iTunes uploading to firefly

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  • #1517
    Gnits
    Participant

    can this actually be done?

    can you change things like ratings, genre?

    Gnits… proud user of a brand new (today) unlung box…

    w/ Firefly to boot…

    #11474
    rpedde
    Participant

    @Gnits wrote:

    can this actually be done?

    can you change things like ratings, genre?

    Gnits… proud user of a brand new (today) unlung box…

    w/ Firefly to boot…

    Sadly, no. If the music is remote, you can’t really edit it. On the other hand, you *can* maintain it on a machine with iTunes and sync it to the slug and have it pick up playlsits, ratings, etc from your iTunes database. That’s what I do.

    I just sync the whole iTunes folder to my slug using rsync (unison might be a good choice on windows) and it picks up the ratings and stuff from the “iTunes Music Library.xml” that sits in the iTunes directory.

    — Ron

    #11475
    Gnits
    Participant

    You are soo responsive. Not something i am used to from other forums and things i use online.

    Additional questions..

    If i move the directory over to the slug and set up itunes to use it over the network, can i rsync without creating two copies of the music. IE, my itunes uses it directly but my son who just listens to it, can use it as an iTunes server?

    Additionally, what IS this rsync tool. (a link would be just fine as opposed to a long description).

    I understand that you also cannot use songs on the shared resource to sync to an ipod? Is this something that can be worked around without having to ditch iTunes entirely. I may be in the minority, but I actually do like iTunes with the usual caveats…

    (hate drm…)

    As this is my newest foray into this world, its very intriguing all that can be done, MCE’s upnp, dnla, this itunes server, appletv…

    It seems that there is still so much to be done to realize all this potential. Next thing i want to do is start taking my movies and start importing them into something (iTunes) and start viewing them on my TVs and such. Real exciting stuff here…

    Any suggestions on things I can start looking at with these new things to start getting more out of what i have? Suggestions about where this is going, and such?

    #11476
    Gnits
    Participant

    BTW, what is Bonjour?

    #11477
    rpedde
    Participant

    @Gnits wrote:

    You are soo responsive. Not something i am used to from other forums and things i use online.

    When I’m not in Dallas. ๐Ÿ™‚

    I left yesterday at 2:00 am, and just got back right now (11:00pm, my time). Oof. Talk about a long day. ๐Ÿ™‚

    If i move the directory over to the slug and set up itunes to use it over the network, can i rsync without creating two copies of the music. IE, my itunes uses it directly but my son who just listens to it, can use it as an iTunes server?

    If you move the directory over to the slug (by changing the path in iTunes), then you can maintain just the single copy of the music. But your playlists and stuff will still be in your “my music” directory.

    On way around that would be to just copy the “iTunes Music Library.xml” to the directory on the slug. Then it would get picked up the next time it scanned. Or set up a batch file that runs at logon from your startup group, or schedule it as a scheduled task in the control panel.

    Additionally, what IS this rsync tool. (a link would be just fine as opposed to a long description).

    Just a directory syncronization program. http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/. Works best unix to unix, so if you are using mac, it works fine. If windows, I’d recommend Unison http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ instead. Or “robocopy”, which might be in XP now, or at least available from MS from one of their download pages.

    But if you move your directory to the server, you won’t need to do that.

    I understand that you also cannot use songs on the shared resource to sync to an ipod? Is this something that can be worked around without having to ditch iTunes entirely. I may be in the minority, but I actually do like iTunes with the usual caveats…

    Correct. Unless you either:

    1. Sync your copy of iTunes to the server (which then serves as a backup of your music) and maintain your iPod on your computer, and just use the server for guest browsing, or disconnected via laptop, or via soundbridge or whatever.

    or

    2. Move the directory for iTunes to the server (like you mentioned) and maintain the iPod from the iTunes instance that is actually connected to the files.

    (hate drm…)

    /me nods.

    It seems that there is still so much to be done to realize all this potential. Next thing i want to do is start taking my movies and start importing them into something (iTunes) and start viewing them on my TVs and such. Real exciting stuff here…

    Any suggestions on things I can start looking at with these new things to start getting more out of what i have? Suggestions about where this is going, and such?

    The AppleTV is worth looking at if you use iTunes as a server. Won’t stream from a firefly server (drm again…).

    A modded XBOX running xbox media center is a nice TV hub also. Check that out — read up on it. I use it a *lot* as a media player.

    At some point (soonish) I hope to have a upnp front-end for this thing to play media that way, but will probably be at least a month.

    — Ron

    #11478
    rpedde
    Participant

    @Gnits wrote:

    BTW, what is Bonjour?

    It’s the location service that lets iTunes find the server. If the next question is “why does it show stopped in the web interface”, that’s a long standing bug.

    ๐Ÿ™‚

    — Ron

    #11479
    Gnits
    Participant

    @rpedde wrote:

    It seems that there is still so much to be done to realize all this potential. Next thing i want to do is start taking my movies and start importing them into something (iTunes) and start viewing them on my TVs and such. Real exciting stuff here…

    Any suggestions on things I can start looking at with these new things to start getting more out of what i have? Suggestions about where this is going, and such?

    The AppleTV is worth looking at if you use iTunes as a server. Won’t stream from a firefly server (drm again…).

    A modded XBOX running xbox media center is a nice TV hub also. Check that out — read up on it. I use it a *lot* as a media player.

    At some point (soonish) I hope to have a upnp front-end for this thing to play media that way, but will probably be at least a month.

    — Ron

    If DRM is not an issue (IE, a third party utility imports my DVD to itunes, then it should not be a problem?

    #11480
    rpedde
    Participant

    @Gnits wrote:

    @rpedde wrote:

    It seems that there is still so much to be done to realize all this potential. Next thing i want to do is start taking my movies and start importing them into something (iTunes) and start viewing them on my TVs and such. Real exciting stuff here…

    Any suggestions on things I can start looking at with these new things to start getting more out of what i have? Suggestions about where this is going, and such?

    The AppleTV is worth looking at if you use iTunes as a server. Won’t stream from a firefly server (drm again…).

    A modded XBOX running xbox media center is a nice TV hub also. Check that out — read up on it. I use it a *lot* as a media player.

    At some point (soonish) I hope to have a upnp front-end for this thing to play media that way, but will probably be at least a month.

    — Ron

    If DRM is not an issue (IE, a third party utility imports my DVD to itunes, then it should not be a problem?

    Not sure which you mean. Firefly will now serve mp4 video to itunes or frontrow, but it won’t serve to appletv, as appletv uses a crypto handshake to make sure it’s talking to iTunes and not a 3rd party daap server.

    #11481
    Gnits
    Participant

    ok, that answered my question.

    So i am better off with some form of MCE and wait for you uPNP server to be working?

    I am not sure which one i will get but i would be happy to help with the testing of it.

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