DigitalSandbox

When I bought my Mac Pro, the old Mini became a designated Home Theater PC (HTPC). Ever since then I have struggled to figure out how to maintain the libraries in multiple locations. The Mini didn’t have a large drive (only 80 GB) so I focused on using it for movies. The Pro had 250GB so it housed the music, but only some videos since I don’t watch movies on the computer screen anymore. This naturally meant that the two had some overlap but a lot of differences. The goal was always to buy a larger drive and house everything in one location and, if possible, keep the libraries in sync.

I recently bought a 1.5TB hard drive for the Pro and am in the process of setting up my media center. Here is the solution that I have come up with so far. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good and it works well.

This Doesn’t Work

The first thing I tried was setting up the iTunes library on the Pro and then telling the Mini to use that same Library as it’s library. This works in some ways, but not in some very annoying ways. It was nice because everything I added to the Pro was available instantly on the Mini. Playlists and Playcounts were always in sync. If this worked better it would be a perfect solution. Alas, there are some significant drawbacks. The biggest one is that you can’t be using iTunes on the Mini and the Pro at the same time. Whichever computer has it opened locks the library file so that no one else can edit it. Since the goal is to basically leave iTunes always running on the Mini, that means that you can’t use iTunes on the Pro. Ever. So a different solution is required.

Here’s What I’m Doing

The solution that I came up with is to establish the Pro (since it houses the drive and is the main computer in the house) as the official iTunes library. I set it up to copy the files into it’s directory structure and keep the files organized in the Preferences. I also made sure that it never sleeps. Since I am using it as a home server this isn’t an issue, but those wishing to try this should be aware of that point. The Mini has it’s own library but it doesn’t copy files or keep the files organized. Then I added the files in the Pro’s iTunes library folder to Mini’s library. Viola! Now I have both libraries accessing only one set of files.

The caveat is that anytime I add new files to the Pro I have to tell the Mini to get them as well. I have found that simply copying the Pro’s library files (everything except the iTunes Music folder) to the Mini works fine and is much faster than adding the iTunes Music folder back to the Mini and letting it process everything. THe downside to this arrangement is that playcounts and playlist don’t stay in sync. But this is far from a deal breaker compared to the issues I had doing it the other way.

There are several programs that claim to sync your libraries. Most of them seem to focus on syncing your files however and since that not what I need I continue to look for something to sync playcounts and playlists. I am surprised that Apple hasn’t really addressed this issue. Most homes are getting multiple computers now. I have 3 now in my house. They need to create a specific app to address this situation. An iTunes Server app would be perfect. something that maintains a master library that all iTunes Clients pull from and post to. I would even be willing to pay for an app like that.

So there you have it. Not a perfect solution, but one that is certainly usable. Just to demystify the setup a little bit more. The Pro and the Mini are both wired so there aren’t any issues from pulling the content across the network like that. I am ripping most things in Apple TV format, but some of the kids stuff is just iPod Hi-Res using Handbrake. And yes, 1.5Tb is a ridiculous amount of storage. I’m down to 1.38TB available and I have about 85 movies, a ton of TV shows and over 9GB of music. I LOVE IT!