No video playback in front row?

Yep... same problem here. Front Row worked fine with my iTunes TV show collection up until I upgraded to Snow Leopard. Now all I get is audio when trying to play them via Front Row.

But it isn't only iTunes content that won't play... none of my DVDs that I ripped will play on Front Row either. It has totally screwed up my home entertainment setup. What is going on??

Same problem here. I have to watch my videos in itunes which is a pain as my Media Mini has no keyboard or mouse and now I have to use them. Bah!

Not pleased apple.

having the same problem, I tried lots of my videos, some of them however did played both sound and video, it looks like a codec problem, all of the files I tried were .avi, but some were Xvid codec and some were d50x codec I think! the latter played well but some of xvid codecs did not played, the one with 25 fps...I checked them in VLC... maybe reinstalling perian or Flip4mac or other codecs may help, I'm not sure...Quick time X, and 7 are both installed and both show these video clips fine!

I tried something and it solved my problem, If you have Perian just uncheck the Load external subtitle in the bottom line and there you go, It seems that FrontRow can't show external subtitle and picture goes black, Just try it and see if it works for you too...!

Unfortunately, neither of the two solutions posted work for me. Simply no video at all for me using Front Row under Snow Leopard. Sound works fine though. The video's also play fine in iTunes.

My problem is a little bit diffrent. I also have no video playback in front row (just sound and black screen), however it relates only to software subtitled movies. I mean movies subtitled with iSubtitle, Muxo or Subler. iTunes and QuickTime plays them well, only Front Row doesn't. It looks like a front row bug or something. It makes my Front Row completly useless, so please fix it!

No video playback either, however if i restart video and sound works. This is a mac mini serving as a media center, connected via HDMI to a 32" insignia 1080P TV.

The perian solution worked. But not having the subtitles is not very useful.
Hope Apple fix this

solved
make sure you have quicktime pro installed. open the movie and click on WINDOW -> SHOW MOVIE PROPERTIES. you will then have your video and audio source. if you have a text subtitle then this is your problem. uncheck the subtitle file then close the dialog box. then click on FILE->SAVE AS->SELF CONTAINED MOVIE.

hope this helps. works for me

guys, download the latest divx
http://www.divx.com/en/software/mac/divx

the problem is with the codec
this will work for those .avi movies that dont work, i just downloaded and installed now works fine, hope that helps.

A delayed response because I just found a problem/solution that worked for me.

I'm converting my DVD library to mp4/x264s via Handbrake and want to include *text* subtitles. Using all the normal options in Handbrake things work great in iTunes or QuickTime. I can turn the subtitles on and off as desired.

Where the resulting files quit working is in FrontRow. If I play a mp4 with a text subtitle track in FrontRow the video is blank/black.

I found a nice, simple solution....

Simply "disable" the subtitle track in the m4v file. You can manually re-enable it for a given playback in iTunes or QuickTime but with it "disabled by default" FrontRow works wonderfully.

The simplest way to do this is with mp4v2's mp4track command as follows:
mp4track --list yourFile.m4v

Look for a "type" of "(sbtl)". Grab the "id" from the line before it and then:
mp4track --track-id theIDFromPreviousStep --enabled false yourFile.m4v

That's it. They now work in Front Row.

Like davidreed999 I encode using Handbrake and use Subler to add all info including subtitles.
Unchecking the Subtitle track in Subler gets my movie shown in Front Row, only caveat is that I can not play the subtitle in any way in Front Row.
The unchecking of the Subtitle also prevents it from showing the subtitles in Air Video on my iPhone.
So it still is not the solution to the problem I'm afraid.
My Japanese is still not good enough to understand the movies without the subtitles...

Any news from Apple?
Any other suggestions?

Hi all,
My problem seems to be different to all of you.
We have purchased a mac mini to use as a media system, however this does not have snow leopard installed, the unit is 4 days old and there are multiple issues with it.
We have it connected to a amp via HDMI and then the amp connects to a plasma via HDMI.
we have the network version of eyetv and it works perfectly over the LAN, apart for a few lags, but I suspect these are aerial issues more than transmission over the LAN.
but the main problems are that; front row will not play movies only the sound file from the movie plays and I get a black screen.
if I put a DVD in to the mini mac and open the dvd player app it says "A valid device could not be found for playback. [-70017]"
and if I try to play a movie through iTunes it plays fine if you want to watch it at a tiny screen res but if you dare try to watch it at full screen it jumps and jitters like an crack addict in rehab, not fun.
If anyone "apple included" has found a way of fixing this issue it would be nice to have an expensive unit that is supposed to do what it is advertised to do.
talk about frustrating i have been at this all day and still come up with nothing!