Content is Played Back on the Primary Monitor

As I mentioned recently when discussing dual monitors, most of the time, your Mac won’t care which display is the primary one, but sometimes it makes a difference. Front Row, for example, always displays its menus and content on whichever screen has been designated as the primary screen. This is a source of annoyance because unless you are running a dedicated media center, you probably don’t want to use your TV as the primary monitor. At the moment, I don’t have an easy fix for this problem. Designating the primary monitor requires a trip to the Displays preference pane.

Limited Flexibility in Locating Content

I don’t mind so much that Front Row expects music to be in the iTunes Music folder. After all, if that folder starts taking up too much space in your home folder, you can move it to an external drive and tell iTunes where it’s located. Once you have the folder in a new location, go into iTunes’ preferences and click the Advanced tab to choose the new location of your music folder. Since Front Row relies on the iTunes preference settings, it will know where to find the music.

Videos Must Be in Certain Places

Video files must be inside the Movies folder in your home folder or in the Movies subfolder of your iTunes Music folder—otherwise Front Row can’t find them. Frankly, I don’t like either location for storing longer videos. The Movies folder would quickly consume free space on my main drive, and I generally don’t use iTunes to play longer videos. I prefer to keep that content on an external drive in a location that can be accessed by other user accounts on my Mac. In fact, I am currently moving much of this content to a Time Capsule.

Making Front Row see video content that is stored outside your Movies folder on an external drive is quite simple. (Actually, I’m rather annoyed that I did not think of this solution on my own.) Create an alias of the drive or location where your video files are stored and drop the alias into the Movies folder in your home folder. I am currently using an alias to point to a Recordings folder on an external drive.

Locating Content With an Alias

When you select the alias in Front Row, a list of the videos in that folder will appear. Simply click on the desired video to play.

Problems Organizing Content

Because it’s designed to work from a remote, Front Row doesn’t really have a search function. It doesn’t even mimic the remote control–based search capabilities found on most cable set-top boxes. This limitation can become a major annoyance if you have a large collection. Scrolling through a long list could get tedious unless you take preventive action.

The only real solution is to keep the drive that contains your video collection organized. If you like searching videos by genre, create subfolders based on genres inside your recordings folder that will contain the videos.

Organization by Movie Genre

Prefer an alphabetical search? Create separate subfolders inside the folder where your videos are housed. As you navigate through the menus, Front Row recognizes the subfolders and presents them as menu choices when you select the parent folder. No matter what type of organization you choose, create the subfolders inside the folder that contains your videos and move the videos into those subfolders. You don’t need to duplicate the same structure inside your Movies folder.

Do not use smart folders for this task: Front Row does not recognize them. Fortunately, if you change the folder structure later you won’t usually need to create a new alias.

If you are using the movie cataloging application DVDpedia , there is a plug-in available for Front Row that allows the information from your DVDpedia library to appear within Front Row. I began using this plug-in just before this article went to press. So far, I like what I see. I have only a few of my movies in a DVDpedia library at the moment, but as you can see from the screenshot it provides a variety of ways to access the information within Front Row and to watch linked movies.

DVDpedia Plug-in in Action

Front Row and Internet Radio

The text in Front Row displays better on my TV than the text in iTunes, so sometimes I use Front Row to play Internet radio stations. It’s easier to read if I am sitting across the room. Initially, I couldn’t get the radio stations listed in iTunes to appear in Front Row—perhaps because there are too many to navigate easily with a remote. Once again, the solution is simple and depends on integration with iTunes.

Launch iTunes and create a new playlist. When the new playlist appears, give it a descriptive name. Now go to Radio, select a favorite station, and let it play for a few moments to ensure the station is still operating. Drag the station into the playlist that you just created. When you have finished adding stations, quit iTunes. The next time you launch Front Row, select Music, then Playlists, followed by the name of the playlist that you created to hold your favorite stations. I am not sure if there is a limit to the number of items that Front Row can recognize, but if there is, it must be rather large. It handles large playlists of other music without any problems.

Problems Playing Certain Content

If you spend any time at all working with media files on your computer, you’ll realize there is a veritable alphabet soup of file formats out there. Every time I think I have a handle on them, something new comes along. While QuickTime handles many of these formats nicely, there are some it just cannot manage. Unfortunately, if QuickTime cannot handle a format, neither can Front Row.

The solution to this problem is to locate an appropriate codec for QuickTime. Once it can handle the file, Front Row should handle it as well. Perian and Flip4Mac meet most of my playback needs, but other codecs are available from several sources. If you are hungry for more options, check out the QuickTime Components Page. I haven’t tried it yet, but I have seen at least one report of plug-ins that allow Front Row to handle Hulu and Netflix content. That ought to satisfy your appetite for content for the time being.