Best way to set up audio/video library

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Best way to set up audio/video library

When I originally bought my MacBook Air, I wanted the convenience of having all my movies and TV shows and videos (a good portion of which have been ripped from DVD's) available on the machine, so I bought a 1TB version. However, that library is sitting around 510GB, so it's taking up a lot of space, and I've decided the juice isn't worth the squeeze, so to speak.

I'll be upgrading to a MacBook Pro after the first of the year, and I want to correct this situation. What's the "best practice" of setting up my libraries (video and audio) so I can access/download them to the MacBook (and my iPad, for that matter) but don't have to sacrifice so much on-machine disk space?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 13.1

Posted on Dec 20, 2022 8:47 AM

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Answer 1

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judysings

Community Specialist

Dec 21, 2022 3:25 PM in response to The Coffeys

Good afternoon The Coffeys,

If you are wanting to access your videos and music on your MacBook Pro as well as iPad, you can keep them on an external drive (if you have a newer iPad that supports this).

Or, you can store them on iCloud Drive and just download the movie or TV show you want to watch on device.

Or, you can use iCloud Photos and Apple Music to manage this content in their native libraries, with "Optimized" set on your devices so the full resolution file is stored in iCloud instead of on your device.

If you want to store files on your computer instead of iCloud, you can use Home Sharing to see them on your iPad.

The resources below will provide more information about these options:

Manage your library in the Apple TV app on Mac - Apple TV App User Guide

"The Library pane in the Apple TV app includes your purchases and rentals organized by category, playlists you’ve created and home videos you’ve manually added to your library."

"Watch home videos

In the Apple TV app on your Mac, click Library, then click Home Videos in the sidebar.
Move the pointer over the item, then click the Play button that appears."

Set up and use iCloud Photos

Manage your photo and video storage

Set up iCloud Drive on all your devices

Join Apple Music on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC

Connect external storage devices to iPad - iPad User Guide

Let us know if you have any further questions after reviewing these resources.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

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Best way to set up audio/video library

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