spainter

Q: Mac mini as media sever

Good day,

I have a late 2012 mac mini that I bought back in Oct. And I have installed sever 4 on it. My questions are;

1. With the mac mini I have a 2014 Imac and a 2012 macbook pro. I have music on my laptop and movies and shows on the mini. I want to put everything on the mini. But I have read that only one mac can use Itunes at a time if I did that. I want all macs in my home to be able to watch what they want when they want. What can I do to make this work?

 

2. How do I set up sever 4? For some reason I just can't get it and I am a mac user for 12yrs. But first time trying to use sever.

 

3. I have about 800gigs on media and growing, so with that in mind can a usb drive work with the mini for what I need? And all macs are running 10.10.2

 

I have tried looking up what I need but, get lost. This will be for home only, nothing else. Thanks Scott.

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), ssd, 768 gig

Posted on Jan 27, 2015 6:03 AM

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Q: Mac mini as media sever

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  • by keg55,

    keg55 keg55 Jan 27, 2015 6:10 AM in response to spainter
    Level 6 (8,429 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 27, 2015 6:10 AM in response to spainter
    I have a late 2012 mac mini that I bought back in Oct. And I have installed sever 4 on it. My questions are;

    1. With the mac mini I have a 2014 Imac and a 2012 macbook pro. I have music on my laptop and movies and shows on the mini. I want to put everything on the mini. But I have read that only one mac can use Itunes at a time if I did that. I want all macs in my home to be able to watch what they want when they want. What can I do to make this work?

     

    2. How do I set up sever 4? For some reason I just can't get it and I am a mac user for 12yrs. But first time trying to use sever.

     

    3. I have about 800gigs on media and growing, so with that in mind can a usb drive work with the mini for what I need? And all macs are running 10.10.2

    1. You can consolidate all your Movies, Music and Shows over to your 2012 Mac Mini. Then turn on Home Sharing on ALL your Macs that you want to share that media with. I do this with Music. I have my Music library in iTunes on a 2012 Mac Mini running OS X Server 2.2.5 (Mountain Lion) with Home Sharing turned and I can access any of the songs from any of my other Macs that have iTunes Home Sharing enabled.

     

    2. You should be able to install OS X Server 4 and after the install, launch Server and setup the Services you want (e.g. File Sharing, DNS, VPN, Time Machine Back up, etc.)

     

    3. Yes, you should be able to plug in a USB drive (e.g. 2TB) and store your media on that by telling iTunes to point to that drive for your iTunes Media folder. I personally haven't done it only because my Music library fits on my Mac Mini's internal drive.

  • by John Lockwood,

    John Lockwood John Lockwood Jan 27, 2015 7:59 AM in response to spainter
    Level 6 (9,349 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Jan 27, 2015 7:59 AM in response to spainter

    With iTunes Sharing/Home Sharing you can have multiple Macs or Windows PCs all play music and videos from the Mac server. What you cannot do is have all the Mac and PCs then sync those music and videos to iPhone/iPads/iPods. Only the Mac that actually has the files on it can do the syncing.

     

    An Apple TV can also play media from the Mac running iTunes and sharing it via Home Sharing.

  • by spainter,

    spainter spainter Jan 27, 2015 8:32 AM in response to spainter
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Notebooks
    Jan 27, 2015 8:32 AM in response to spainter

    I have home sharing on. I gotta be missing something. It's something easy most likely. It can't be that easy just put all my media the mini and that's it. In case you can't tell I've never done this be for.

  • by keg55,

    keg55 keg55 Jan 27, 2015 8:40 AM in response to spainter
    Level 6 (8,429 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 27, 2015 8:40 AM in response to spainter

    It really is that easy!

     

    You have to be sure to login with your Apple ID/password in iTunes to setup Home Sharing on THAT Mac. So for the other Macs on the network setup their Home Sharing using the same Apple ID/password used on the Media Server. But once you do, there should be a little House icon in the leff side of the screen for iTunes 12 with a dropdown to choose which music share you want to open.