iTunes Library for non Apple Movies, Music and TV Shows

[gregzw]

iTunes Library

I use AppleTV Gen 4 to access my personal Library of Music Videos, Movies, TV Shows, Music and Photos using a MacMini (late 2014) running OS X 12.1. Response is great with no buffering and sound quality is as good as the video that was captured. Most are at least Dolby Digital 5.1 and 1080P video. Couldn't be happier.

Here is a description of my configuration:

My iTunes Library is stored on a RAID0 made up of 3 (4TB) drives housed in two Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo Drives for a total capacity of 12TB with about 11 TB being used. (NOTE: This volume was created using SoftRaid).

It is backed up to a Thunderbay IV Raid 5 using TimeMachine. Both are connected to a Late 2014 model MacMini running Sierra 10.12.1. This Raid was also created with SoftRaid that came with the 4 bay drive.

I use an AppleTV (4th Gen) to access movies and TV shows in the iTunes library on my home theater (88in projection screen).

Movies, TV Shows, music and photos (my photos library is also on the RAID0) can be accessed from any device that can access itunes.

I am in the process of expanding the Library to 16GB. I have decided to use Disk utility to create a new volume as follows:

Step 1
I am using a RocStore 2 Bay removable drive connected to my mac mini via Thunderbolt 2. This has two 6GB SATA 7200RPM Drives from HGST. I combined them into a Raid 0 for 12 TB.

Step 2
I have (2) MyDigitalSSD 1TB drives. These were also combined into another Raid0. They are each connected to a USB3 port on the MacMIni. This gives me a total of 2TB of high speed storage.

Step 3
I have 4 Patriot 512MB Flash Drives (400MBPS Read and 300MBPS Write). I created a third Raid0 and added these drives. They are attached to the macmini via a USB3 hub with 4 ports. This gives me another 2TB of high speed storage.

Step 4
I created a “concatenated disk” volume (JBOD) using disk utility and added the three RAID0’s created in Step 1 thru 3 (in that sequence).

Step 5
I copied the library from the old 12TB Raid0 (Approximately 11TB of data) to the new JBOD volume (16TB). The copy took about 10 hours and all fit on the Raid with the HDDs leaving the SSD volumes for the new photos, movies, TV shows and music that I add in the future.

Hope this helps anyone managing their own video library. Feel free to post any questions.

 

[benjitek]

Sounds like a great setup for anyone who watches stuff over and over again

 

[gregzw]

Actually I have watched less than 10% of the movies and tv shows in my library. I have playlists with selections from over 8,000 music videos that I use at parties and outdoors at night from my swimming pool.

 

[John_Hagan]

It sounds like a great setup. Well done and thanks for the detailed description. Enjoy!!

 

[mpainesyd]

For those thinking of adding non-Apple Store videos to iTunes so they can be watched with ATV, there are several steps...

a) In iTunes Preferences / Advanced tab make sure "Copy files to iTunes Media Folder" is unchecked

b) Locate the video file with Finder and drag it onto the iTunes window (or you can use File/Add to Library)
c) It should appear under Films / Home Video

d) Control click on the item and select Get Info. Click on the Options tab
e) Change the Media Kind to "Film" or "TV"
f) Click on the Details field and add the TV program name, if applicable
g) Click on the Genre field and select an appropriate genre
h) Click on OK to save the changes - the item will disappear from Home Videos and, hopefully, turn up in Films or TV Programs

The item should now appear in the Computers app of Apple TV (provided iTunes is running on the Mac).

Dougs Applescripts for iTunes has some great utilities for automating some of these steps. If anyone has suggestions for further automation please post them on this thread.

There are ATV apps that allow you to watch video directly from your Mac without going through iTunes but I prefer to keep everything together.