Playlists and syncing my two ipods

[Anonymous]

I have a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ which has Firefly installed. It all works fine to play my music collection, except that I cannot use playlists. I need some help with this please.

I have 3 computers which all run from the NV+ but are all based in different rooms. I want to sync my two ipods separately from two of separate computers. However, with my music database stored on the NV+ and accessed through iTunes & Firefly, I am desperately seeking a way of allowing the ipods to sync with iTunes.

The only way I can think of doing this is by using playlists on the local computers, with them referencing the music database on the NV+. However, whatever I do to the settings I am left in the situation that I just cannot drag any of the tracks from iTunes Server (Firefly) to a local playlist. It just will not work.

What am I doing wrong?

I have looked at many postings in this forum regarding playlists, but the solutions either do not work for me, or the answers are just too complex for me to understand.

Please would somebody help me here, but in terminology that is not too complex for a Firefly beginner like me. Thanks.

[stretch]

A copyright protection feature of iTunes prevents you from syncing a remote library to your iPod, creating playlists from tracks on a remote library, etc.
You can play music / playlists on a remote library but that’s it.

iTunes see’s Firefly as a remote library.

One of your PC’s will have to access the music stored on the NAS directly. This PC can be used to sync your iPods, create playlists, etc…

You could also try the Java Firefly client found in the Add-On Software section.
This little application can be used to create playlists. It’s still under development but it gets the job done.
It can’t sync your iPod however.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for enlightening me. How annoying that despite me having paid for all of my music collection, the DRM thought-police have decreed that I cannot sync with my remote library. This effectively makes my NV+ useless as a fully working remote library which can be sync’d with my ipod(s).

I am a little confused by the comment “One of your PC’s will have to access the music stored on the NAS directly. This PC can be used to sync your iPods, create playlists, etc… “. What does this mean? Does it mean I will still have to keep a complete copy of my itunes music collection on one of my computers as well as on my NV+ server device? How does this differ to my current setup where my three computers can all see the NV+ as a Shared “iTunes Server” in iTunes and play the music from there accordingly (without the benefit of ipod sync or playlist functionality). Please advise.

[stretch]

No.

Open iTunes, in the preferences section under one of the tabs you will find an entry field titled “library location” or similar.
By default it will be set to “C:My DocumentsMy music……”

Simply change it to //servername/media/Music

OR

Map the /media share on the NAS to a network drive letter. eg. Z:
Then in iTunes set the library location to Z:Music

That’s how my NV+ is set up. Firefly is used to stream music to the SoundBridges only

Your other two PC’s can access the library via Firefly if you wish but they will have read only access.
In fact it’s probably advisable to do this as iTunes like to “manage” the library and you don’t want all three PC’s trying to move things around

[Anonymous]

Thanks. I changed the iTunes Music Folder Location (under the Advanced section of the iTunes Preferences) to my NV+ music location. I should add at this point that my computers are Mac’s.

Unfortunately, even after a reboot and restart of iTunes the program still looks in the local hard drive (C: ) library for the Music library, though I can still see and stream from the NV+ which is still listed as iTunes Server in the Shared section of iTunes.

So, I am none the wiser right now. The question remains, to access the library with any decent functionality, do I have to copy my music library onto all of my computers separately? If that is the case, it kind of defeats the excessive copyright controls which do not allow sync’ing from a remote library.

[stretch]

A Mac makes things easier…

http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=80559#p80559

[Anonymous]

Good to hear a Mac makes things easier! 😀

Thanks for the link. I can understand the instructions except…

2) create symlink (in Terminal) from Music folder to new iTunes folder location (e.g. ln -s /Volumes/[volume]/iTunes /Users/[user]/Music/iTunes)

…might as well be in mandarin chinese, because I am not sure what a symlink is and am not sure about how to use the syntax of the example, Any ideas please?

[EVILRipper]

A symbolic link is like creating a ‘shortcut dir’.
It is a dir, which points at another dir.

The syntax is quite simple like the example you gave yourself:

ln -s target source

so just run the given command with the correct volume and user:
ln -s /Volumes//iTunes /Users//Music/iTunes

This created a ‘dir’ on /Users//Music/iTunes
which goes to /Volumes//iTunes when opened.

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much for all your help, stretch and EVILRipper. I now understand the instructions given in the link and have followed them exactly. However, it makes no difference; i.e., there is no change from the before situation – nothing appears in the Music part of the Library section of iTunes, but the whole of my music collection still happily appears in the Tunes Server of the Shared section of iTunes. It’s just as though all those steps are an intricate way of giving me what I already have got through standard iTunes functionality. That is, play access to my music library on the NV+ Firefly streamer, but no sync or playlist functionality whatsoever.

Isn’t life frustrating at times?! 😕

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