIDEO_TS files in 10.6.
the second issue occurred when I thought upgrading to 10.7 would solve the issue; Front row still couldn't play the VIDEO_TS, because FRONT ROW was gone...
SYMPTOMS:
both issues always showed the same symptoms:
when a dvd-back folder was selected, front row would show a black screen, and then, caused by my frantic pushing the ESC button, front row would give me the dvd player not valid -70012 error.
CAUSE:
so what happened? I chose to buy my MBP 17" with the smallest HDD (yep sorry, was cheap-s-ing). Then later that year, I decided to buy the HDD caddy and switch my internal superdrive for a SSD. I ended up placing the original HDD in the hdd caddy, which I then put in the Superdrive's slot, and I placed the SSD in the slot where the original HDD was residing first. I now had a MBP 17" late 2011, with vertex3 SSD. I forgot, I also put in 16 GB, replacing the 8 GB.
So, when I back-upped all my favorite DVDs as VIDEO_TS files, (no I did not download dvds through usenet), grabbed the popcorn, and started Front Row, the disappointment began. No VIDEO_TS file would play, always the same -70012 error message. So after a lot of internet research I stumbled upon a guy who said: yeah, you have to upgrade to 10.7. After the upgrade my FRONT ROW was gone.
SOLUTIONS:
In 10.6:
As Apple's DVD player is always looking for the internal dvd player as a prerequisite to start, Front Row, which uses Apple's DVD player as video player, will throw up the -70012 error. 'Cause it finds the HDD in the HDD Caddy instead of the SuperDrive. So in 10.6 (and in 10.7 also) you can use the following solution:
(I got this solution partial from http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20070591-263.html)
1: modify the DVDPlayback framework that the DVD Player uses so that it will recognize external drive as a valid DVD playback device. (The HDD Caddy came with an external casing for the SuperDrive)
2: download a hex editor (I used Hexedit 220 from http://hexedit.sourceforge.net/ )
3: Go to the folder /System/Library/Frameworks/ and back up the file "DVDPlayback.framework."
4: Open Hexedit_220 and use it to open the following file:/System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A/DVDPlayback.
5: Using the editor's find&replace through COMMAND-F, replace "Internal" with the text "External" and save the file. Note that Hexedit also saves a backup automatically.
6: Close the file once saved, and then run a permissions fix on the boot drive using Disk Utility. Then restart the system and you should now be able to play DVDs off the external drive using DVD Player. That is, If you use an external dvd player (which I don't use).
7: I inserted a very small USB stick in the MBP with no data on it, and Front Row and Apple DVD Player accepted this. I could now play my backupped DVDs.
ofcourse, I still wanted to upgrade to 10.7, so here's the solution to 10.7
10.7:
upgrading was a simple click with the mouse, worked like a charm, Office still worked, and some minor updates installed through software.
Front Row however, gone...
I used the steps outlined in http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/21/front-row-for-mac-os-x-lion/ to get Front Row back:
- first get the package from Madhatter: Download the free package installer by MacHatter
- install, or customize the install
- all done.
Then I used the steps from step 3 through 7 outlined above in solution 10.6.
Catch:
So I did not find a solution to fooling the DVD Player / Front Row with the USB stick. So everytime I watch VIDEO_TS in Front Row the USB stick must be inserted. But, the good news, I can still use my remote control for something.
Hope I helped some guys out there with this solution.
Regards,
Johnno

The issue has previously hit Apple TV owners. I think people came to the conclusion that it was a HDMI handshake problem. Basically the process where the device and TV greet each other, make up some rules about communicationg and what their secret key is and so on.
I haven't tried this yet, but my local service center says that basically I can do one of two things:
- Downgrade to 10.7 and then download the 10.7.1 update from Apples website. To do this without having a Mac OS X Lion disc, you can hold down CMD + R when the computer boots to be able to access the recovery partition on newer Macs that come without the OS disc.
or..
- Put something in between the computer and TV. For example, if you're using an amplifier as a part of your home theather set up, this will probably work. The service guy said he has his Mini connected to the amplifier, which in turn is connected to speakers and a projector. The inverted colors still appear, but only once per night (i.e. after the first problem is reset by resetting the link then it's fine).
For now, I'll do my little dance of changing the source on the TV from HDMI 1 to HDMI 2 and then back again to reset the link... But, I'll probably try downgrading in a few days.

ITunes and Front-Row no longer in Sync

Since I moved my whole iTunes library to an external drive, Front-Row is no longer showing if a TV Show is new or not. And it won't update the iTunes counter for that show. The video-podcasts are working correctly. When I download a new one, it shows as new (with a blue mark) on front-row. But not the new TV-Shows I downloaded. I'm using Tiger, Mini-Mac Intel and Front-Row 1.x
The iTunes library is still at my internal drive, I just moved the Music folder to the external drive, and setup iTunes to read from there. Front-Row does show everything correctly, but its not in sync with iTunes.
Thanks for any help.
Wk
Message was edited by: WilliamkWusik

No one? :cry:

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.

Places is not shown in front row

when I go to front row,it shows that there is no photo in this album, while I have photos linked to google maps in iPhoto!
where is the bug?

I don't even see "Places" anywhere inside Front Row's "Photos" module. Which version of Mac OS X, Front Row, QuickTime and iPhoto are you using?
-Doug

AppleTV or Mac Mini with Front Row?

I'm trying to decide whether to get an Apple TV, or a Mac Mini running Front Row. Cost is not the main issue. I live in The Netherlands where Apple has no movie rental service. I have a large DVD collection that I am slowly ripping to an external hard disk for use in iTunes. Any thoughts on which is the better approach?

Yes - I had actually stumbled across Plex since posting my original question and have been playing with it on my iMac. It is very nice indeed and a whole load more functional than Front Row yet with a very nice user interface. The information and graphics it automatically downloads on movies in your library is especially impressive. Apple would do well to consider taking over this project and incorporating it into the next release of Front Row and Apple TV! Incidentally, I see that it is a port of the popular XBMC application, that started life as the open source home theatre application for the X-Box, but has since gone on to be the main home theatre applications for Linux. Indeed, Plex has swung it for me - it is a class above what the Apple TV can provide and justifies the extra expense of the Mac Mini. In terms of user interface, it is no more difficult to use than Front Row, but because of the power of system it is more complex to set up (but not by any means impossible). Integration with the iLife apps is automatic.

Ver. 9 slow messed up Front Row, TV Shows show up missing, display issues

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