Thank You, iTunes Home Sharing -or- How To Use A Single Central Storage Server With Multiple iTunes Libraries

For several years now I've been running a Windows Home Server (WHS) at home. It was the perfect solution when I first stood it up because I had several Windows laptops in use and it allowed for easy centralized storage, backups, and remote access. Over time I've drifted over to Macs, but my WHS still works well for just about everything short of Mac Time Machine backups, which required a little chicanery.

Anyway, a few months back I began the process of digitizing all my physical media. I started this on my MacBook using iTunes (and HandBrake), with the storage being a shared folder on my WHS. This Christmas I got an AppleTV and I noticed some immediate flaws in my setup. Namely, to stream your iTunes library to AppleTV using iTunes Home Sharing requires the computer hosting iTunes to be awake and iTunes running. Since I typically close the lid on my MacBook when not in use I quickly ran into availability issues and decided I needed a better solution.

So I turned to iHomeServer which allows you to run iTunes as a service on your WHS. For my initial setup I just added a watch folder in the iHomeServer config which imported all the centralized media that I had created on my MacBook into the iTunes library on my WHS. Problem was, this method of importing lost a ton of the metadata that I had meticulously entered when originally ripping the media on my MacBook. So all my television episodes were listed out of order, synopses were lost, as was artwork information and a bunch of other crap that made navigating the library intelligently possible. This would not do.

So I took another look at iTunes Home Sharing and its Import feature. With Home Sharing enabled on your local network, you can transfer file copies (and automatically sync new Movie, TV Show, and Music purchases) between iTunes libraries - and all of the metadata from the source library is retained. The one downside to this is that the importing actually creates a second copy of each file on the importing machine. This usually wouldn't be an issue, but since I'm using central storage it means I'm keeping two copies of each file on the same machine - one for my MacBook iTunes library and one for my WHS library. But my plan is just to keep the MacBook library clean now that the initial import is over. If I need to access those files from my MacBook in the future, I'll just use Home Sharing and stream from the WHS iTunes instance. Oh, and Home Sharing is also enabled in iOS devices now. So I can also stream from my WHS to my iPad or either of our iPhones within our home network.

So I now have access to my entire media collection on my WHS at all times through my AppleTV and iOS devices. What's that, kiddos? Want to watch Baby Signing Time for the 132nd time? No problemo!

So, the steps were:

1. Rip and edit media on my MacBook from the comfort of my couch.
2. Import the media into my WHS iTunes library via Home Sharing.
3. Use iHomeServer* to run iTunes as a service on my WHS.
4. Profit.

* In this setup, you DO NOT want to define any iHomeServer Watch Folders on your WHS. This will add any media found in these folders to your WHS iTunes library automatically. Which, if you've already used Home Sharing to import the files, will create duplicates in you library - duplicates that have shit for metadata.