iTunes multiple mac setup

[steviem]

Hi,

I think I have the idea worked it out, but just need to make sure it will work properly.

At home I have a mac mini with a 320GB External Hard Drive, I want this to host all of my music and video through iTunes.
My main computer is a Macbook, and I've spent about 5 or 6 hours rating music on this, I wouldnt really like to lose all these ratings.
I have an iPod Touch that I want to be able to put movies or tv on from the mac mini, but it is currently synced to my Macbook.

All of my video is currently on the External Hard drive and I access it in Front Row by having a symbolic link in the 'Movies' directory on the mac mini. I have used around 200GB from video content.

What I am planning on doing is using a modified iTunes Library file from my Macbook, only specifying the external hard drive instead of the internal disk. This should keep my ratings. Is this correct? I will then add individual tv series and change their type to TV shows, once I am finished with the TV shows, I will then start on Movies.

I'm wondering if there is a more efficient way to do this as it is likely to take me a long time, although front row should run a bit quicker with everything in the iTunes database.

Does anybody have any suggestions to make it quicker?

 

[tersono]

Hi,

I think I have the idea worked it out, but just need to make sure it will work properly.

At home I have a mac mini with a 320GB External Hard Drive, I want this to host all of my music and video through iTunes.
My main computer is a Macbook, and I've spent about 5 or 6 hours rating music on this, I wouldnt really like to lose all these ratings.
I have an iPod Touch that I want to be able to put movies or tv on from the mac mini, but it is currently synced to my Macbook.

All of my video is currently on the External Hard drive and I access it in Front Row by having a symbolic link in the 'Movies' directory on the mac mini. I have used around 200GB from video content.

What I am planning on doing is using a modified iTunes Library file from my Macbook, only specifying the external hard drive instead of the internal disk. This should keep my ratings. Is this correct? I will then add individual tv series and change their type to TV shows, once I am finished with the TV shows, I will then start on Movies.

Does anybody have any suggestions to make it quicker?

I do something similar. I have my iTunes library set up on an old G4 file server. I have a symlink setup that redirects the iTunes folder on my MacBook Pro to the iTunes folder on the server. I also have another machine (my wife's) set up for access the same way. This means that all three computers can update/modify the iTunes library at any time without them getting out of sync and my wife can sync her iPod without problems.

Note that this doesn't require modification of the library file - it just means that you need to have the network share mounted before you open iTunes.

As you say, though, it needs to be a symlink - an alias won't work.

 

[zombitronic]

As you say, though, it needs to be a symlink - an alias won't work.

I do this with a simple alias...works perfectly, even on a network.

But I alias the entire iTunes folder, not just the library file. This way, I can add or edit music from any machine and it will all collect in one place. Much better than just sharing a playlist across the network from within iTunes, IMO.

 

[tersono]

I do this with a simple alias...works perfectly, even on a network.

Well, that's very interesting, and more than a little puzzling as I tried it repeatedly and just couldn't get an alias to behave.

Thanks for the insight though - I'm gonna hafta do a little digging and find out why it didn't work, just for curiosity's sake - I love a puzzle

FWIW I also linked the whole folder - not just the library.