Apple TV Set Up (ATV2+MBP+Airport Extreme+External HD)

[piepertim]

I am going to be buying an Apple TV Take 2 here pretty soon along with an Airport Extreme Base Station. I would just like to know if this set-up would work.

I want to keep all of my iTunes music files on my Unibody MacBook Pro so that I have those with me at all times but Movies and TV Shows are expensive on hard drive space so I want to keep all of those on an External HD that is connected via an Airport Extreme Base Station. (This External HD would also be acting as my Time Capsule - wasn't sure if this would affect anything)

Here is my plan:
I will create an iTunes Library in a folder on my External HD and point iTunes to that folder so that I can fill that library with my Movies, TV Shows and maybe a couple hundred songs. Since I have iTunes automatically keep my library organized it should copy anything I drag into the library, while pointed to that folder, to the External HD and not keep a copy on my MBP. Right? And then when I want to watch a movie on my Apple TV I will point iTunes to this external library and then I should be able to stream movies to my Apple TV. Right?

For the vast majority of the time I will keep my iTunes pointed to my local iTunes Folder on my MBP so that I can stream my music to my Apple TV.

This set should work, correct?

If I am not being clear enough with my idea please let me know and I'll do my best to clarify.

Any help with this or any ideas on how I could do this in a simpler way would be much appreciated!

 

[pasipple]

Yes that setup will work. I have the same setup and the ATV2 works flawlessly.

 

[hokiepokie07]

When you say you have iTunes set automatically to keep your library organized, what does that mean, and how would I go about doing that?

I'd love to have mine more organized, but I still seem to have multiple folders for the same artist.

 

[piepertim]

When you say you have iTunes set automatically to keep your library organized, what does that mean, and how would I go about doing that?

I'd love to have mine more organized, but I still seem to have multiple folders for the same artist.

For this to work you must have the "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" checkboxes checked.

Basically iTunes will organize your iTunes Media Folder by artist. Whenever a new artist is added to your iTunes, iTunes creates a new folder in your iTunes Media>Music folder with the artist name and a subsequent folder with the name of the album(s) that I have added.

Let's say the bands name was spelled incorrectly when I imported the songs to iTunes and I decide to correct it. This change would be reflected in the iTunes Media>Music folder. The same goes for if a song was named incorrectly. iTunes will automatically change the file name of the song to reflect the changes you make in iTunes itself in order to keep your iTunes Media>Music folder nice and neat.

Having the "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" checkbox checked is very important as well in order to insure that everything you add to your iTunes doesn't get lost on your computer. Basically, when you drag and drop music files to your iTunes, iTunes copies those files into the corresponding folder within your iTunes Media folder. This insures that all of your music is one place and not scattered about your computer in random folders and allows you to delete the original media. (otherwise you will have two copies of the file on your HD)

That seems like a bit of a long-winded response. Hope that helps and makes sense.