Continuing the “Breathe new life into OS X” series including Breathe new life into OS X Safari & Breathe new life into OS X iChat, our focus will be on Apple’s Front Row application. Out of the box, Front Row taps into your current media library composed of iTunes albums, movies, television shows, iPhoto albums, and DVDs. Enjoy your multimedia library from the comfort of your couch or bed using the included Front Row remote. Perfect right? Nothing more to ask for. Right? Wrong.
The convenience offered by Apple’s Front Row application dissipates once users begin to push the limitations of the software. Where does the convenience of Front Row begin to waver?
- Front Row only indexes your home Movies directory (~/Movies) and your current video library via iTunes. No preference pane for external drives or directories.
- Television shows downloaded via bittorent will most likely fail playback despite being saved to your ~/Movies directory.
Both of these pitfalls can be remedied in 5-minutes or less breathing new life into the integrated “media center” built into all current Apple computers.
Support bittorrent downloads
Missing your favorite television show - be it Greys Anatomy, Nip/Tuck, or Prison Break - is a thing of past. The modern convenience of DVRs and the bittorrent network allow anyone with access to broadband internet to acquire their favorite episodes within hours (or less). Until now, playback of downloaded episodes often required the open source VLC Media Player due to the video encoding - DivX / XviD - of most distributed television episodes.
The fix? A small XviD QuickTime Component.
- Depending on your hardware configuration, download the PPC or Intel binaries (~2MB).
- Unzip and drag the AviImporter-r7 & XviD_Codec-r58 components into ~/Library/QuickTime. If the directory does not exist, create it and then drag the components within. Restart in order for Front Row to properly detect the new components.
- Test your new QuickTime components by dragging any bittorrent episode into the Movies directory and starting Front Row. If all is as it should be, Front Row will play your file(s) as they were meant to be watched - from the comforts of your couch / bed with remote in hand.
Expand on your Front Row experience
Now that Front Row is configured for playback of the more widely accepted XviD codec, the possibilities for video playback are endless. The following are additional links to supplement your video library needs.
- MacTheRipper - Freeware DVD ripper allows users to make “legal” copies of their DVD library creating region free images of disks.
- Handbrake - Once your videos have been stripped of their encryption, pass the video_ts folder through Handbrake for MPEG-4 / h.264 conversion. Doing so will wield much smaller video files for playback via Front Row.
Help Front Row with ripped VIDEO_TS folders
Insomniac pointed out a great solution for users who rip / decrypt their DVD collection resulting in VIDEO_TS folders unrecognizable - by default - in Front Row. With DVD Assist, Front Row users can browse their VIDEO_TS library of video content forcing playback through their DVD Player application.
Support external directories
Building an enormous video collection isn’t a problem if you have the internal hardrive space. Fortunately, Front Rows can populate video files stored elsewhere - external drives / directories - using what are known as Alias’s. Unlike “shortcuts” found in the Windows desktop environment, an OS X Alias is completely dynamic. This means that the file or directory being referenced can be moved without breaking an Alias.
Using an Alias referencing an external volume, you can store all your television shows & movies outside of the ~/Movies directory. Example:
All personal video files are stored on an external volume connected the the computer via Firewire. Movies and television shows are organized into their own respective directories - ‘Movies’ & ‘Television’. In order for Front Row to see content stored outside of the ~/Movies directory, we need to create a link between the two using an Alias. In the example above, I’ve highlighted the ‘Television’ directory created an Alias using the keyboard shortcut CMD+L.
Feel free to rename the Alias appropriately. The word “Alias” does not need to be in the title. Once completed, drag the Alias into your ~/Movies directory and start Front Row. Navigate to Videos > Movies where you should now see the Alias pointing to your video library within the external directory.
62 Comments
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Nice write up… Dugg.
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Great! Now the only woe in my life is the lack of subtitle support.
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I’m beginning to get hooked on these types of blog posts Derek. Keep them coming! They are full of great, handy content.
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this post would have been handy months ago.
front row has been out so long now that anyone using it has really figured this out already. i was expecting more from this post from the tittle on digg. front row is supposed to make life easy. you want me to rip a dvd and the convert it to divx? that sounds like a pain.
what would be great is support for video_ts files straight from front row.
in reality, the solution to make front row really fun is just buying movies from the itunes store.
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Haven’t you heard about DVD Assist?
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/22782
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I wasn’t saying that ripping a DVD was the way to improve Front Row, it was an option to expand your library. The motivation to get this content up was because I grew tiresome of torrented television episodes being unplayable in Front Row.
Insomniac had great link for DVD Assist which seems to make the process of viewing VIDEO_TS folders a little easier.
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It’s surprising what the users are doing for Front Row what Apple didn’t. I must keep insisting that Apple should add plugin support to this app!
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Just FYI, Handbrake will convert straight from the DVD. You don’t have to unencrypt them if you don’t want. Though it is faster to rip a few discs and use Handbrake’s queue feature to do several movies at a time.
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Just FYI, Handbrake will convert straight from the DVD. You don’t have to unencrypt them if you don’t want.
Decrypting content has always been second nature.
Thanks for the tip on queuing rips with Handbrake. It would have alleviated some processing power by doing multiple videos through the night rather than randomly throughout the day.
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DVD assist look very interesting.
thanks!
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How can I brows my iPod via front row?
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Don’t forget about the Matroska QuickTime component @ http://sourceforge.net/projects/matroskaqt/
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I can’t recall ever needing a Matroska component. More details?
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Nice post…I’ve never thought to use alias’ to expand my content.
It also just reminded me to organize my movies folder!
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My Final Cut Pro stopped working after installing the xvid quicktime component. It would not open at all anymore. I had to remove the files again so that I can open FCP again. Can someone else confirm that it’s not just me?
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I have for the longest time utilized an external hard drive for my movie and music collections, However I have them on seperate drives. Well, now that iTunes is smoother on it’s video playback..
I go to prefs and turn off the copy feature, add my movies, and then turn on said pref.
Now it organizes my vids and allows frontrow to access it. No more aliases.
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i have the same problem …please help me!
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The one feature that I really miss in Front Row is the ability to display it on a second monitor. I have my iMac connected to my TV, and the only way to get videos to display on my TV is to mirror the displays. If I mirror the two monitors, then it makes my widescreen iMac look like crap, not to mention that it’s an extra step to make it work. I’d like to just pick up the remote that’s sitting on my table and hit “Menu” and have it just work on my TV, dim the iMac monitor to a black/gray background, and then put large video stats on my iMac monitor (time elapsed, time remaining, volume status, etc.).
It sure would be nice if Apple would realize that this is a media center app and therefore needs to be AT LEAST as customizable as Quicktime which will allow you to select which monitor to display a video on when you select “View>Present Movie…” Ideally, there should be a preference pane for Front Row in System Preferences that allows users to include directories with videos, monitor display prefs, etc.
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If I put the TV shows under the iTunes TV shows folder, will I be able to access them from that menu in FrontRow or do I need to use the Movies folder?
It is quite frustrating to have to go to Movies->My Movies->TV Shows->TV Show Name->Season->Episode.avi
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Another interesting application is ffmpegX (http://homepage.mac.com/major4), in case you need to re-encode audio/video with few clicks.
I’ve been using it to convert AVI files that have audio in AC3 format (not supported by Quicktime/Frontrow) to MP3.
About the AC3 audio stream: I haven’t tried the A52Codec plug-in yet (the old AC3 plug-in was not working on Intel macs): http://trac.cod3r.com/a52codec
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If you can add the videos to your iTunes video library I don’t see why not? Unfortunately, all the episodes I grabbed online - for some odd reason - were not able to be added to my iTunes library.
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Matroska is the most wonderful video container you’ll never use, Derek. It’s got wonderful documentation, marvelous features, flexibility and extensibility up the wazoo and, still, is an almost-unknown outside some hardcore Linux circles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matroska
In the 4 years the format has existed I’ve only ever found a single file that required it (extension .mkv) and only VLC played it. This was three years ago and I’ve yet to find another one.
I like the format, but I don’t use it nor do I see anyone doing so.
By the way, I can’t tab into the “Followup comments via e-mail” box. This is probably because it’s not part of the tabindex. It should probably be tabindex=”4″ or so. If a form in firefox has tabindex elements then tabbing will ignore the fields and widgets that are not in the index.
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I’m in the UK so I don’t have any TV Shows purchased from iTunes. Consequently I have no folder within my iTunes folder for them to go in. Does anyone know what I need to call a folder that Front Row will see as TV Shows, so I can put my own files there.
(I’ve tried creating one called “TV Shows” and putting files in it, but Front Row still doesn’t find anything under TV Shows???)
I just wanted to try and organize my files in Front Row a bit better rather than have a really long list in Movies….
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The TV Shows folder that is referenced in Front Row is actually the iTunes library associated with television shows. If you were to organize your video files from within iTunes - marked as TV shows - they would be reflected as such in Front Row.
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Thanks Derek I’ll give it a go…
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Hello again, sadly iTunes won’t import the TV shows I already have (DIVX, AVI files) so I can’t use it to designate them as TV Shows. It’s a shame there isn’t another way to organise the files in FR. I have 40-50 movies files of various things on NAS drive which FR can play using your shortcut idea but it’s very slow scrolling through such a big list (wirelessly), they need to be organised into playlists or something….??
Thanks anyway.
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Just thought I would point u in the direction of Perian. It’s a QT plugin that covers lots of different codecs.
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This is creepy. Here I am, checking out a post from two weeks ago referring precisely perian and while I’m reading about it a popup translucent window comes up (I have email.appetizer installed) with a mail for this discussion with a comment about it.
Awkward.
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Nice writeup. Too bad Front Row completely blows — the response time (via remote or arrow keys) is atrocious.
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That lag time is due to the fact that Front Row feels obliged to scan each clip for playback in that small preview pane to the left of the directory listings.
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If you have QuickTime Pro, there’s a solution to some of the problems mentioned here. If you open your DivX avi (or any other file that you can open in QT when you have the right codec) and choose ’save as’ and select ‘as a reference movie, you will get a small .mov file that you can just drop in the iTunes window and organise just like any other iTunes compatible video file. Just make sure you don’t move the original file so that the reference movie can find it (you can also save as a self-containing movie, but I prefer to keep the originals). It works with any kind of file, but for some reason .wmv files give really jerky playback.
This also allows you to add subtitles. If you have a .srt or .sub file you can convert them with TitleLab to QuickTime text and add them to your movie in QT Pro, again save as a reference movie. You can even add chapters to a movie you ripped from a DVD. Metadata Hootenanny allows you to convert the chapter structure from a DVD to QuickTime chapter text that you can add to your movie in QTPro.
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Great tip creating the reference and dropping that into iTunes. Sort of like folder Aliases. Nice.
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Another solution to make your VIDEO_TS folders play through FrontRow is to make DVD images of them with DVD imager (freeware) or with Toast (in the video tab select ‘DVD from VIDEO_TS’ and choose ’save as a disc image’ instead of burning to disc). If you mount such an image with Toast (right-click on it and choose ‘mount it’), FrontRow ill see it as an inserted DVD that you can play through the DVD icon in the FrontRow menu.
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You can also have original DVD content playing in iTunes if you have the mpeg2 component for QuickTime. You can extract the main title from a DVD to elementary streams with MacTheRipper (or with Mpeg Streamclip or Cinematize if you mount the DVD with FairMount). Choose ‘Title only extraction’ under ‘mode’, select the main feature, click on the ‘D’ (demux) button and on ’streams’ to select the audio and video track you want to keep. When MacTheRipper is finished, you get the original m2v video and ac3 audio file of the title you selected. With the mpeg2 component you can open the m2v file in QTPro, with the AC3 component (mentioned above) you can also open the ac3 in QTPro and add that to the m2v movie file (select all > copy > go to the beginning of the movie file and choose add to movie). You can also convert the ac3 to aiff with bd4go, in that case you only have to give the aiff file the same name as the m2v file and keep them in the same folder. The audio will be associated with the video automatically then (no need to ‘add’ it to the video). Save as a reference movie and drop into iTunes (add subtitles or chapters if you want).
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in response to gary, YOU DON’T HAVE TO MIRROR, but there still is an extra step.
System Prefs
Displays
Now, grab the white line on the top of your dominant window, and drag and drop it over the secondary display. You now made that other display the primary monitor, and front row will show on that one instead. And the other monitor will just show a greyed out screen.
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As far as referencing is concerned, I just tried to make an alias between a folder on my external HD (Archos AV500) but the folder doesn’t show. Does the connection have to be firewire?
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It doesn’t have to be Firewire as I have alias’s for media on a USB hard drive and on NAS drive which work fine. Just make sure you’ve put the alias’s in the Movies folder on your Mac and that the drives are mounted and it ought to work.
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Are you creating Aliases to folders, or the actual movie file(s)?
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This is a great idea! However, it prevented my QuickTime from playing my .avi files from my digital camera (Canon PowerShot). (I have 100+ short .avi files in my iPhoto library and with the xVid stuff installed, quicktime would crash everytime I tried to play one of my .AVIs).
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I could,t add a shared folder on my pc seen in my mac by the procedure you explained. made the alias and put it in ~/movies directory but couldn’t see any thing in th front row. So sad!
any opinion on that?!!
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If I’m not mistaken, Mac OS Aliases do not work with shared folders in Windows XP.
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So have we actually found a solution to use some kind of Alias in the iTunes TV folder instead of converting all TV shows to the iTunes format?
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Download and install Perian, open your files in Quicktime, save files as Reference Movie Files, and then drop reference files into iTunes.
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Ick. Is there a way to accomplish the TV show thing w/o using iTunes, or is Front Row checking the iTunes DB for TV?
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Front Row is looking under TV Shows in iTunes. Simply download Perian (to ensure Front Row can play more video formats) and browse your files manually through Front Row.
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Anyone experiecing troubles when playing mkvs in front row? Picture goes black after about 3 minutes.. the sound continues, tho. I’ve installed Perian 1.0..
Suggestions?
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this is GREAT - I have just got a new mini mac - after reading all this, i am not going so bald now! - thanks
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what about a skype plugin, just like the one they just came out with for the apple tv, I mean if apple tv can do it , why can’t a real mac run skype in frontrow
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I have the same trouble, though this is not happening with every mkv file. I am streaming them from a smb share. The file server and my mini mac is on a gig ethernet.
I did not have this trouble with my old server, but then I had to wait playing the movie until the file had been transfered or else the movie was choppy(much slower server)
Advice please.
BTW I really want to play my music files in front row without importing them into itunes, is there a way to do this?
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