FrontRow is over a year old now, and users have discovered many tricks and tips to get the most out of your FrontRow user experience. As iTunes, DVD Player, and iPhoto get updated older tips no longer apply, and new ones sprout up.

Here are my Top-10 Must Have FrontRow Tips & Tricks for the 1st Quarter of 2007.

1. Movies on External Drives
OK so your internal drive can only hold so much, and you have quite the extensive collection on movies for Front Row. The solution is simple. FrontRow accesses your ~Movies folder. Drop aliases of your movies in this folder and FrontRow wouldn’t be wiser to know they are on an external hard drive. Take this one step further, and organize your movies by adding genre bases folder. Front Row won’t have to list all your movies at once, and getting you to your movie at its scheduled start time.

2. Get Music Artwork
This used to be a thorn in most Music collector’s sides. That was until iTunes introduced its “Get Album Artwork” feature. Accessing their online database of iTune Artwork, you can easily add artwork to your tracks. iTunes however doesn’t have all the artwork out there, and that’s why we have a Google Album Artwork Search.


3. Photos By Keyword
The photos module is probably the most undeveloped module in Front Row. But since the dawn of the digital camera, I’ve been storing thousands of photos on my Mac in iPhoto. To organize them I have them sorted by Rolls, and have added Keywords to them all. For Front Row viewing I added Smart Folders based on the keywords I utilize. These are easily accessed through Front Row and beats trying to navigate your library 1 photo at a time.

4. High Definition DVD’s
Music is a front for iTunes, Photos for iPhoto, and DVD for DVD Player. Set your preferences here and they will apply in Front Row. A nice one is the HD option. Now your Mac may not have a HDDVD or BlueRay player but it can play DVD Studio Pro 4 Authored DG videos. With some nice upscaling for 720p and 1080p if you wish.

5. Play Video_TS Folders
Highly documented, Front Row does not play video_ts folders, your DVD Player app can. DVD Assist allows you to do this with an AppleScript that essentially plays the referenced video_ts. You can also add DVD cover movies instead of the previews. Simply Brilliant.


6. Internet Radio
Covered last week, getting Internet Radio in Front Row is easy. Simply drag the Radio Station over to your iTunes Library. These will not appear as Music tracks in Front Row. Add a smart play list to sort out the ‘Kind’ types and you have quick access to your Internet Radio!


7. Play Other Media Types
FrontRow depends on QuickTime to play its video files. It used tobe a struggle to find the QuickTime codecs to play your avi / divx / etc files in FrontRow. Install Pernian and Flip4Mac and you’ve covered the most popular video formats out there! Other 3rd party codecs can be found on QuickTime’s Components page.


8. Hiding Music
Ok, this is one for the parents out there that allows their children to access Front Row. Say you have an ‘inappropriate’ music. Uncheck the boxes associated with these Tracks and they won’t appear in Front Row.

9. Scripting…
This is one of my new favorites. I purchase TV Shows on DVD and like having them readily available through Front Row. Add the 'Set Video Kind Selected' script to your iTunes Script folder and you can tag a set of videos as TV Shows, Movies, and other Metadata such as Show Name, Season, and Episode Number. This doesn’t work on protected video files.

It frustrating navigating to song to only find that its no longer there. Add the Remote Dead Tracks script to your iTunes script folder, and on your action, quickly and cleanly remove tracks that may have been deleted through the Finder.

10. EyeTV jump
EyeTV allows you to view television on your Mac with an ElGato or compatable tuner component. El Gato has made it simply to switch back and forth from EyeTV to FrontRow. Launch EyeTV first and hitting the Menu button the remote will Pause the TV, and launch FrontRow. Exiting FrontRow and EyeTV will jump to the front again. Hold down the menu button in EyeTV and access EyeTV’s full screen menu, including Program Guide, Recordings, and other options.