What I have found out is that iLive apps work well on a single Mac on its local HD ( iPhoto and iTune are what I have used , so I can not speak really for the other iLive apps ).
To share out libraries to show pics or play music threw the supported way using the Preferences settings of the different apps works ok , but still has kinks to be worked out. For example when closing iTunes it is smart enough to not actually close down so the shared library still is accessible , but Iphoto is not , so you have to be diligent to not actually close down iPhoto , otherwise its shared library will not be accessible. Also features are reduced, for example in iTunes cover-flow is not available on shared library.
But once you actually put the libraries on a USB and/or network HD , iTunes and Iphoto start to have some real issues. The issues have to do with the fact that a shared resource might go away while it is being used , or might not be available when the application starts and these apps can not handle that very well. The reason for the disk to not be available or go away could be that the USB disk has been unplugged , or it has not been plugged in. Or the wireless connection has been lost for a network disk.
iTunes for example marks songs with a ! if it had issues accessing them. It has no concept of the device the library is on comes and goes. So when I sync an Ipod or iPhone with songs that are marked ! ( even if the HD containing the songs is accessible again) it will skip syncing them. I have not found a single operation to undo this check. What I have been doing with lots of frustration is to go threw the library and click on each song shortly , once it plays this ! is gone.
iPhoto in some cases creates a empty photo library if it can not find the original one. Again not aware that the device the library is on doesn't exist or has gone away. In my case the iPhoto library was on a shared disk . ( AEBS with a USB disk \volumes\Shared Disk\ ) At one time this disk was not accessible iPhoto created a folder called "Shared Disk" under "\Volumes", and created the empty library in it. So the path to the library was the same but instead of located on the disk at "\Volumes\Shared Disk" it was in a folder at the same path. This folder by the way was not listed in finder , or any files in it could not be found with finder or even a share ware tool called EasyFind. More on this at
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/434002/
