Video questions

hi everyone,

it's great to be here and i'm enjoying the process of getting used to my new macbook. i have a few questions though. i tried searching the forums for some of these, but i couldn't figure how to phrase my questions. so these are my video questions.

1.is there a way to easily look at my video library? imovie won't acknowledge my movies, as most of them are wmv files. i can view them in downloads, but i cannot get macbook to show a thumbnail of the videos like windows does. for example, in windows, i could distinguish one rihanna video from another based on the thumbnail of her outfit. so far in mac, i have to click on the vid to see which one it is, and over time that gets tiresome.

2. is there a way to move certain videos so they are not so easy for people to access? my wife and i have family-friendly videos and not-so-family-friendly videos. in windows we could "hide" the latter vids so only we knew where they were.

Hi gbv750,

welcome to the forum.

1) I believe that if you have the proper codec for the video file there will be a thumbnail. If not just try playing it once. That always work for me. Oo if you want to play wmv file with quictime you'll need flip4mac. Here's the link.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx

2) Here's an application that I found that will hide your files or folders. Plus its free. Its calleed Hide Folders.
http://www.altomac.com/hide_folders/index.php

alienapp said:

Hi gbv750,

welcome to the forum.

1) I believe that if you have the proper codec for the video file there will be a thumbnail. If not just try playing it once. That always work for me. Oo if you want to play wmv file with quictime you'll need flip4mac. Here's the link.
Windows Media® Components for QuickTime

2) Here's an application that I found that will hide your files or folders. Plus its free. Its calleed Hide Folders.
Hide Folders for Mac - Freeware program to protect documents and folders on Mac OS X

Click to expand...

thanks for the response. the problem with Hide folders is, well, it's called "Hide folders." it's begging to draw curious eyes. if you have kids, you know that if you put a "don't look here" sign on something, the kid will look. i miss the way i could look at the the guts of a pc and move folders around. i know it's early, but i feel like mac doesn't want me to customize it.

In the Finder, you can change how you view files. You can view documents, photos and video files as a list, in a column view, in Cover Flow, or as icons. What you want to do is open a Finder window, and at the top towards the left there is a group of buttons that let you choose which view you want to use. You probably want the icon view so you can see thumbnails of your videos. Cover Flow mode lets you see even more detail. Just experiment with the options and decide which one works best for you.

You can certainly look at the "guts" of your Mac and move folders anywhere you want to, using Finder. You don't have to keep your not-so-family-friendly videos where they are. You can rename the folder as something innocuous and move it to a location only you will remember. Or you can lock a folder as a disk image.