External hard drive and MBP and itunes syncing movies..

[ShakyJay]

So I rarely post, because most of the time I can just find the answers I am looking for from previous posts, or come across the answers I need from reading thread after thread but I have been stumped on this and just can not figure this one out, so I come to the almighty Mac geniuses...

My dilemma-I have about 1400 songs on my MBP hard drive, nothing too big an Iphone 4, and an external seagate 1TB hard drive drive with about 500GB of movies or 320 movies and consistently growing-soon to be upgraded to a 2TB due to demand.

Is there any way that i can keep the files in my Itunes library/playlists/covers/info and all the other information I look up when I want to transfer one of these movies to my Iphone or actually watch it on my MBP on the go without taking up a ton of space?

I tried dragging and dropping the files into Itunes but then Itunes tried to copy and make files of each folders for each and consolidate everything and there was not nearly enough space-So I unchecked the option to automatically create a backup folder and I will consolidate my music manually-solved that problem.

If I drag and drop and then disconnect the external will I have to go in and manually locate the movies each and every time I reconnect the external and close Itunes to try and play one or is there a way to reconfigure Itunes to recognize where the movies are stored as opposed to the songs?

What about when I want to watch a movie on my MBP on the go, is there a way to transfer/copy just one movie to the desktop for easy deletion purposes from my MBP and yet still keep it in my Itunes library and I can just re-route it to the external later

Sorry if this is confusing or if this is asking a lot of questions, if you need more information let me know and I will be happy to answer any more questions I can. I have been working on this for a while now and it is still stumping me, so I thought if anyone could answer this you all could.

Thanks-
Wallace

PS-if this is the wrong area feel free to move it the correct one.

 

[ShakyJay]

OK, so I have managed to get everything to store to the external and even create some cool folders and playlists and rename some things with cover art, but when I unplug the external I get the "!" and have to go in and manually click and play each movie before iTunes will recognize where it is at? Is there a way around this?

Did I do something wrong when dragging and dropping them into my playlist? Should I start by dropping them into the movies first, then move them into the playlist? If that is the case, why are some showing up and not others?

If I have to direct Itunes to the drive they are stored on, is there a way to select all and just do that?

 

[mstrze]

I migrated my entire iTunes library to an external almost two years ago.

Her is the proper procedure:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449

Essentially you tell the computer where the new media folder is going to be located, and then have iTunes migrate everything over for you. Given your current situation, I am not quite sure if this will solve your problems however, as you have done this fairly haphazardly and are already seeing a bunch of "!" by your media.

Good luck.

As for the 'on the go' answer...it's absolutely easy to specific/sync movies via iPod/iPhone and as for having them on your MBP, you could easily pull one movies from the iTunes media folder on the external to your MPB and watch via Quicktime (in that way, iTunes won't think it's a new video and try to add it to your library again.) Then, you can delete this file when done.

Also, please make sure you have a back up. It would suck if you lost the external which holds all of your media. PLUS, if you had a Times Machine backup, you could just go back and start over with the whole iTunes folder migration and do it properly this time and avoid issues.

 

[newagemac]

If you want to keep your iTunes Library on your computer but store your movies and tv shows in the external drive then you can just hold down Option when dragging the file into the iTunes library. With that method, iTunes won't make a copy of it, it will just reference it from the external drive.

 

[ShakyJay]

If you want to keep your iTunes Library on your computer but store your movies and tv shows in the external drive then you can just hold down Option when dragging the file into the iTunes library. With that method, iTunes won't make a copy of it, it will just reference it from the external drive.

AAAHHH, thats what I needed...I think it is still taking up some space on my hard drive, but it is a small price to pay.

Should it be taking up any space though?