iTunes folder vs new Music and TV, what to do?

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iTunes folder vs new Music and TV, what to do?

Hi there,

I keep my iTunes folder on an external HD (it's around 3TB) and means that when we go on holiday I can just take my drive and plug into the laptop so the kids have all their music/films/programmes etc.

Now with Music & TV splitting the functions, quite rightly, what am I to do with my iTunes folder! If I point music at the iTunes folder that works the music, but what about the movies/TV shows/home movies. Do I have to manually import them all?! At the moment we just scroll down the movie folder and launch in Quicktime.

In short I guess I have to lose the iTunes folder and create a Music and TV on the drive which will make everything cleaner, but how do I get everything in the right place!?

Cheers

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on May 19, 2020 1:34 AM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

Level 10

274,988 points

May 19, 2020 3:38 AM in response to James_hayes

It is really up to you. You can continue to use the iTunes Media folder structure if you wish, with the Music and TV apps connected to their respective set of files in their subfolders, or you can consolidate the media into the new separate library structures. If you want everything on the external drive so it can be used with a different computer then you probably want to copy the existing Music and TV libraries to <External>/Music and <External>/TV respectively. Consolidating their respective media collections into <External>/Music/Media and <External>/TV/Media would make it easier to backup the libraries to a second drive for security. When the media is stored outside of these folders a clone of the library on a differently named drive might not work correctly.

tt2

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Answer 2

James_hayes Author

Level 1

8 points

May 19, 2020 3:44 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks TT2,

I think you're right, it's time to consolidate. Even as I was typing my question I remembered the "Automatically Add to .." folder so I'm going to move all video to the TV folder and all music to the Music folder so it's much cleaner. Then do the good old download album artwork so it's all where it is supposed to be stored. I've included the drive on my Time Machine backups so everything is safe, think we've all learned the lessons about working from external drives and not backing up!!!

Stay safe

J

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

274,988 points

May 19, 2020 3:58 AM in response to James_hayes

Rather than move anything by hand set the media folder (App > Preferences > Files - Reset gives the default path with respect to the database) and then use File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files. That way you know the library will get updated with the new file locations correctly. You then need to manually clean up the original copies.

tt2

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Answer 4

James_hayes Author

Level 1

8 points

May 19, 2020 4:21 AM in response to turingtest2

The movie folder is 2.1TB so on an external 4TB drive it's just not feasible as there is a further 1.2tb of music. I manually dragged the movies/tv shows/home movies to the 'Automatically Add to TV' folder and launched TV. It took several minutes but has positioned everything where it needs to be and consolidated nicely.

Cheers, J

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

274,988 points

May 19, 2020 6:12 AM in response to James_hayes

Fair enough. Moving things around on the same volume on a Mac can work. In other circumstances that can break things.

tt2

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iTunes folder vs new Music and TV, what to do?

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