How do I Add Images to Front Row Movies?

[macminifan]

Hello,

I have a macmini and I wanted to find out how I can add images to movies on my mac HDD so that I can see the images on front row next to the movie titles e.g. similar to how album art is displayed when playing music through front row

Thanks in advance for your help.

New Mac Fan !

 

[speakerwizard]

right click the movie in itunes and 'get info' you can change all the info and add artwork there, I tend to use metax, its a great app for adding all the meta data to my vids before adding them to itunes.

 

[mpshay]

If you are not using itunes (just ripping the DVDs to the hard drive) then just add a file to the video_ts folder entitled preview.jpg. Works like a charm!

 

[Mernak]

10.4 did not use the iTunes cover art iirc, whereas Leopard does, so it may depend on what OS you have.

 

[macminifan]

I tried the preview.jpg option but it didnt work.

Any other suggestions?

Your help is most appreciated and being a first time mac owner, I can now see why people like macs so much cause of the sense of community around the users!

 

[mpshay]

Just to make sure I understand...You are not using iTunes, just ripping the DVD to the hardrive? You added a JPEG of the cover art entitled preview.jpg to the folder containing the video_ts folder and no picture was shown in Front Row? The movie is listed, just no picture?

 

[macminifan]

Correct, not using itunes just ripping DVD to hard drive for backup purposes...movie is showing in list just no picture .

I followed your instructions exactly

Thanks agin for your help mpshay.

 

[mpshay]

Still in .vob file format or did you transcode it to something like .M4V? If it's a .M4V you will need to edit the meta data to get a picture.

 

[macminifan]

Its still in .vob file it wasn't converted. Thanks for your help

 

[rollocla]

This worked a treat! thanks!

Hi all, I'm new to Macs and have basically purchased one to act as a media centre using Front Row.. I've stared 'backing-up' all my DVDs onto several 1TB external drives and have been trying to find out how yto get the cover art to work as with the rest of my nedia.. this method worked! fantastic!

Now, can anyone tell us how to do the same with the movie synopis? I'm imagining a .txt or some sort of .inf file? I'd be really really grateful for any help.

Mat

 

[jonocon]

Artwork for front row

Iam downloading movies from a site and then converting them to divx which puts them in front row, can anyone tell me how to get artwork for my movies, at the moment the movies are listed in front row but the image to the left is blank.I'm new to this so my apologies if it's a simple question.Help would be gratefully received

 

[Catch Them]

Iam downloading movies from a site and then converting them to divx which puts them in front row, can anyone tell me how to get artwork for my movies, at the moment the movies are listed in front row but the image to the left is blank.I'm new to this so my apologies if it's a simple question.Help would be gratefully received

why not just use iSquint and convert them with H264 and then change the meta data in itunes or the metax app to add in the photo.

to change the photo in itunes.

drag the video file into itune s(or on the docks icon)
then right click that file, get info and just drag a picture into the blank white space.

 

[Cave Man]

The easiest thing is to drop Front Row and use plex. Even works with DVD iso images.

 

[johto]

Iam downloading movies from a site and then converting them to divx which puts them in front row, can anyone tell me how to get artwork for my movies, at the moment the movies are listed in front row but the image to the left is blank.I'm new to this so my apologies if it's a simple question.Help would be gratefully received

You could store all your "misc" format movie files (avi files like xvid/divx etc) on you your "Movie" folder, then if you have installed Perian, those should open OK on quicktime and inside frontrow. You then open a movie in quicktime, and save it as a "Save as reference movie" movie.

You then get a smaller file that points to the actual movie file. Use program called "metax" and add metadata info to the small reference movie file(album art, date,plot,actors,directors etc) ..then drag this reference movie file written with metadata to the itunes "movie" section! Tadaa! You now have your movie showing nicely on your frontrow!

 

[meulemaster]

You could store all your "misc" format movie files (avi files like xvid/divx etc) on you your "Movie" folder, then if you have installed Perian, those should open OK on quicktime and inside frontrow. You then open a movie in quicktime, and save it as a "Save as reference movie" movie.

You then get a smaller file that points to the actual movie file. Use program called "metax" and add metadata info to the small reference movie file(album art, date,plot,actors,directors etc) ..then copy this reference movie file written with metadata to the itunes "movie" folder! Tadaa! You now have your movie showing nicely on your frontrow!

He Johto,

I really like the simplicity of your answer and would love for it to work 100% but for some reason i keep getting the album artwork and a screenshot of the beginning of the movie in front row and only the screenshot in my movies library in iTunes.

could you please tell me what I am doing wrong?? I also posted this same message in the thread so other people can benefit from your expertise!

Cheers and many thanks!!

 

[johto]

" ..then copy(drag) this reference movie file written with metadata to the itunes "movie" folder(section)! Tadaa! You now have your movie showing nicely on your frontrow!" <-- i changed my wordings to the original text

The above means you drag your meta-tagged movie reference files to the itunes movie section, NOT that you copy them in to the physical directory structure, maybe this is the confusion? Only have the tagged referece files in there, nothing else. Store your actual movie files somewhere else.

This is how it should look like:

 

[HiFiGuy528]

" ..then copy(drag) this reference movie file written with metadata to the itunes "movie" folder(section)! Tadaa! You now have your movie showing nicely on your frontrow!" <-- i changed my wordings to the original text

The above means you drag your meta-tagged movie reference files to the itunes movie section, NOT that you copy them in to the physical directory structure, maybe this is the confusion? Only have the tagged referece files in there, nothing else. Store your actual movie files somewhere else.

This is how it should look like:

If you do this, when you click on it in Front Row, nothign will happen becasue the folder is just meta data. right?

 

[HiFiGuy528]

I order to get artwork to show in Front Row, the artwork file MUST be named "Preview.jpeg" That is capital "P" in preview.jpeg.

 

[crystalreef]

Hi,

I have added artwork and descriptions to my movies which are located on an external drive. The movies are in sub folders relating to genre so I dont want to import them into iTunes and lose this sorting.

The artwork shows correctly in front row but it does not show the description after a short delay like it does for movies in iTunes. Is there any way to get Front Row to show the description after the delay for movies outside of iTunes?

 

[BlueRevolution]

No, but you can try using Plex instead.

If you want to import into iTunes, you can import each folder one at a time, sort your movies by date imported, then change the genre of each set of movies all at once.

 

[JungleRoD]

.mov MetaX

Since I have Quicktime X, I can't build up reference movies so I Downloaded MakeRefMov from the developer section of Apple (it makes a .mov file as a reference movie). The problem is that MetaX doesn't seem to work properly. It finds metadata, I toggle them, but it doesn't write them in the movie. Sometimes it just crashes and sometimes it displays an error (about file dimension). Any Help please?