whats the best way to set up itunes/iphoto library over network?

[turbinez]

I am setting up my desktop G5 as a media server to store all my movies, tv shows, iphoto pictures, itunes music.

I have the movies and tv shows all set up via SMB shares. But how would I go about sharing my itunes library and my iphoto library as well without having to copy every picture and music file into a seperate folder? That would be a major waste of space and I would have double files for music and pictures.

If somebody knows a great way to share itunes/iphoto over the network to my AppleTV please post your method here.

[jmarshall]

Share your itunes and iphoto file locations via smb as well?

[Fergus]

Personally, I share my iTunes music with my Mac and XBOX via SMB. iPhoto organises your photos into a proprietry directory structure that's not great for accessing via anything other than iPhoto itself, so I manually export full-size images each month to another SMB share. This allows me to access my photos on XBMC and acts as a back-up too.

[turbinez]

i tried sharing my "iTunes Music" folder but then I cannot use "Library View" only File view, which is sort of messy and ugly.

Looks like I might have to copy manually over my music over and share that folder instead. Meaning having doubles of everything. :(

[jmarshall]

Scan your shared iTunes music into XBMC and use it's library - it's far nicer.

[turbinez]

If i mount my iTunes Library folder via SMB and added as a source under music, and run a scan... will it put any extra files into my 'iTunes Library' folder? That is what I am afraid of.

Also will it play podcasts and mp4, aac files for audio?

[jmarshall]

It won't touch your files, or add anything to your folders.

And yes, it'll play anything without DRM in it.