Applications :: Multiple ITunes Libraries On Same Machine?
Jan 18, 2010
I have just transferred my iTunes content to a larger hard drive in my Mac Pro. I did this by changing the 'iTunes Media folder location' and then, using the 'Organise Library' feature, I consolidated my library. All went well until i remembered that my wife also has an account on this Mac with her own iTunes library which references the same content but in the old location.
My question is - what is the best way to get my wife's iTunes library to reference the content in the new location?
Also, I noticed that iTunes 9 now stores downloaded apps in the iTunes Media folder rather than in the users home folder. How does iTunes handle multiple iTunes libraries storing apps purchased via different iTunes store accounts in the same folder?
I have a bunch of itunes libraries and it's a pain to switch between them (open itunes while holding the option key and select the library). I don't think itunes lets you have more than one open at a time, but I didn't know if there was a third party plugin or something.
Is there a way to add files to multiple iTunes libraries simultaneously?
I currently store all my media on a network drive; so I don't want to copy the same file to multiple locations. Instead, after the DVD is ripped I'd like to have the movie added to two different libraries. Simply copying the iTunes library from my primary computer won't work. The library on my primary computer, has all my personal song ratings and playlists. The second computer is connected to a TV to be used as a HTPC and is more of a family computer. I would like to be able to maintain different playlists for this computer.
Essentially is there an easy way to make sure any new files added (or modified) to my primary iTunes library are also added to another iTunes library?
I love iTunes, but ever since my dad and I have gotten iPods (we just ordered my mom a 15gb), I have wanted to share the same music library with two users, so that whenever one user imports something it appears in the other user's library. Both users would have the same music, but they can sync their iPod in their own user name and have different songs checked. I just don't see myself having two copies of my 10gb+ music library on the same computer. There must be a way...
I have multiple devices that I want to sync from my one Mac. I decided to go for the multiple library options under my one user account. I have created multiple libraries but the problem I'm finding is that if I buy a new book/app they get placed in finder for that device. Is that a way of keeping this clean and keeping all apps, books etc under the one library in Finder and all the different devices just reading from there?
I currently have a MacPro and a Mac book Air both with iTunes libraries. The musics, Tv shows and movies are stored on my external drive connected to my router. My main iTunes library is on my MacPro, but I want to ensure that that my library on my Macbook Air is automatically updated when i add contact to my external drive and MacPro iTunes library without physically copying the content on to my macbook air.
So here is what I'm trying to do, I've got a 160 gb of music in itunes on my macbook pro, but I need to decrease that number, b/c my I'm running out of hard drive space and my library is only getting larger. I want to have it set up so that I've got my entire library on my external hard drive (1 TB, space is not an issue), and while I'm at home I can access the entire library. However, while I'm out of the house, I'd like to only have about half of my current collection with me on my macbook pro..
I tried to set it up using the 'itunes manage multiple libraries' method, but this didn't transfer any of my ratings or playlists. Then I realized that with having these two libraries completely separate, this will be a re-occurring theme. The playlist and ratings between the two separate libraries in two separate locations, would continue to get more and more askew from each other depending on which library I'm accessing when I import new music, change ratings, or modify playlists...........
Is there an easy way to keep my ITunes libraries in between two computers (MacBook and IMac), and my iPhone in sync? I've been having a bit of trouble, particularly with my IPhone - if I'm on the road, and download new podcast episodes daily, and then get home at the end of the week and plug my IPhone into my iMac, rather than syncing the new podcast episodes to the IMac, the IPhone gets wiped out and only has the podcasts, songs, etc that were on the IMac. Is there any easy way to keep the libraries on the two computers and my IPhone synchronized?
I currently run my iphoto and itunes from a external drive.I would like to set up a seperate itunes library on my laptop to manage a few select playlists on mutiple devices...2 iphones,2 itouch, and 1nano.I set up the library but am unsure of how to get the playlists from my devices to the new library.Can one device be associated with multiple same user libraries?
I'd like to have two iTunes music libraries, the same songs on both but one for high quality lossless music file to play from iTunes at home and the other for lossy music files to have on my iPod. The reason for this is that I just maxed out my 64GB iPod Touch, I have a mixture of bitrates and I know I could go in and decrease the quality and file size of the songs but I would like to still have the the higher quality songs too to play at home. If this is possible then what would be the hurdles of syncing multiple libraries?
Is it possible to play music from multiple libraries over a single device, with control over the playlist possible from multiple devices/computers? Baiscally, in one of my smaller offices, everyone has a Mac or PC with iTunes, along with various iPads, iPhones etc etc. They randomly pick some tunes to play from each of their individual machines.
I would like to setup a system where there is a single device (Mac/PC/Airplay/Apple TV etc) with decent speakers, where anyone can submit a track(s) to play from their library, be it on their Mac, iPad iPhone etc. to stream through the central system.I would then imagine using the Remote app to control it.
They should all be able to submit tracks simultanously, rather that one device connecting with a Airplay at a time. This would also work in a party senario. Guest rock up, pair their device with the system, and they can all submit track(s) from their device and it goes into the playlist...
I have about 250GB of music in my iTunes Music folder, too much for any of my player devices with the exception of the computer itself. The "iTunes Music" folder is located on an external drive. I want to create multiple libraries to simplify syncing with individual devices, named something like "Nano silver 16", "classic 160", "iPhone", "iPad", etc. I know how to create the new libraries from info at: [URL] Questions:3) Is there a way to switch the "iTunes Music" folder to sort by album, (instead of by artist, then album, which lists each individual song of a compilation (Greatest Hits of...". "soundtrack", "duets..., etc. in separate folders with one song each). Royal pain! 2) How do I populate the individual libraries from my media folder once I have created them? I can't find any info to do this. Am I right that these just reference the real files, and don't duplicate them in a new location/folder? I don't want to increase the space taken up by new library files. 3) Where should all of the library files live to make it easy to find and switch from one to another? At present, I have to check/uncheck individual files to sync onto separate devices, and this becomes impossible with so much to begin with. --WWmac mini, OS 10.7.4, iTunes 10.6.1
I am running out of room for all my music, movies etc, so have purchased an external drive for all my media.
All files are currently under the "shared" portion of the hard drive. It is set up so that different users are accessing different files in their libraries (eg my husband has his music, I have mine), but none is accessing everything. We had it like this to make it easier to manage our individual iphones, ipads etc, without having tracks that we both use duplicated in the hard drive. And its been great.
My problem is that I now want to move all the media to an external drive, and everything I have read recommends doing this through the itunes library. I am concerned that only one persons stuff will be moved by doing it this way, leaving the other missing files. If I simply move the folder, will it work to just point each library to the new destination? Some things I have read indicate that this won't be successful and that itunes won't find the new files.
Also, a small(ish) thing, while I am at it I would be quite keen to implement the new file organisation system with Music, Movies etc all on the same level. But not sure when or how to go about that with this setup.
Am I best to set up a new user, and import ALL folders into itunes, then move it within that itunes? Or should just moving the folder and pointing each itunes to the new location work?
I have multiple Podcast Libraries. Which Podcast file is in the correct place? I can combine the other Podcasts after knowing the correct path. "iTunes New" is my external hard drive housing iTunes.
So is it:
iTunes New > Podcasts iTunes New > iTunes > Podcasts iTunes New > iTunes > iTunes Music > Podcasts
First I was lucky that I didn't trust this "time machine", I could've just formatted the drive after I did the time machine back up and end up wiping my entire itunes library, Here is what happend, I only had two instances of time machine back up, both to the same external HD which has more than plenty of space. The first TM backup was immediately after a fresh install of snow leopard, online updates, and some important apps. iTunes and iPhotos library was empty at that moment. I thought I'd just restore this backup when I need a fresh install later. Then today I decided to wipe out everything on my MBP and have a fresh install, so I did the second TM backup in an expectation that it would back up everything new since the last backup, including my itunes and iphotos library. It turned out that TM (treacherously) didn't do that and tell me backup was done (AKA the infamous FALSE TRUE, the worst scenario of logics). When I checked the backup directory on the external HD, and the itunes directory reported a miserable size of 123kb, which was supposed to be around 20gb. same goes for the iPhotos library, there was no backup. Abandoning this fashion machine, I manually copied the libraries, taking some time but at least I know what I'm doing. Anyway, back to top, Is is a known issue or is TM designed in this way?
I have an iMac and just bought a Seagate 1T expernal hard drive. Currently most of my music is encoded AAC so I can keep it in the imac hard drive and be able to loaded in my iPod 30 Gig.Currently I have about 24 Gig in the library.Since I use my iTunes as music server for my home Hi-Fi systems using a wireless network and Squeezebox devices connected to my steroe system I would like to create a second library with just Apple Lossless files. I would like to use this library for my home listening but keep the current library in the iMac haddrive with the AAC files to sync them to my iPod.
I have decided to manage two iTunes libraries on a single user account by using the old "option key on launch" trick; one on my Macbook's HD and another on an external HD. However, is it possible to view and access both of the libraries in parallel, or at least switch quickly between them without having to quit iTunes and launch it again?
when I try to import one cd for my lossless folder (after telling itunes were that folder is and import setting is set for apple lossless) itunes ask if I want to keep the media organized in the itunes folder. If I say yes, some files from my aac folder is showing up in the lossless folder and versa?
I have a Mac Pro desktop and a Macbook with (mostly) duplicate music on. But there is some music I only have on one or the other. Most uploaded from CDs and some bought from itunes, Amazon etc. Each has about 20GB each but as I said it's mostly the same. I want to do a complete clean re-install on the Macbook and then not take up its HD space with music, just use Home Sharing via the desktop/airtunes. Apart from literally going alphabetically through both, is there a neat way of comparing, to make sure that when I clean off the Macbook I don't miss something that isn't on the pro?
I just opened my ~/music/iTunes folder and in the iTunes folder there was a folder named 'previous iTunes Libraries' that folder existed of two iTunes Library Data files. My question now is can I just delete that folder or is it essential to have iTunes function properly?
I've been searching the forums and web looking for info on how to / best way to sync iTunes libraries (including playlists, ratings, and play counts). I've found several programs including TuneRanger, SuperSync, Syncopation and some others (links below). The general consensus seems to be that they all suck. (TuneRanger seems to do exactly what I want, but doesn't appear to have a free trial period.) [URL]
how do backup all your itunes media? do you just use one drive and not back up? im just wondering, because i have a fear that if i only back up all my itunes media on a external drive, that one day, it will crash when i need it, and ill be screwed. so what the best way to back it up? i was thinking of burning it all to dvds but that would take forever.
I have one iTunes library on my MBP and another on an iMac that are different. I want to combine them into one (on the iMac) but when I try the songs/videos moved over can't be found by the iMac (have the exclamation mark next to the title). I really don't want to backup to disc to move them over by restoring because the library I am moving is 70+ GB (that's a lot of discs) so I have copied the folder onto a separate harddrive. How do I combine these libraries? Please give me step by step instructions that a middle aged Mom who has not slept through the night in 14 years can understand.
I have an external hard drive which holds all of my music. It is my main iTunes library and is in AIFF (CD) format. What I want to do is copy this music and convert it to MP3 (or similar compressed format compatible with iPod) from the external drive, and put it into a separate library on my Mac's internal hard drive in the MP3 format. That way I'd still have my original music in AIFF on the external drive, and a copy of it in MP3 format on the internal drive for moving to my iPod or iPhone. Is this possible? Does it make sense? Also, is there a better (in terms of sound quality) compressed format than MP3 to use?
I currently have a lot of different songs on my iMac and my MBP and I was wondering if there was a way to sync the two without having to use the automator approach found here [URL]
I use a PC and a Mac. I have my music, apps etc on my PC desktop, and my photos and videos on my Macbook.
Just got an iPhone 4, is it possible to use my PC to sync most of my stuff, then plug it into my Macbook and sync only my photos and videos and nothing else?
