James;223724 Wrote: > iTunes likes to be in control of the music files - using it any other > way is probably going to cause many headaches! >
Sorry to disagree, but that's simply not true. I've posted tips on using iTunes with Slimserver numerous times in both the general and beginner's forum that specifically disallow iTunes from managing music file locations. It makes iTunes use a lot more straight forward and idiot-proof. Philip, Slimserver does not manage music files - it has no such capabilities, so it can never be a primary manager or "master music library source." It employs a scanner to read an existing managed music library. It also trashes stats regularly (clean and rescan, etc) so it's not an ideal place to hold playback stats. You can manage your collection manually (files and folders), let iTunes manage it, or use yet another program to do this. My solution is to manage music files and folder manually using the Finder (filesystem) and both iTunes and Slimserver are simply scanners and views to my music. Set iTunes prefs like this General: UNCHECK "Check for updates automatically" Advanced: UNCHECK "Keep iTunes music folder organized" UNCHECK "Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library" (this is the critical one) You want to uncheck the first option because newer iTunes updates seem to always break Slimserver scanner integration. It's also additional trouble I'll explain below. If the third option is unchecked, then I believe the second one can only ever do anything when you use iTunes to rip CDs - it won't affect drag and dropping of files onto iTunes. To add music to iTunes simply drag and drop it from your folders into the iTunes library and/or individual playlists. You can do your whole collection at once if you so choose. The last time I rebuilt my iTunes DB (due to Slimserver bugs scanning it), I just dropped my entire collection at once (20k files). You can set Slimserver up to read from your iTunes library or just scan the music folders directly. Letting it use iTunes has the advantages you likely know about, such as picking up iTunes playlists and the like. I then use iTunesUpdate to populate iTunes stats based on Slimserver playback. This works fine as long as you don't ever have any modal windows pop up in iTunes (like "New Version available"- in that case it will cause playback to stop after the current track until you dismiss the modal window. -- MelonMonkey Bruno *'Twisted Melon - Fine Mac OS Software' (http://twistedmelon.com) | 'mira - Personal Control for your Apple Remote' (http://twistedmelon.com)* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MelonMonkey's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8466 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=37986 _______________________________________________ plugins mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/plugins
