iTunes help

[taimatsu]

I wonder if anyone can help or suggest help souces for an iTunes problem.

Robert and I are running iTunes, mostly because I have an iPod. We have in the house several desktop machines and two laptops connected via a WLAN. We want to listen to music through iTunes on two laptops and one desktop. All the music is stored on a fourth machine (running SuSe Linux iirc). All the instances of iTunes specify that directory (V:/mp3) as their library folder. So far so good.

The trouble is that... let's say I buy a new CD, Kylie's Greatest Hits or whatever. I fire up my laptop and rip it to the mp3 directory via iTunes. That's great, I have it in my Library list in iTunes. Robert, however, on his laptop or desktop, does not, as iTunes does not automatically check to see whether new files have been added to the Library folder. If I tell him it's there he can go and drag-and-drop the file/folder and it'll be added, but when we're dealing with batches of CDs this gets hideously clumsy, and we end up deleting the Library list and re-dragging-and-dropping the entire mp3 folder, which has to be done in chunks and is enormously stupid and boring and easy to screw up, as we have over 19 GB in there at the moment, and a pile of CDs still to go.

So what's the solution? Is there a way to make iTunes pick up on new files? Is there something obvious I'm missing? Is there another iPod-compatible program I should use? Where can I get help with this?

All assistance most welcome; and if you are instrumental in helping me sort it out I'll buy you a drink or a cookie or something when we next meet.

Comments

[borusa.livejournal.com]

It's running Gentoo, actually, but that's beside the point - it's just a Samba share.

Morning!

[taimatsu]

Afternoon!

You're great :)

[purplepiano.livejournal.com]

Interesting problem - we've got a similar situation here, but I like to keep two copies of the music files on two different computers anyway, for backup. If all the client computers are running Windows, would it be possible to install and run iTunes itself on the Samba share? That supposes it can be convinced to store the user preferences on the share, and use those preferences, whoever is running it...

I found an Applescript (http://crossroads.net/a/2005/02/14/multiple_itunes_libraries_one_music_folder) to do this (via ipodlounge (http://forums.ipodlounge.com/archive/topic/74013-1.html)) but this is Mac only. Maybe browse the ipodlounge forums, or the forums on Apple support, ... eek! I see you've already discovered the latter!

[purplepiano.livejournal.com]

Hm, the first one probably won't work because the place where iTunes stores the library index seems to be hardwired, e.g. to My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml on Windows. What about replacing this file with a shortcut to a shared library index file on the shared machine? I've tried this on a Mac and it works, but it doesn't work with Windows shortcuts.

[purplepiano.livejournal.com]

PS let us know if you find a solution.

[taimatsu]

Note to self: Another stupid clunky way to do it would be to have stark as the main music computer with all the info and playlists, and make it share music and playlists to the laptops. This has the upside that we're all using the same list, and the downside that if we want to add music or a playlist or change something we have to use stark, either directly or using vnc.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

Thinking about this some more, the problem appears to come down to two issues

1) In ITunes, if you add an entire directory to your music library, and that directory contains files that are already in your library, then it re-adds them, creating duplicates.

2) It doesn't notice when you _delete_ files from the directory.

Hmm.

Could you do me a favour and email me the XML music library file? I've got an idea!

[taimatsu]

Which one? The one fron stark, or one somewhere else, or what? And to what address?

[borusa.livejournal.com]

Really don't care - just want to know what the format is.

[taimatsu]

Have now emailed - have they arrived?

[borusa.livejournal.com]

Got them.

Hmm.

Can't believe no-one's had the same problem before.

[taimatsu]

I'm sure people have, but I can't find any useful help on the issue.

[taimatsu]

The problem is more than that. The problem is that each instance of iTunes only recognises changes to its list of files that are performed through that instance of iTunes. Any change that is performed through another iTunes or directly on the file directory will not be reflected in your iTunes unless you update it manually.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, but it would be OK to press a button that said "update the library", surely?

[taimatsu]

Of course that would be great, but if it's the equivalent of re-adding the entire list it'd still take ages... So you have a clever idea involving syncing against one or another Libray file?

[sogoth.livejournal.com]

copy the iTunes Music Library.xml file into a temp directory on the machine that you store all your music on. Create two batch files. One to run after you've copied some CDs that copies the xml file up to the shared drive. Another to copy down the file whenever you start up a computer.

This way whenever you log into the computer you will have the latest version of the library loaded for you :)

should work in theory

[sogoth.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected. I just tried it and the damn thing didn't work :\
p00t!