Front Row Video Player 4+

Experience color accurate HDR videos with full surround sound using spatial audio.

◆ FAQ

‣ Why do I need this?

Many movies and TV shows are available with multichannel audio. However you would need to have a full surround sound setup in order to fully enjoy that experience. Apple introduced spatial audio which allows playing multichannel audio into regular headphones, such as the AirPods Pro. This vastly improves the roominess and depth of the played audio. Unfortunately, not many video players support Apple's spatial audio. So I created a simple video player with AVKit, which is able to use spatial audio.

‣ Where is feature XYZ?

Front Row was created to play videos with HDR and/or multichannel with spatial audio. Therefore it was designed to be as simple and as easy to use as possible.

‣ Help! My video file is in MKV and doesn't open with Front Row

As Front Row is based on AVKit (which is what QuickTime Player uses), it can't directly open MKV files. However MKV is a container format and it usually contains Apple device supported streams such as MPEG-4 video with AAC audio. If so, you can remux the file into an MP4 file using `ffmpeg`.

ffmpeg -i ./input.mkv -map 0 -c copy -tag:v hvc1 ./output.mp4

Note:
- Add "-c:s mov_text" after "-c copy" if there are built in subtitles
- Use "-tag:v hvc1" for video streams encoded in H265. Use "-tag:v avc1" instead for H264

‣ I followed the steps above but don't hear any audio

The audio stream is in a codec that is not natively supported by Apple. You'll need to transcode the audio stream into a supported format.

ffmpeg -i ./input.mkv -map 0 -c copy -c:a aac_at -b:a 448k -tag:v hvc1 ./output.mp4

Note:
- Add "-c:s mov_text" after "-c copy" if there are built in subtitles
- Use "-tag:v hvc1" for video streams encoded in H265. Use "-tag:v avc1" instead for H264

‣ I don't hear spatial audio through my supported device

First, make sure that the audio track contains more than 2 channels. Also, make sure to turn on spatial audio under the audio menu bar while the video is playing.

◆ Privacy

Front Row does not record or transmit any information and works entirely locally.

◆ Report a Problem

Click the "Report a Problem" in the "Help" menu in the app.