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Some advice needed.
I’ve moved my music onto iTunes on my MacBook, got my cover art up to date. All good. So the next step is creating a central media server. I can’t find much documentation around networked iTunes.
I can pull iTunes across the HomeLAN, no problem there but how do I coordinate media between iTunes machines?
The scenario is that I want to have my music stored on the central server. I’ll probably rip on my MacBook and then I need to move it back to the server. So the Server has all the music, video, photo’s etc and my MacBook has a subset of the whole collection and is the primary collection device.
Should the backend be a Mac, or should it be a NAS? Does SlimServer fit in here somewhere?
As well as iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie needs to work similarly.
Any thoughts welcome.
blog
iTunes will be no problem. iPhoto - I’ve no clue - it *should* work as long as you tell iPhoto where it’s library is on the remote server. iMove *may* work, but I’m not sure you’d want it to (assuming you’ll be using wireless - my iMovie files are all 12gb monsters). I know iDVD won’t like burning DVDs from projet and iMovie files stored remotely (tried that one myself).
I would get a backend mac. Maybe a small x86 imac - that way you can not only use it as a server, but you can hook up the MacBook using “target disk mode” and use it as a firewire drive. If you need to add storage later, you can just keep adding firewire drives. But it’s easy for me to spend your money. I’d go with the x86 iMac as they might be more upgradable. My concern would be in case you wanted to get an iTV and that thing does rely on 802.11n - an PPC mac mini or imac may be left out of Apple’s next airport card generation.
Good luck!
How did you get the Cover Art? I thought that required an iTunes Store account, which in turn requires a credit card with a US-based billing address?
iTunes has a ’share library’ function - however you need to be running the same version on all your macs/pcs that are using the shared library.
I share from a NDAS LanDrive to my PC where I maintain a iTunes Library and share it out to both PC and my Mac Mini
What you want to get is something you can access from multiple locations in your house and preferably not havig to have to lug around a laptop. I’m using one of the setupbox multimedia devices that plug into the home audio and video system and wirelessly access a dedicated server with some storage. For video only 802.11g works as with lowerbandwidth it can’t stream the video properly.
Rod: I don’t know if this will help you, but I just found this article while browsing.
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/19/how-to-keep-your-itunes-library-on-an-external-hard-drive/
cheers
Michele
Thanks Michele, that link (and comments) looks to have the answer. Consolidate Libary looks useful. Great opportunity for a product to manage all this.
Marting, this is just the Music Server stage. I’m getting ready for iTV or whatever else to stream the media around the house.
John, it was a manual process. Search for art on Amazon and drag into the Album Info dialog. Took 3 days on and off, but there now. Result is glorious. Another great product opp or non iTunes countries.
Rod: Look at the Ready NAS NV from http://infrant.com/products/products.php - Serves iTunes from the NAS as a central server. Works very well!
The drums are beating: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/index.php?p=293