VIDEO_TS playback for Front Row
I ran across an interesting post over at AVS Forum, “Squished Squirre” has written up a script he calls “DVD Assist” that’s said to “allow Front Row to seamlessly play VIDEO_TS folders from inside of Front Row”
This is a little Applescript applet I put together to allow Front Row to seemlessly play VIDEO_TS folders from inside of Front Row. Please read the docs that come with it.
There is still a lot more that can be done, but I think this fleshes out the idea pretty well.
I don’t have a good place to host this, so I’ll put it on rapidshare.de to start with.
Version 1.3.1: Download Here
Hopefully no one will have problems figuring out how to download from rapidshare. Scroll down the page, and click the “free” button. Then you have to wait a few seconds and then you can click the download link.
Let me know what you think of this, and what improvements could be made.
My system is in a bit of a shambles at the moment due to some new additions, so I can’t test this one out just yet. If any of you folks happen to try this please share your impressions with us.
B.Greenway
August 28th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Hi All,
This ap works really great. I will certainly use it to play some of my regular dvd’s although the usual limitations of Front Row apply. So far there have been no problems with it and as I have the Mpeg2 decoder in Quicktime the setup was real easy too.
I will test over the next couple of days and get back with any possible improvements.
August 30th, 2006 at 1:05 am
So THIS is why the download count jumped from 50 to 290 in a day
August 31st, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Great piece of work. It’s not crucial but would be nice if Front Row is again reactivated once DVD Player is stopped. That would mean another script to sense when DVD Player stops and to start Front Row? I am not too familiar with AppleScript. Thanks for your work!
September 1st, 2006 at 11:48 pm
DVD Assist v1.3 is now available from Squished Squirrel.
http://rapidshare.de/files/31632076/DVD_Assist_1.3.1.dmg.html
September 4th, 2006 at 12:07 am
Reactivating Front Row would be cool, but to do it right has a few problems. I’ve already found that Applescript doing certain tasks in the background are already enough to cause playback glitches on non-dvd movies in Front Row, and it wouldn’t look right unless it was a seamless transition (desktop doesn’t show up.)
Solving those issues come after fixing the movie pauses… I think I have it nailed, but need time to work on it.
September 5th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Great app…wish the cover art could be shown as in the trailers…my version still shows the Video_TS text after I select the movie…am i doing something wrong in hiearchy?
September 7th, 2006 at 9:22 am
If you have version 1.3.1, look at the second directory example in the docs. It shows how to configure thing to avoid seeing the video_ts folder, or its contents.
September 14th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
I cannot seem to get the videoa to play if shared on another imac…i have my macbook conncted to my hdtv…the movies are on my imac…front row does not find the shared movies…any ideas?
December 5th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
I finally installed DVD Assist (now up to version 1.4.7) and, while it was born and will likely die as a “kludge” (should Front Row ever include Video_TS playback natively, that is), until such time it’s really the best thing we’ve got going.
I really like how you stay inside Front Row as long as possible before being “seamlessly” deposited, full-screen, into the Apple DVD Player app. Also, with a little fiddling with QuickTime Pro, it is possible to substitute a movie trailer or a poster still for the QuickTime movie that activates the DVD player.
Really very slick!