A Shared iTunes Library for Movies

[OpTic Jayex]

I have an idea. I want to burn all or most of my dvd's to my desktop. I want to put all these movies, TV Shows, etc. on the Home Desktop with iTunes Sharing so i can watch any movie on my Apple TV. What is the best way to do this? I also have some external hd's.

 

[Risco]

I have an idea. I want to burn all or most of my dvd's to my desktop. I want to put all these movies, TV Shows, etc. on the Home Desktop with iTunes Sharing so i can watch any movie on my Apple TV. What is the best way to do this? I also have some external hd's.

1. Rip them with Handbrake
2. Purchase iFlicks
3. Use iFlicks to update meta data
4. Copy iTunes Media folder to external HDD, do NOT move the whole iTunes, just the media folder.

 

[Alrescha]

[*]Purchase iFlicks

Subler is free, and does metadata.

A.

 

[Risco]

Subler is free, and does metadata.

A.

I know, but my personal preference is iFlicks. I also have iDentify, and the most reliable and easiest to use is iFlicks.

 

[jpvand]

I use RipIt or Handbrake for DVDs, MakeMKV for bluray
Handbrake to convert to .m4v - I use the AppleTV 3 preset and it works great for me (appletv 3 keeps 1080p if converting a bluray, appletv2 is 720p, but does not matter if encoding a DVD). the preset has no problem playing on my Apple TV 2 or 3, iPhone 4 or later and iPad 2
I use metaz to edit metadata http://griff.github.io/metaz/

metaz is free and works pretty well too.

I have my library on my internal drive in the shared folder - this allows me to be logged into any user and access the whole library. only problem is itunes can only be open by one user at a time. any changes are only applied to the one library so it is always in sync and i don't need to have multiple copies of the music files on different user accounts. it is not the best solution but works for me for now.
Occasionally i will place some movies on an external HD to save some space on my internal HD. Before importing those files that I want to keep on the external HD I deselect the "copy to itunes media folder" under the advanced settings. It means I have to keep track of where those files are, bc if I remove them from iTunes, I have to manually delete them from that folder.

 

[OpTic Jayex]

All of those ideas sound good to me. I want to have them on 1 hard drive if possible. I want to make it a shared HD so anybody in my house can access it freely. Our Home computer, a PowerMac G5, has a 1 TB HD. I don't know if that's even enough space for all the content.

 

[ftaok]

All of those ideas sound good to me. I want to have them on 1 hard drive if possible. I want to make it a shared HD so anybody in my house can access it freely. Our Home computer, a PowerMac G5, has a 1 TB HD. I don't know if that's even enough space for all the content.

Just asking ... why does everyone in the house need access to the drive? Isn't Home Sharing enough?

Here's how I do it. I have an old Dell laptop in the basement with a 1TB HDD connected via eSATA. This is my iTunes server. I turn on Home Sharing on the Dell and all of my devices can connect to it via the network. This includes our Macs, the iPad, the iPhones and the aTV.

I also turn on sharing on the iTunes folder on the Dell so that any computer on the network can access the drive, but the only reason that I need is to add movies to the drive. The Dell isn't the fastest at ripping/converting DVDs, so I use a Hackintosh to rip DVDs and convert using Handbrake. I use Subler to get the metadata and add artwork. I then copy the file from the Hackintosh into the "Automatically add to iTunes" folder on the Dell iTunes Server.

100% of the times, it works all the time.

ft

 

[Alrescha]

I turn on Home Sharing on the Dell and all of my devices can connect to it via the network. This includes our Macs, the iPad, the iPhones and the aTV.

This. I do the same thing, except I'm running Snow Leopard Server on an old Mac mini.

A.