Comments on: iTunes: Multiple library locations and preserving the metadata (and multihoming iPods too!)

By: Gnarl

Gnarl — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:26:30 +0000

Ok, I’m on Windows XP and don’t see ‘rsync’ as an available command… are you on a Unix based system or Mac? Can you point me at a Windows based solution?

I’m trying to use a Mybook as my main music repository. Adding to it from a ’sacrificial’ machine which has USB 1.0 but, works fine for burning my CDs while using my primary machine with USB 2.0 for loading my iTouch… I’m getting very tired of having to pull music in to the primary machine album by album though… and especially of having to burn the AAC after I copy the CD… is there an option to have it automatically convert to AAC? If so, I’ve not found it.

Either way, thanks for the feedback and the ideas…

By: bbum’s weblog-o-mat » Blog Archive » iTunes Library Backup, rsync & cover art

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 07:46:19 +0000

[...] A while ago, I wrote about synchronizing iTunes libraries between a couple of machines using rsync while allowing for multiple locations. [...]

By: bbum

bbum — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 01:41:28 +0000

Given that iTunes writes a bit of data after every play of a song, I am not sure if it has a notion of a truly “read only” library. Probably not.

By: stingerman

stingerman — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 01:05:37 +0000

You can share over the network, but the danger is that multiple computers writing to the data files. So, you just need to designate one machine as the master and only that one can add or make changes to the library, all the other machines should be read only.

By: bbum

bbum — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 23:05:50 +0000

It increases performance when dealing with really large files. Not really necessary, but a vast improvement when dealing with a large media file that has had a change to ID3 tags.

By: Nathaniel Nutter

Nathaniel Nutter — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 19:44:49 +0000

Is the –block-size=128000 option necessary or is just there to increase performance?

By: bbum

bbum — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 05:35:44 +0000

I doubt if iTunes is going to handle multiple clients accessing the same metadata database (the ‘iTunes Library’ file is a database of some kind, as far as I can tell). Or, at least, it’ll likely lead to exclusive access to one client only.

Sharing the media via a network share shouldn’t be a problem. You would likely have to remember whatever has been imported on the master and then re-import into the slaves.

Really, someone should write a bit of code that syncs the metadata between different libraries. I wonder if the iTunes scripting dictionary is rich enough to do so?

By: n[ate]vw

n[ate]vw — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 05:29:33 +0000

Great info. From your description, it sounds like I’d also be able to share a single copy of my iTunes library with multiple computers via a network share. Now that iTunes has all the fancy artwork functionality, and I’ve found the “Sing that iTune” widget to help me gather lyrics, I’m hoping to invest some time gettting my library in order. But I have my own organization preferences, and want to keep everything except the digitally restricted media *outside* of the library. I think it will still work though: all my ripped music in one folder, and my iTunes library shared between my several computers via a share. I wonder how confused iTunes would get if I shared between Mac/PC versions as well as a mix of v6 and 7……