Question about Apple TV and Movies on external HD.....

Question

Level 1

4 points

Question about Apple TV and Movies on external HD.....

I have ripped my entire movie collection out for the apple tv and they play great.

One problem......

I have them all stored on a 1TB external HD and I add them to my "Movies" Library. They are copying over and taking up all the space on my IMAC HD. My question is too fold....

1) Can I somehow add movies to my itunes so my apple tv recognizes them without taking up space on my Imac HD?

2) Is there a way to do this without moving my entire current Itunes library (music) over to the 1TB drive?

I am really just looking for a way to map the movies to Itunes without copying them all from the external drive to the Imac drive that the Itunes library is currently on.

Thanks for any help.

IMAC, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Aug 18, 2010 6:34 AM

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Answer 1

Chenks

Level 5

7,435 points

Aug 18, 2010 6:48 AM in response to Imac4fun

Imac4fun wrote:
1) Can I somehow add movies to my itunes so my apple tv recognizes them without taking up space on my Imac HD?

yes this is a simply itunes configuration issue.
itunes preferences > advanced > untick "copy files to itunes media folder when adding to library"

2) Is there a way to do this without moving my entire current Itunes library (music) over to the 1TB drive?

changing the option mentioned will not move any content from where it originally is.

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Answer 2

Jolly Giant

Level 7

25,464 points

Aug 18, 2010 9:07 AM in response to Imac4fun

Imac4fun wrote:
I am really just looking for a way to map the movies to Itunes without copying them all from the external drive to the Imac drive that the Itunes library is currently on.

as an alternative to what Chenks suggested, keep the +copy to+ ... option checked and option-drag the movie files from the external HD into an open iTunes window. same effect, but you don't have to remember going back into the advanced preference pane if you do want content added to the iMacs internal library.

in any case, be sure the drive is mounted before launching iTunes for the content to be playable.

J GG

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