Currently our household has 3 Macs. A 1.66Ghz Mac Mini (my workstation, called Valkyrie) w. 1GB RAM, a 1GHZ Powerbook w. 512MB RAM (Rikke’s machine, called Freya) and my 2.2Ghz MacBook Pro w. 2GB RAM (Godiva). They’re all running Leopard and share the wifi network (on which there are several other devices, as well as a 1TB network HDD). Connected to the Mac mini is a 250GB disk for photos and music and a 500GB disk for time machine backups.
Here’s the deal; I want to hook the Mac mini up to our 40” Bravia and use it as our media center, running OSXBMC on it as well as whatever other applications it would make sense to run on there. In turn, I would then have my 20” Cinema Display, wireless keyboard and mouse and the external HDD’s sitting without a workstation.
This is where the MBP comes into play, because I then want to use that as my primary machine from now on (where it’s been my secondary up until now). But I’m not sure if I can live with some of the issues that crop up in doing this. So I’m looking for some qualified help here:
- The iTunes Library. This is the biggest issue. I’m approaching a 160GB library, which is currently hosted on an external HDD. My MBP’s disk is a mere 120GB, so there’s an obvious problem here. I play music through our Airports, and if the MBP doesn’t carry the music, I can’t do so unless I’m wired. So I can either keep my music on the external HDD so I only have access to it when I’m ‘wired’. This sucks, because if iTunes discovers that its ‘library disk’ is gone, it resets that location to the MBP itself, and so I have to manually change it back all the time. Or I can prune it down; though I’d rather not to be honest. Or I can keep a sub-set of it on the MBP. Or I can keep it on the Mac mini. If I keep it on the Mac mini, I can’t manage it though, except on the TV or through a VNC connection, and that feels a bit bleh. Man, do I ever wish Apple would allow me to manage shared libraries… Or I can find some other solution that eludes me.
- iPhone. I need to have a loose wire for syncing the iPhone if I’m not wired up to the display. No biggie. But again, the iTunes issue.
- Now You See It, Now You Don’t. I’m afraid of applications leaving their windows on a screen that is no longer there, when I unplug the cinema display. I generally think OS X deals with multi monitors well (opposite Windows, cuz DAMN!), but I’m unsure if this is a problem at all?
And of course, anything else that might be of interest.
Comment are open.
Plug the external HDD with the 160gig of music into the Mac Mini attached to the TV. Setup an AFP share, and just mount it over the wifi. Then you’ll have access to all your music sans wires.
I did the same thing with my 1TB RaidMax HDD. I plugged it into an old TIBook with FW400, and I just mount that drive over the WiFi using AFP. I also upgraded my Airport Express to the N model, and I can pull 7Meg per sec from it. If I need to add any files to it, I just plug in FW800 and transfer at just under 70meg per sec.
Once its mounted on your desktop just use iTunes like normal and stream the music to your speakers. This also allows everyone in the house to mount that same AFP share with the music.
So, the music is only in the library on the laptop? Not on the machine it’s plugged into?
When you add files to it and plug it into the laptop, do you then re-set the library location in iTunes?
Personally I keep about +/-10 gigs of music im currently listening to in my ~/Music. I’ll just drag that folder onto iTunes and then just have it there. This is mostly for when I am away from home traveling for work, and or pleasure. Aka cant access all my music but still want some.
When I am at home I just mount the AFP share. I will then drag albums I want to listen to from the /Music folder on the share into the iTunes window. I almost never have the entire library of music in all at once – it has a hard time with it.
This essentially means I never let iTunes manage my collection. (Oldschool Winamp / Foobar2000 guy – I do my own folders, naming and tagging ) If you open iTunes then goto “Itunes>Preferences>Advanced”, then click off “Keep itunes Music folder organized” and “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library”. This way iTunes just becomes a music player – which is all I want. Thus iTunes is not trying to copy all my music across the wifi into “~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music” building its own library for me everytime I add any music.
The AFP share is essentially just your USB harddrive without wires to OSX, you just need to let iTunes know about the change if it is managing your collection.
However if I understand what you want to do – i’m pretty sure you can do the same thing you are doing locally if you goto “Itunes>Preferences>Advanced”, click the button to “change the iTunes Music folder location” to the AFP share because its essentially the same library just mounted over the air instead of cabled. Then iTunes will just look for the share instead of the usb drive. Same thing – just portable. If I remember right – you will want to be plugged in to ethernet the first time when it rebuilds the database. ( which will happen when you change the location, and it goes through rescanning everything )
And then of course there’s the speed-hit for album art and such… Ugh :)
I use the MBP with an ACD as my primary computer. So far I’ve never had any problems with “losing” application windows. I use Spaces pretty liberally and even then when I disconnect the monitor all the windows gather to the MBP screen. Sometimes you’ll have to resize based on the size of the applications on the external… but the little green button comes in handy for that.
As for “Now You See It, Now You Don’t.” issue – I use my Macbook at work currently with external 19” Dell LCD – I use it as a second monitor (man, dual screen FTW ;] ) – after I unplug LCD all windows are moved to the MB screen. Sometimes they’re stuck near border – but you can safely grab them and move them, where you see them – it looks like when you move the window to the side of the screen and only a little fragment of the window is visible – so if it’s not the problem for you (that you have sometimes move the windows closer to center of the screen, to actually see something on them) – that’s no problem with that.
Michael,
have you heard of MultiTunes? Maybe this can help you:
http://porkrind.org/multitunes/
—nico
My home setup is pretty similar to what Pete suggests, I have a little NAS box that stores the music, but I have the iTunes library on my lappy. I let iTunes manage the files and just have the music location set to the AFP share.
It seems to work pretty well and would save you having to change the library location all the time. I’m running that setup over wireless and the speed hits don’t seem particularly noticeable, at least to me. The obvious drawback is that you can’t listen to you library through the lappy if you’re not connected to the network — as long as you have your iPod it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
Keep your primary music files on the 1TB NAS, copy your favorite music to your MBP – or do you really need a 160GB bunch of songs?
With that little drawback of swapping music from time to time you maybe can live luckily.
I’ve been subscribed to your blog’s RSS feed forever. Funny (and cool) to see that you’re going to run OSXBMC. Let me know if you need any help!
elan, I’ve been running XBMC since forever. 6 years or so. But I’ve been craving a OS X version for years; and OSXBMC just rocked my world. I’ve been all over it since its first release. I love it! Your work on it has been awesome, and the progress impressive.
My sincere thanks for all your hard work!
I placed a backup of my main iTunes library (located and updated on a Mac Pro 2.8 8 core) on a 750 gig drive attached to AirPort via USB. On the MBP when starting iTunes I hold down the option key. A dialogue asks me to select or create an iTunes Library. I select the iTunes Library on the server and have everything on the main library on the MBP over the wireless network – including movies, tv shows, podcasts, and music.
We have a somewhat similar setup. Mac mini on the Home Theater display, my main machine (24” iMac) upstairs. The iTunes Library (both the music files and the .xml “Library” files) live on an external drive hooked up to the Mac mini. We manage everything from the iMac, however – buying new music, downloading podcasts, etc. A couple things differ from your situation, however – both machines are hard wired, to gig E – and my main box isn’t a laptop so I’m never off network from it. I do have to watch out that I don’t have iTunes open on both machines at once – iTunes will complain if the library .xml file is open by someone else – if so I’ll screen share into the mini and close iTunes. I can use FrontRow on the mini (Intel, so it has a remote) to show files – I’ve tried to get OSXBMC running, but when I open it the app bounces a couple times and then closes right away – it’s as if OSXBMC thinks I’m running on Tiger (it’s Leopard).
To throw another variable in the pot, we also have an AppleTV on a LCD TV upstairs – this is synced to iTunes on the Mac mini. I think I need to change it to sync to the iMac (even if that means a two hop network copy on any sync) though, since I have iTunes open much more often on the iMac. iPods also get synced on the iMac. iPhoto Library also lives on the mini and gets synced to the AppleTV.
You ought to be able to keep a different local music library on the MBP and use the option-on-launch method to switch which iTunes Library you want to use.
Oh, and there never seems to be any issues leaving things running, windows open, etc. on the mini when I switch sources/turn off the HDTV. I don’t unplug the DVI connection ever, but otherwise it always comes back fine. You can turn off the HDTV and then screenshare from another computer and everything comes up – even FrontRow as I’ve discovered by accident.
Hi Michael!
I totally understand your predicament! iTunes is very nice, until you want to use the same library on several macs etc… I have a pretty big Lossless library running at home which I distribute to other rooms via Sonos (which I really recommend), AppleTV and library-sharing in iTunes, works pretty well! BUT I have another iTunes-library on my MBP with lower quality for syncing with my iPhone, iPods etc, and thats a bit of a hassle with to different libraries I can tell you…
But back to you! If you want your entire library on your MBP, why not upgrade your HDD? I know it’s not that easy that it used to be, but with your merit I have a feeling you’re up for the job!
You can also set-up your mac mini and administrate it with screen-sharing/ARD, and then set-up iTunes to share the library. every time you fire up iTunes on your MBP you can stream music from the mini to your MBP and then to your Airport express. Seems strange, but it works really flawless… If you can manage to wire your apartment, even better! I’m doing that now to our new home, and can’t wait to get me a dedicated technical room with server(s) etc!
And don’t fear the MBP/ACD issues, I plug/unplug my MBP and ACD all the time, (almost) no problems.
Good luck!
Hey Mike,
I use my MacBook Pro exclusively as my primary machine, it’s the original Core Duo version. Overall it works flawlessly, there are problems with it but that is down to it being first version hardware and will soon be fixed by throwing it at Apple but that it by the by.
On the music front what I would suggest doing is slightly different from everyone else’s suggestion and that if you don’t care about having the iTunes library’s synced on both the MBP and the Mini (and as far I can remember OSXMBC doesn’t look at the iTunes library just the Music folder) is to do this:
1) Setup a folder on the Mini to be shared
2) Go back to your MBP, mount your music folder (AFP share) and open iTunes and goto Prefs > Advanced > Library Location and set it as the mounted folder.
3) Now hit Advanced > Consolidate Library.
What will now happen is that it will move your music files over to the shared folder but keep the .xml iTunes library on your own machine.
You will need to set your MBP up so it auto-mounts your music folder when you are on your own network, pretty sure a bit of Network Location settings and an Applescript should be capable of doing this for you.
The size of my mp3 stash is a problem for my macbook too. I’ve looked at the external HD option, but it seems a management nightmare.
What I’m planning to do, is just put a (much) bigger HD in the macbook. And with a TimeMachine install option it sounds easy to install too.
If you open iTunes without your iTunes Library disk mounted, iTunes will reset the library location. However, if you then quit iTunes, mount the disk, and reopen iTunes, it’ll fix the library location back to where it should be. So you won’t need to manually reset the location as long as you can mount the disk and relaunch itunes.
I’m in the process of writing something up for TUAW.com about managing iTunes libraries on multiple machines (merging libraries and so forth) and storing/accessing iTunes from an external drive. It should be up sometime this week.
Like Kevan and Joel mentioned, you shouldn’t have any problem being able to access both the local library and the networked AFP share.
You shouldn’t have many problems with your ACD and your MBP. I unplug my MacBook from my Dell LCD several times a day and never have any issues.
Best of luck!
(and I agree, OSXBMC is awesome!)
Mac Media Center.
i have a mac mini connected to my TV. I use elgato for recording shows and those recorded shows go to a external 500GB USB drive. My itunes purchased movies and handbrake ripped movies go on that drive as well.
All my music is stored on my desktop pro machine. I have 28gb of music and 2.7TB of drives space to stick em on. Itunes is always running on that machine and I use front row to listen to tunes on the tv / stereo connected mac mini. If you don’t know you can change the source directory in front row.
I also have two airtunes cards for the middle level and top level radios. I ALWAYS stream from the Mac Mini.
My desktop machine and my Wife’s power book connects using wireless. That’s nice and all but prone to issues to stream music to the airtunes. My Mac mini is connected to a apple extreme base station. It handles the wireless broadcast and not the little mini. ( my Wii and PS3 are also connected to the base station)
One of these days I’ll do a proper write up on my layout, I am more than satisfied with it.
BTW the mention of the drive space on the mac desktop was not a “Wave my epeen” but I didn’t get to mention that I have scheduled backs up of recorded shows recorded / ripped/ purchased running from the Mac Mini to the Mac desktop using rsync
I had the same problem. I need my Airdisks to automount so that OSXBMC can see them and access my media.
Every Airport Utility update seems to delete the Airport Disk Agent from the startup pane.
Simple solution ? YES
open Preference Pane and go to Accounts, choose your account then click on Login Items.
using Finder look in MacintoshHD( or whatever your root is)/System/Library/Core Services
‘Airport Disk Agent’ should be still there. Simply drag and drop it into the ‘Accounts/Login Items’ pane of your preferences pane.
that launches it on start-up. If you want it to run straight away before you restart just double click it.
You should no get your Airport Disks on the desktop straight away on login assuming you still have Airport Disk Utility in your Apps/utilities folder.
I use my MacBook pro as my primary machine and it works fabulously well. For iTunes, this is what I do:
I have a 300 GB drive hooked up to my Linux server. (The Linux part doesn’t matter, a Mac Mini will work just as well)
I have MacFuse installed to handle network mounting (which I can do even outside of my LAN). I then copied my iTunes library file from my local disk to the Linux server drive. After, I deleted the file on my local disk.
When you next open iTunes, it will prompt for your iTunes file location. Just go find it on the network disk and use that one. In the iTunes preferences, make sure the iTunes music folder location is on the network drive.
This setup should work great. All songs and ratings/playlists are stored on the network drive, and can easily be opened from any computer by just mounting the network drive and double clicking the iTunes library file.
Looks like a good plan there Michael. I use my MacBook as my primary machine and change Displays as I like, never ever was a window gone. Sometimes you have to rearange a bit, for example when changing from a 32” HD TV to a 17” standard TFT.
My iTunes Library lives on my MacBooks internal HD, but the whole 50+GB Songs are on an FW Drive attached to a Cube and shared via AFP. I moved my music there with the “Consolidate Library” command and the help of a very in depth iLounge article. Works like a charme. I can add music and podcasts on the road as I go an add them later to the main library.
Only hassle is that I have to delete the local folders afterwards but that is also quite ok for me, YMMV…
To automount the AFP-Sharepoint when I am at home I use the fabulous Marco Polo which can also do a lot more than just mounting shares…
Good Luck with your new Setup, all the best.
Thank you all for your great suggestions. I’m slowly starting to get things in line here; I’ll write an entry on it once it works as I want it to :)
I was using an MBP until it got stolen, then had to use a regular MB for a while and was immediately frustrated. I run a second monitor off my box so I have a bigger screen with which to do my work (illustration) and it just struggled and hung for a few seconds at a time.
I wish they’d refresh the MBP design and then I’ll pick up a new one.