Problem playing music in Front Row

[rumz]

Ok, so I am having trouble with Front Row 2.0 on my Mac Mini. Video works fine, but every time I try to listen to Music through front row, it hangs. For example, I'll get into the menus, go to "Genre", and the screen will go dark like a part of the transition, but then it just stays dark.

My iTunes library is on an external firewire drive (as I'm using a coreduo Mac Mini), and it light on the drive indicates that the drive is churning away doing *something*, but the next menu never appears, and the computer becomes completely unresponsive. Sometimes I can get the remote to put the thing to sleep, but re-awakening it returns me to a blank, black screen again. I can't quit out of front row, I have to force it to shut down by holding down the power button to get to where i can use the computer again.

Any idea why it's hanging in music? Anyone else had this problem?

 

[rumz]

One thing that appears to happen is that Front Row hangs if iTunes is open when I try to access music via Front Row. I noticed that whereas in the old version of Front Row, playing music seemed to simply feed commands to iTunes, Front Row does not use iTunes to play music, it just refers to it's database / library to find music (I think). Which explains why Front Row kills the music when you exit Front Row, whereas the old one would leave the music playing (since iTunes was still running even when you quit Front Row).

Also, another strange issue. Any idea why an album will play in iTunes but when I try to play it in Front Row, the screen indicates that it's playing but no sound comes out? It's a disc I ripped to Apple Lossless a month ago in iTunes.

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

Front Row 2.0 in Leopard is very different from the Front Row 1.3.1 you know and love from Tiger.

Tiger integrated with Itunes and Quicktime for playback. Leopard Front Row is a stand-alone player embedded within the OS.

Do a search on "front row downgrade" in the forums - you'll find a post I ranted over this a lot - and found a semi-solution. (music / dvd and pictures work - but movies does not)

 

[rumz]

Cool, thanks for the heads up.

I'm starting to wonder if part of the issue might be that my external drive is just playing less nice with Leopard than it did with Tiger. It's a bit squirrely in the first place... it seems that when Front Row locks up, I have to force the computer to shut down, turn off the external hdd (because at this point it's not powering down with the computer), power the Mac Mini back up, then power the external drive back up. I guess I could always use a new external hdd...

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

If / when Front Row bricks on you next time. First try tapping escape - and waiting a second. Or do the keyboard shortcut for "force quit" (which, I can never remember)

Granted - I was doing this when I was fudging with Front Row 1.3.1 Movie Playback - but it might work for you, too.

So - Front Row 2.0 works just fine until you play a file FROM your external drive? Or do you just think that is what is causing the crash?

 

[rumz]

If / when Front Row bricks on you next time. First try tapping escape - and waiting a second. Or do the keyboard shortcut for "force quit" (which, I can never remember)

Granted - I was doing this when I was fudging with Front Row 1.3.1 Movie Playback - but it might work for you, too.

So - Front Row 2.0 works just fine until you play a file FROM your external drive? Or do you just think that is what is causing the crash?

Yeah I tried force quitting (keyboard short cut) and escape and all that... non-responsive. both movie files and music are located on this external drive. It doesn't seem like it has any trouble loading videos off the drive, but music occassionally causes front row to hang. And when it hangs, I can see / hear the hard drive working doing something, but I have no idea what-- but it seems to get stuck doing that, which is why I have to power down the external HDD, or else a power cycle on the Mini doesn't do me much good. It's odd, though. I haven't been able to find any similar complaints about Front Row hanging though (I guess I have yet to check the Apple forums), which leads me to think there's just something screwy going on with my external drive.

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

I don't know how old your external drive is - but that could be the drive failing, too. (the read head loses seek on whatever file is playing - and has trouble re-locating it - all the while Front Row is waiting, too)

If you hear a lot of loud "clicks" with pauses at the end of reading and writing files - that could be the problem. Thats sometimes a sign of the read/write head and/or wiper arm failing. Also could be the read/write head struggling with bad sectors on your drive.

I'd try using Itunes to play the same file FROM that drive (not one loaded on your local drive) Or find another program to play that file - see if it hangs with that.

If it does - try checking your external with Disk Utility.

Don't sweat this response too much - I'm very bored, so I likely went too far with my response.