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[ddwakeham]

I am hoping to setup a shared media setup for home using multiple installations of MC.  One of the installations will be "primary" and the others will be secondary.  All installations should be able to add/rip media to the library, share cover art, and update custom library tags.

My question is on the best way to set this up.  

I've been playing with setting up a central library and then using the library manager to have all clients us this libary.  My problem is that the libary has some entries as UNC locations (\\mediaserver\music\...) and others have mapped drives (z:\music\) and some have local drive locations.  For this reason some of the media doesn't play

Anyone have a primer on how to best setup something like this?

[sraymond]

The short answer is that there's no "good" way to do this.  If you want to share the library, there are two choices:  media server or use the same library file.

The problem with media server is that you can't update tags, etc. on the remote end.

The problem with using the same library file is that MC doesn't support multiple-access.  It is not recommended to have the same library file opened on two or more machines at the same time.  Bad things are purported to happen - though I've never been bitten.

As for the UNC/mapped-drive problem, simply do a find and replace on the <Filename> - I do this now and again on the whole library.  The only problem with UNC paths is that MC will reimport the items with a UNC path if they're part of the import search:  this creates duplicates that are a PITA.

Do an INTERACT search on this topic and you'll find lots of discussion.

Scott-

[NickM]

Same problem - maybe a slightly different way of dealing with it.

Buried in the back of the house is a central MC machine.

CDs are ripped and encoded on my laptop.  When I am happy with the tagging, cover art etc, I move the files to the central server.  I do this still from my laptop ( you'll see why later ).

Then I import the media from the central MC, picking up all the nice tagging.

Lastly, I export my playlists from my laptop (hence doing the moving part on my laptop) to the central server every now and again.

I too wish for an easier solution - but at least this works...

nick