Networking a Mini and iMac

[iMerlin]

I also posted about this in the ATV section but I think its more of a network share problem.

So I have added a Mini to my Apple family and Im loving it so far. For a while now Ive been ripping Blurays on my iMac for streaming to my PS3 for playback. Well the Mini has taken the PS3s place as my HTPC. So I setup the Mini on my network and all is well. I can connect to my iMac from the Mini and Vice Versa. I can screen share, no sweat. I can copy and paste files between the 2, no problems.

My issue is mainly with the program Plex and iTunes. All my BDs are stored on my iMac so I pointed Plex to the iMac drive to add the movies. It appeared to work until I restarted the Mini at which point it appeared to lose track of where that folder is. If I try to play a movie it gives me an error like "file doesnt exist". I can go back in and add the source again, but this is starting to take a while to do and it keeps losing link when I shut one of the machines down.

So my question is... is there a way to automatically mount a shared folder on my Mini upon startup?
Anyone have experience with plex know of a better way to do this? I tried it as an SMB share but that also didnt seem to consistent.

iTunes is a whole other issue. I dont want to have a different copy of iTunes on all my Macs, not sure how to address that one though. Ill have to start googling. I would prefer to have my iMac as the mainframe storing all the media and have my Mini and MBP get its content from there, but Im having a tough time figuring that out.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Eric M]

setup

OS X can automatically mount network resources when they become available on the network but...just thinking, what's the reasoning behind replacing PS3 with Mini - PS3 + PS3 Media Server creates a very capable system that is also capable of up-scaling video and the HD playback is extremely smooth.

If you really do want to do that though, then I'd suggest using static IPs and permanent mount points eg. you can tell OS X to look for a specific location on the network and mount it when it starts broadcasting as live. Make sure that you use 100/1000 network between the two as wireless and HD = jerky picture + OOS sound...

"file doesn't exist">permissions issue, make sure that you have rights to play/edit files you are trying to stream/watch

 

[iMerlin]

OS X can automatically mount network resources when they become available on the network but...just thinking, what's the reasoning behind replacing PS3 with Mini - PS3 + PS3 Media Server creates a very capable system that is also capable of up-scaling video and the HD playback is extremely smooth.

If you really do want to do that though, then I'd suggest using static IPs and permanent mount points eg. you can tell OS X to look for a specific location on the network and mount it when it starts broadcasting as live. Make sure that you use 100/1000 network between the two as wireless and HD = jerky picture + OOS sound...

"file doesn't exist">permissions issue, make sure that you have rights to play/edit files you are trying to stream/watch

Ya know, I was running PS3MS but had such inconsistent playback results I was getting fed up with it. I tried every tweak I could imagine but still had stutter and sometimes videos not supported altogether. So I decided to jump ship and get the Mini. Not to mention I like the UI using the Mini much better than I liked the PS3 XMB for streaming.

So to your second point, I am hard wired for both the Mini and iMac to my AEBS so I should be golden there. I definitely have permissions since I was able to play them right after I load that source. The problem is when I close Plex and restart the Mini, I try to play the same file and get that error. So it appears its losing the mapping to that iMac drive. I was thinking about sticking an external on my AEBS and sharing it from there instead. But Im not sure about that yet!

So if I assign all my boxes static IPs then I can tell OS X to mount those automatically? Can you point me in the direction of the instructions to do that?

Thanks for the reply by the way!