iTunes-NAS-XBMC?

wrz0170 · Feb 25, 2011

Hey there,

I did a lot of googling of the subject and could not find anything definitive here nor the XBMC forums.

Does anyone know if iTunes library---->NAS----ATV2/XBMC can play nice together? What about movies and/or TV shows that were purchased through iTunes?

Or do I have to pony up for Mini / Plex because of how iTunes works?

Curious about your setups out there and what works!

Thanks!!

scienide09 · Feb 25, 2011

Why not cut out the middle man, i.e., iTunes? You can point XBMC directly to your NAS. This is what I did, and it works great.

You can then access stuff in iTunes the normal route, and stuff on your NAS via XBMC.

Zentech · Feb 25, 2011

iTunes-NAS-XBMC?

@wrz0170

I'm "real" new APLLE world. Started on PCM then.. stucked into windows.
After more than 1 year following MacRumors I moved to Apple.
Now I onw iMac 27", Iphone 4, iPda, ATV 2G and soon the new MBP.
Just need to understand my need, If a 13 or 15".

NAS-XMBC
Unfortunately for a newbie like me life is not easy. Everybody are able to do everithing but there is a lack in information flow. And working to write (my job) a map for newbie like me.

I did many try and now, not sure how (but sure not clear next step), I was alble to JB the ATV 2g. To install XMBC and connect the ATV2g to my NAS - Thecus N4100Pro - all my music and DVD (still need to RIP some other DVD of my collection)-

Is really quite easy. Most difficiult (for me) is to finetune XBMC. Actually I see only avi but not any iso.

Rgds
Zentech

tallyho · Feb 25, 2011

scienide09 said:
Why not cut out the middle man, i.e., iTunes? You can point XBMC directly to your NAS. This is what I did, and it works great.

You can then access stuff in iTunes the normal route, and stuff on your NAS via XBMC.

Well...must depend on the NAS. I have files on a TimeCapsule and can access it as an smb share from XMBC, but with lots of buffering. My Macbook sees the same files (on the TC) as being in its iTunes library and I can stream them via the native ATV2 interface with no buffering at all. This requires my Macbook to be running with itunes open though!

So, cutting out the middle man should work, but smb on a TC or airdisk attached to an Airport Extreme is a real bottleneck. Apparently a Windows 7 smb share works fine, but I don't run windows and I don't want a computer running if I can manage without...

wrz0170 · Feb 25, 2011

scienide09 said:
Why not cut out the middle man, i.e., iTunes? You can point XBMC directly to your NAS. This is what I did, and it works great.

You can then access stuff in iTunes the normal route, and stuff on your NAS via XBMC.

Hi there. Please explain more? I copied my iTunes library; music, movies, TV shows, the whole thing over to my NAS (in my case, a Netgear ReadyNas Duo, but most NAS drives work the same way I would assume).

With that said, XBMC is pointed to my NAS or so I think. It "sees" the music folders but there appears to be nothing in them when I actually try to drill down to the files themselves. And to put it out there, same thing with my pictures. I can see the file folders and actually the thumbnails. But when I click on a picture to view it full screen or play a slide show, the screen goes blank.

I am hoping user error in knowing the right way to point XBMC to my media on the NAS.

scienide09 · Feb 27, 2011

It all depends on network setup, I suppose.

I have my NAS connected to my router via ethernet cable. Plus, both my NAS and my ATV2 have a fixed, manually assigned IP so that they can always be found on the network.

In XBMC, you can add your NAS as a video source by pointing it to the IP address of your NAS plus subfolder(s), if applicable. You can do this within XBMC itself, or by SSHing into the ATV2 and manually editing the sources.xml file.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Adding_Media_Sources

If it helps, I was having trouble pointing to the right folder in XBMC, so I manually edited the sources.xml file. This was very easy, and ensures I have the correct syntax. Plus, "typing" with the Apple remote is a real pain in the a**, so I was much faster to edit the file.

tallyho said:
Well...must depend on the NAS. I have files on a TimeCapsule and can access it as an smb share from XMBC, but with lots of buffering. My Macbook sees the same files (on the TC) as being in its iTunes library and I can stream them via the native ATV2 interface with no buffering at all. This requires my Macbook to be running with itunes open though!

So, cutting out the middle man should work, but smb on a TC or airdisk attached to an Airport Extreme is a real bottleneck. Apparently a Windows 7 smb share works fine, but I don't run windows and I don't want a computer running if I can manage without...

I think I see what you're saying. I too wanted to avoid the hassle of running everything through iTunes on a active computer, which is why XMB-->NAS is a great solution. However, I don't think of TC as a NAS, at least not in it's normal setup. Typically TC disks connect via AFP don't they, rather than SMB? I'm not sure if XBMC does AFP -- it's not listed on this page: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Configuring_PC_Shares

wrz0170 · Feb 27, 2011

scienide09 said:
It all depends on network setup, I suppose.

I have my NAS connected to my router via ethernet cable. Plus, both my NAS and my ATV2 have a fixed, manually assigned IP so that they can always be found on the network.

In XBMC, you can add your NAS as a video source by pointing it to the IP address of your NAS plus subfolder(s), if applicable. You can do this within XBMC itself, or by SSHing into the ATV2 and manually editing the sources.xml file.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Adding_Media_Sources

If it helps, I was having trouble pointing to the right folder in XBMC, so I manually edited the sources.xml file. This was very easy, and ensures I have the correct syntax. Plus, "typing" with the Apple remote is a real pain in the a**, so I was much faster to edit the file.

I think I see what you're saying. I too wanted to avoid the hassle of running everything through iTunes on a active computer, which is why XMB-->NAS is a great solution. However, I don't think of TC as a NAS, at least not in it's normal setup. Typically TC disks connect via AFP don't they, rather than SMB? I'm not sure if XBMC does AFP -- it's not listed on this page: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Configuring_PC_Shares

Thank you! I had progress today. I was able to finally get music to play. It browsed to network and manually inputted the IP/user/password. I also finally got the time set too, separate issue.

However, movies and TV shows that I bought via iTunes do show up and start at the beginning then freeze. Pictures, almost the same thing. I got the thumbnails to show up but once I click on the pic to see it full screen or slideshow, it just goes black.

But I am happy with the progress thus far. If anyone knows how to remedy the the movie freezes and picture issues, would love to hear from you.

currentcomics1 · Feb 27, 2011

XBMC add movies and iTunes library

Hi guys, I had a similar issue. I did not want to have my MBP on to watch movies or listen to music. I use my time capsule as normal but hooked up an external HD to it to act as a NAS. I copied all of my music and movies to separate folders and followed the instructions from the following link.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ataqsy7bhfcau8h

The instructions made it fairly easy. I love my set up.

tallyho · Feb 28, 2011

scienide09 said:
I think I see what you're saying. I too wanted to avoid the hassle of running everything through iTunes on a active computer, which is why XMB-->NAS is a great solution. However, I don't think of TC as a NAS, at least not in it's normal setup. Typically TC disks connect via AFP don't they, rather than SMB? I'm not sure if XBMC does AFP -- it's not listed on this page: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Configuring_PC_Shares

Well yes and no. To clarify: I'm not using the TC for Time Machine backups; I'm just using its internal hard disk and other USB disk attached to it for network storage. So I don't want to buy another NAS when I have loads of storage already available.

TC/Airdisks do have SMB but I'm finding the performance to be poor. Ideally I'm looking for a way to get afp working with XBMC. A (less desirable) alternative is that FireCore's ATVFlash(black) will have a media player when its out of beta, and it will support afp as well as smb. http://twitter.com/firecore/status/41270389967560704

I'm sure someone out there somewhere wants to get XBMC working *properly* (ie no SMB bottleneck) with files stored on a TC/Airdisk though --it's hardly an unusual setup!

scienide09 · Feb 28, 2011

I'm surprised that SMB performance on the TC seems to be poor. I'm using SMB to my NAS via my older AEBS -- given that TC is a child-product of the AEBS, you'd think they'd have similar performance issues.

I haven't had any buffering issues with streaming from the NAS direct to ATV2. I'll throw the obvious one out there first -- do you have a lot of wireless devices on your network, something that could be causing interference?

wrz0170 · Feb 28, 2011

tallyho said:
I'm sure someone out there somewhere wants to get XBMC working *properly* (ie no SMB bottleneck) with files stored on a TC/Airdisk though --it's hardly an unusual setup!

I know I do!

I just want my files (pictures, iTunes library which includes music, TV shows and movies) to play via ATV2/XBMC from my NAS.

I made some progress in getting the iTunes music to play. That was a matter of pointing XBMC in the right way to the NAS. The frustrating part is when I try to point XBMC in a similar manner for pictures or movies, they don't want to work properly. I can see the folders, the thumbnails but thats it.

tallyho · Feb 28, 2011

scienide09 said:
I'm surprised that SMB performance on the TC seems to be poor. I'm using SMB to my NAS via my older AEBS -- given that TC is a child-product of the AEBS, you'd think they'd have similar performance issues.

I haven't had any buffering issues with streaming from the NAS direct to ATV2. I'll throw the obvious one out there first -- do you have a lot of wireless devices on your network, something that could be causing interference?

No, it's not a network congestion issue. My original thread explains that I can effectively double the network traffic and have perfect playback when using the standard iTunes/ATV2 interface. In other words, I have my movie files on the TC and also linked to in my Macbook's iTunes library: I can then stream perfectly (so the movie data is going from TC to Macbook, back to TC and out to ATV2). Of course, this is using the TC/Airdisk's native afp streaming protocol, I guess.

Browsing the TC as an smb share directly from XBMC on ATV2 is when the bottleneck occurs (many files play OK-remember these are SD encodes of my DVDs, not HD movies) but many have frequent buffering.

There's a 19-page-and-counting thread on the XBMC forum, but these posts are relevant:

Another thread:

Anyway, you get the picture (sorry for linking to individual posts, but I thought I'd home-in on the relevant posts in long threads).

FWIW, I'm not trying to play avi or mkv, just h264 SD videos encoded in Handbrake, using the Apple Universal preset. And they stream perfectly over wireless using the stock iTunes/ATV2 approach...

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iTunes-NAS-XBMC?

wrz0170

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Zentech

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tallyho

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