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FrontRow slideshow behavior--help please

574 Views 6 Replies 3 Participants Last post by kktx, May 20, 2006

kktx

Discussion Starter · May 15, 2006

Just started playing with the new Mac Mini (Duo) that will be used in a dedicated HT. My first impression is that FrontRow is really cool, and is a worthwhile way of interfacing with media in a HT setting. Note that I will primarily be using FrontRow to play music encoded in the Apple lossless format, and also to view slideshows stored on a remote computer that is used, in part, to store photos.

The one extremely annoying thing I've noticed so far is that FrontRow, when viewing albums stored remotely over the network, defaults to the "Ken Burns effect" and to music (Minuet in G) rather than straight slide viewing. While the volume can be muted and slides can be advanced individually once the slideshow is paused, the KBE means that some of the photos are effectively cropped.

There doesn't seem to be an overall preference pane to fix this behavior. Does anyone have a good workaround? This is extremely annoying and very un-Maclike, IMO. Any advice would be appreciated.

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imlucid

· #2 · May 15, 2006

I don't know about un-Maclike but that behavior is designed to give a use a custom slideshow feel without having to set up the slideshow to begin with.

However, here are some workarounds:

1) You can select a remote album in iPhoto and set the desired music you want played back when viewing that album. This can be a song or playlist.

2) You can manually create your own slideshows in iPhoto and determine your own transition effects and turn on/off Ken Burns Effect.

Hope that helps.

Kevin

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kktx

Discussion Starter · #3 · May 15, 2006

Thanks for the tips. I guess what I felt was un-Maclike was the spoon-feeding of one behavior without a simple and obvious way to customize the content delivery. I expected a control panel (for FrontRow), or a preference pane in iPhoto that dealt with FrontRow or something more obvious. I have been an avid Apple user since the II+, and have multiple Macs at home and at work, so the fact that the solution was not obvious to me suggests that others are probably experiencing the same frustration. A cursory look at the Apple support threads supports this view.

I guess I tried this the wrong way--I went to the "server" Mac with the iPhoto library and checked my existing slideshows--they all had music unchecked and Ken Burns unchecked.

I didn't realize that you needed to select the albums in iPhoto on the remote Mac (Mini in this case) but will give this a try this evening.

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ColecoVision

· #4 · May 16, 2006

You're right, it's not very straightforward -- you have to set the default song on an album-by-album basis ahead of time in iPhoto. Click the album in question, and click the 'play' button in the lower right-hand side of the toolbar. (Make sure the iPhoto window is fully expanded when you do this, or the 'play' button itself may not be visible. In that case, you'll see a double arrow on the toolbar, just to the left of the 'search' box -- click this to expose the 'play' option.) In the window that pops up, click the 'music' tab and select a default song or playlist for the album. That's the audio that will play in Front Row.

Simple interface with hidden gotchas? Very Apple-like indeed. Can you say 'rebuild the desktop file'?

Troy

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ColecoVision

· #5 · May 16, 2006

...btw you can disable Ken Burns this way too.

Troy

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kktx

Discussion Starter · #6 · May 17, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by ColecoVision
You're right, it's not very straightforward -- you have to set the default song on an album-by-album basis ahead of time in iPhoto. Click the album in question, and click the 'play' button in the lower right-hand side of the toolbar. (Make sure the iPhoto window is fully expanded when you do this, or the 'play' button itself may not be visible. In that case, you'll see a double arrow on the toolbar, just to the left of the 'search' box -- click this to expose the 'play' option.) In the window that pops up, click the 'music' tab and select a default song or playlist for the album. That's the audio that will play in Front Row.

Simple interface with hidden gotchas? Very Apple-like indeed. Can you say 'rebuild the desktop file'?

Troy

Thanks! I appreciate the mini-tutorial, and your helpful advice. It would be nice if there was a global approach to changing this (e.g., by selecting multiple albums at once and doing the same--haven't tried this yet, but I assume given your response that this doesn't work).

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kktx

Discussion Starter · #7 · May 20, 2006

Mea culpa. It appears that you can select all of the albums remotely and change the slideshow behavior (after pressing play, as noted by ColecoVision).

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