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[escaflo]

Hi,

I am looking at getting the iPhone 5 and I am very comfortable with how my current MC setup is with my current Android phone on my Mac. I use to be a iPhone user and switch over to Android and am now thinking of going back to iPhone so I am trying to find the best way to use my current MC setup with it.

I got MC installed on my Macbook Pro in Parallels. It loads its library from the Media Server which is on my HTPC. I want to be able to connect my iPhone to my Macbook Pro and have it sync the music across. I don't mind installing iTunes on my Windows in Parallels but I think the export to iTunes feature doesn't work with the MC on Parallels as it loads the library from the Media Server.

Is there any easy way around this other than me having to sync by connecting my iPhone to the HTPC directly or me having to use iTunes on my Mac to sync the music?

Thanks,
Derrick

[glynor]

There is a way, but it is somewhat complex.

I'm syncing three different iOS devices right now to my MC library using randomly generated playlists and two different PCs.  I've been planning to do a nice write-up on it because during the process I discovered a ton of little gotchas here and there.

This won't be that full write up, but I can get you started.  Here's what you'll need:

1. You'll want to install iTunes on the HTPC.  This works best if the MC server itself also has a copy of iTunes.
2. Use prod's awesome MCiS add-on to sync your FULL MC library over to this copy of iTunes.  You can schedule this to run on a timed basis.
3. You might need to sacrifice some hard drive space to have an iTunes compatible "cache" of your music files (this is the hard part that I need to document), if you have lots of FLAC and other non-iTunes compatible formats in your Library.
4. I'd set MCiS up on the HTPC to just sync and then close iTunes.  You don't really need to actually use iTunes on your HTPC, just have it sync there.  That's because syncing MCiS across the network is very slow and unreliable.  The media files themselves will need to be available on a network share, though, so that the laptop can access them "in the same place" as the HTPC.  This is probably already the case so that MC on the Laptop can use them.
5. Set up GoodSync to sync the contents of your iTunes "Library" (the database files, not the actual media) over to your Laptop.  GoodSync can be set up so that it works much like Dropbox in that when the contents of the monitored directory change, it automatically syncs the changes.  You'll want a copy of GoodSync on both the HTPC and the laptop.  This will work EVEN when the Laptop isn't on your home network (GoodSync is awesome).
6. Set up iTunes on your Laptop.  It will be easiest to do this with Windows -> Windows copies of iTunes (because otherwise the OSX iTunes has to rebuild paths for each sync, since OSX doesn't have things like M:\)  I think it is possible to use GoodSync to sync an iTunes library to a Mac, but I've never tried it.  Make sure the Laptop copy of iTunes uses the library files that are synced over from GoodSync.

If you do all that, then each time you open your copy of iTunes on the Laptop, it will be using a database identical to the one on the HTPC, which has been synced to MC.

You can do LOTS of fancy things using MC's SmartList functionality.  I have a set of playlists that determine what gets synced over to my iOS devices, and includes things like Play Doctor lists, Top Hits, New Imports, and others.

[escaflo]

Thanks for that!

That actually sounds like a feasible solution for me. I already have GoodSync running on my Mac and my HTPC so it should be good. Hmm I might just give that a go.

[glynor]

It works perfectly, and it is quite powerful.

If you have files in your library that aren't iTunes/iOS compatible (like FLAC) you can even set up a Generic Handheld in MC (and automate syncing) that will do the conversions for you, to make sure that MCiS can sync these files over.

That's the complex part, but I can explain if you want to go there.

Like I said, I'm intending to do a mega HowTo Thread sometime soon, but I'm working on another project right now.