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tuffie88

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 24, 2009
2
0
I've maxed out AppleTV and my MacBook Pro is complaining too (i.e. almost out of storage space).

Is there anyway to compress music files in iTunes, and thereby in AppleTV/MacBook, to increase the number of songs I can store/access on AppleTV?

I have 400+Gig of music. AppleTV ain't big enough!!

Anyone?

Alternatively, can I run multiple AppleTV's linked (which wouldn't address the MacBook issue)?:(
 

pacmania1982

macrumors 65816
Nov 19, 2006
1,168
520
Birmingham, UK
You're at the stage where I think you need to start looking at storage devices, whether they be USB or NAS.

I personally have a 1.5TB USB hard drive which is partitioned into 4 (Software, Music, Movies & TV Shows) which houses my media on. I've unticked the option in the iTunes preferences to copy files when adding to the library. It is hooked up to a Mac mini in the bedroom which is then connected to an Airport Extreme base station. The Mac mini has iTunes running on it which shares out the music, tv shows and movies. The Apple TV in the living room streams all of this wirelessly as I have told it NOT to sync anything other than pictures. My current library has about 12,000 music files in, over 500GB of movies and over 200GB of tv shows. Its not quite as large as some peoples on here, but the way I have configured it, everything just streams.

Now in your case, you're going to have to work out what you need. Either move your library to another drive on your laptop or get a something that plugs into the network that you can put your files on and then reference in iTunes.

You're going to have to do some work, its not simply a case of doing what you asked - compressing the iTunes library, which I do not believe is possible

Hope you figure it out, be sure to ask if you have any queries ;)

pac
 

tuffie88

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 24, 2009
2
0
thanks to you both!

Very helpful.

I kind of knew it was coming to this but just didn't want to admit it.

Sigh...
 

Shuttleworth

macrumors regular
Dec 23, 2008
196
0
UK
Yeah, but imagine how much space all that stuff would take up if it were physical! I justified part of the cost of my AppleTV by not buying a new DVD cabinet ;)
 

pacmania1982

macrumors 65816
Nov 19, 2006
1,168
520
Birmingham, UK
I was actually going to post the link to that article, but figured I'd write a few lines with my experiences rather than have to sift through the millions of posts under that thread ;0) (You may see one of my comments on there also!)

Hope you figure out a solution!

pac
 

tom1971

macrumors 6502a
May 15, 2007
670
0
I've maxed out AppleTV and my MacBook Pro is complaining too (i.e. almost out of storage space).

Is there anyway to compress music files in iTunes, and thereby in AppleTV/MacBook, to increase the number of songs I can store/access on AppleTV?

I have 400+Gig of music. AppleTV ain't big enough!!

Anyone?

Alternatively, can I run multiple AppleTV's linked (which wouldn't address the MacBook issue)?:(

The easiest way to add storage to AppleTV is by using an external USB drive. You can trick the ATV into thinking that the external drive is the main drive to sync with.
Check http://patchstick.wikispaces.com/Use+USB+hard+drive+as+primary+storage for details

Regarding your MBP problem - I guess there is not much you can do except for switching to a bigger drive.
 

chrono1081

macrumors G3
Jan 26, 2008
8,456
4,164
Isla Nublar
Dont Compress Files!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




.......EVER!!!!



File compression is usually the easiest way to have corrupt files. Look what happens on windows machines when you compress the root of C like the user did to this machine on my desk. IT DOESNT WORK

Also remember back when memory cards for game consoles (ps1) era had the memory cards that held LOTS more blocks then the normal cards and people where always losing game saves? Thank compression.

Theres many more I can think of but these are a few.

As others have stated look at NAS.
 

RumMunkey

macrumors 6502a
Nov 3, 2006
692
2
Canada
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/530.17)

www.drobo.com


You're welcome / I'm sorry
 
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