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]

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?