I'm posting this on the "mac" side of this forum to see if any of you are achieving anything like this using boot camp or VMware virtualized versions of windows7. Also wondering if anyone can comment on a way to have mac and pc versions of MC utilizing the same library or workflows to minimize work to have MC running smoothly on both platforms.
I use both.
On my Mac Mini I have both MC Mac that runs natively in OSX, and a Parallels Desktop Windows 8.1 VM that runs MC19.
On my Macbook Pro, I have the same.
All four of these copies are used both with their own independent Libraries (on the Mini mostly for testing, but on the Laptop for offline use). Mostly, however, they load the network Library served by my main server at home, which is a Windows box running Windows 8.1 and MC19. My HTPC is also a Windows 8.1 box and it is used pretty much exclusively as a network client of my main server.
Maintaining one "master" Library on a single, always-on, network connected copy of MC will probably provide the best experience, if you want to access the same media from multiple machines. For audio-only usage, it doesn't really matter if this is a Mac or Windows copy. However, if you might want to use the Video and Theater View features of MC, then you'd probably be best to use a Windows machine (or a Windows VM on a Mac) as the master server, and then connect to this copy with the other copies as clients.
When you connect to a Windows-served Library with a Mac, all non-audio assets will be hidden, but it otherwise works very well. There are a few additional limitations when connecting this way, as the source files aren't directly accessible (and must be streamed to the client by the server). For example, the Right-Click > Locate > On Disk (External) features don't work when connected to a server like this, and you can't drag-drop files directly from MC into other applications on your Mac (into the Finder to make a copy of the file, for example).
If you're clever, and the files are accessible in the same place on the client as the server, MC can do some of these things when connecting Windows > Windows or OSX > OSX, even with a network Library. But these are minor considerations, especially if you will do most of your "file management" (moving the physical source files around) from whatever machine is set up as the server.
All playback and tagging features work fine. You can create and modify Playlists, and (if your bandwidth between the client and server permits) stream the full-quality, untouched original sources to the clients for playback.
Hope this helps!
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Topic: suggestions for managing library on nas between macs and PCs? (Read 6300 times)