My family has 4 copies of our iTunes database, my iMac (sleeps 20/24 hours, only place DVDs are ripped to video for streaming to the AppleTV), my wife's iMac (sleeps 10/24 hours), our PowerBook file server (never sleeps, streams audio to 2 Airport Expresses and the AppleTV with the music stored on USB flash drives) and single backup on the Time Machine out of paranoia. What a mess.
We've used SlingShot to synchronize them, and it's been partially successful. It can move files from one computer to another, but viewing counts and stars don't keep (we use stars to mark songs we'd like to hear more of from the iTunes DJ and we're very happy with that). There are, of course, workarounds, like sharing a play list for 1 star, 2 star, 3 star, etc. and then after it copies, you can select the playlist, and mark them all with the appropriate stars, but that's ... irritating.
I'd like to be able to use something like rsync that can see into the .xml library and have starred songs have precedence over unstarred so that every star is propagated.
That said, I'm completely open to more ideas. I'm not looking to buy more hardware. I don't see a single central repository as a smart idea for a few reasons. 1) Write blocking. As near as I can tell, if more than one computer has iTunes open, the last one to exit gets the write precedence, so even if another computer added songs to the .xml library, if another one marks with stars and exits later, the new songs are lost from the library. 2) Scarcity of drive space on our server. My iMac has a 500GB drive and all the CPU for all our ripping needs, and plenty of room for our DVD collection (transcoded with Handbrake of course) for now. The PowerBook is always on, so it's a natural iTunes streaming server, but the drive space is slim, and there's not even 5GB of buffer on his flash drives -- nowhere near enough space to store our DVD collection -- this is because of the price of flash 1-2 years ago (when I last worked on "the best solution") and my inherent distrust of spinning media. If I don't rip a new CD fast enough, my wife will on her iMac, sometimes without letting me know, and then I face arguing with SlingShot again. SlingShot sometimes has problems with my library, and will crash after a few days if left to its own devices. I don't know if it has a programming fault, or if it doesn't like my 50GB of music (99% of which came from CD, and 100% of it legitimately purchased).
Is there some rsync like program that can handle the iTunes file with intelligence? Something that can talk to iTunes on an API level and insert media and update metadata like stars while iTunes is running? What's the best solution for using a single ripping client, when any client can and will make updates to stars number of times played?
If this has been discussed recently, I apologize. All searches I tried with iTunes and syncing in them turned out to involve iPods and iPhones which is not my primary problem (although naturally, a song I rip on my iMac and star with the iTunes Remote on my iPod touch would need to be available to sync to my wife's iPod on her computer).
We've used SlingShot to synchronize them, and it's been partially successful. It can move files from one computer to another, but viewing counts and stars don't keep (we use stars to mark songs we'd like to hear more of from the iTunes DJ and we're very happy with that). There are, of course, workarounds, like sharing a play list for 1 star, 2 star, 3 star, etc. and then after it copies, you can select the playlist, and mark them all with the appropriate stars, but that's ... irritating.
I'd like to be able to use something like rsync that can see into the .xml library and have starred songs have precedence over unstarred so that every star is propagated.
That said, I'm completely open to more ideas. I'm not looking to buy more hardware. I don't see a single central repository as a smart idea for a few reasons. 1) Write blocking. As near as I can tell, if more than one computer has iTunes open, the last one to exit gets the write precedence, so even if another computer added songs to the .xml library, if another one marks with stars and exits later, the new songs are lost from the library. 2) Scarcity of drive space on our server. My iMac has a 500GB drive and all the CPU for all our ripping needs, and plenty of room for our DVD collection (transcoded with Handbrake of course) for now. The PowerBook is always on, so it's a natural iTunes streaming server, but the drive space is slim, and there's not even 5GB of buffer on his flash drives -- nowhere near enough space to store our DVD collection -- this is because of the price of flash 1-2 years ago (when I last worked on "the best solution") and my inherent distrust of spinning media. If I don't rip a new CD fast enough, my wife will on her iMac, sometimes without letting me know, and then I face arguing with SlingShot again. SlingShot sometimes has problems with my library, and will crash after a few days if left to its own devices. I don't know if it has a programming fault, or if it doesn't like my 50GB of music (99% of which came from CD, and 100% of it legitimately purchased).
Is there some rsync like program that can handle the iTunes file with intelligence? Something that can talk to iTunes on an API level and insert media and update metadata like stars while iTunes is running? What's the best solution for using a single ripping client, when any client can and will make updates to stars number of times played?
If this has been discussed recently, I apologize. All searches I tried with iTunes and syncing in them turned out to involve iPods and iPhones which is not my primary problem (although naturally, a song I rip on my iMac and star with the iTunes Remote on my iPod touch would need to be available to sync to my wife's iPod on her computer).