iTunes with files living on a network share?
 

As some of you might know, I've recently switched up to a Macbook Pro. It's very nice, I'm totally in love. And, as is always the case when switching things, there are some gotchas.

I have a network share full of mp3s. It is, as we doctors say, very very large. Large enough that I really wouldn't want to copy it all to my laptop. Sadly, that's exactly what iTunes really wants to do when I "Import" or "Add to library" any of those files. It copies any such file into "~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/".

Any thoughts on how I can make iTunes treat a remote fileserver as the repository for its library files?

On a related note, how do I tell the Mac to mount a network share at login or boot time?

In the Windows version -
Edit > Preferences > Advanced > General Tab

If you want to turn off Auto Organization (aka Artist > Album trees) uncheck "Keep iTunes Music folder organized

Uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" to... not copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library...

And right above both of those is the iTunes Music folder location that you can change the path of. Useful for when you have either or both of the above checked off.

Option-drag&drop also bypasses the copy, if you were to only want the change for some files.

Great. I've set it up to point at the directory on my fileserver, but now... it's deadly slow. Playback is okay, but the UI is at a total crawl, and my network monitor is showing me it's receiving about 2M/s just sitting there doing nothing.

You figure it's updating files or something? Should I let it churn for a while and see if things improve?

This is very similar to the behavior I saw iTunes for Windows exhibit when configured in this same way pointed at this same network directory (heh... seems I had the answer to my original question all along...).

EDIT: Evidently it's "Determining Gapless Playback Information". We'll see how it does when it's finished with that.

FURTHER EDIT: Yep! Once that gapless determining is done, it's slick as anything. Thanks, guys!