Mac / Front Row

[BrianL429]

I am a Beyond TV user looking to record TV shows on my Windows system and display them using Front Row on a Mac I'm thinking about buying.

I'm told the Mac has the ability to see any given folder on the Windows box, but the recordings do not have certain tags needed to described the metadata about it (show/episode/etc).

This site generally described what these tags are: http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/

I'm also not sure if the current mpeg version/encoding is exactly what I need.

What I'm wondering is if there is a best practices for making this happen with BTV3 or BTV4.
What I'm assuming this will be is a program to run to convert/tag the files appropriately based on filename. Does any such program exist, particularly one that can be run as a batch job?

Is any integration with this file format/tags in plans for a BTV4 release? This seems like a good candidate for a ShowSqueeze feature.

[rugby]

That would rock. I'm also a Mac-user who's only Windows machine is my Btv box. BTW, if you want AVI files to play on Beyond Media there's a program for the Mac called Handbrake that will make .avi files that work beautifully on BM.

[rakeshagrawal]

Has anyone tried playing back a Beyond TV recorded MPEG-2 file in FrontRow? Or a show that's been ShowSqueezed to Windows Media? I have an iMac but it's unfortunately one of the older ones sans FrontRow. Beyond TV does embed metadata about recordings within both MPEG-2 and Windows Media files, but I don't know if they'd show up in FrontRow or not.

[rugby]

I can't get Quicktime to play the files even with the mpeg2 plugin. This is QT 7.1.2 on an Intel MacBook Pro. I'll try the WMV files once I squeeze a show into that format.

[zoomzit]

Just wanted to let you know that I do have my macbook hooked up to the TV and playing BTV video via frontrow.

My only problem is that my MacBook will play MPEG-2 format (with QT pro and MPEG-2 add-on) But it won't play sound on the AVI's automatically generated from BTV 4.

[rakeshagrawal]

The AVIs that your talking about -- these are ShowSqueeze'd DivX AVIs?

What does QuickTime Pro cost and what does the MPEG-2 add-on cost?

[Bigbird999]

zoom
I always got around the problem of QT not playing files by using VLC. It plays everyhing. I don't have Frontrow but I remember reading that there is a plugin called flip4mac that might solve the problem of the divx sound. Also there are several different versions of divx codecs. I believe universal binary is the one you want/need.

BB

[rugby]

QT Pro shouldn't be needed as that's only for editing and saving movies right from quicktime. Playing movies is free.

The mpeg-2 decoder is $20 I think. You can buy it from apple's online store and download it.

Flip4Mac's wmv plugin allows Quicktime to play windows media video files, not avi/divx files.

What's the audio codec BTV uses when encoding to Divx? That will help us figure out what to install.

[bnflaherty]

Originally Posted by rugby

What's the audio codec BTV uses when encoding to Divx? That will help us figure out what to install.

standard Mpeg2 audio

[rugby]

I just tried a wmv squeezed file and it worked in frontrow.

[BrianL429]

Thanks for everyone's input so far.
Just to calify my original question... I'm not saying the mac won't play various versions of files that BTV can save in.
What I'm actually trying to do is add the extra tags that allow it to be used from Front Row most effectively.
That is, grouped by show, episode, etc, and not just a bunch of video files.