Whats the best Scenario or Practice for my type of setup?

[GhostWorks]

Basically I have some ideas but would prefer to hear what others have done in my type of setup or how i would like it to end up, and obviously asking some one here with more experience in using the QNAP iTunes Server which is the best way to do what I require!

Basically I already have a Media Centre VAIO PC in the Lounge which has my iTunes account and trained 3 New Nano 8GB and 1 ipod Classic 80Gb as well as gaving over 40GB of audio and some Ipod Games, However the Media Centre will be going back to Work for use in the school so would like to move all including games and artwork to the QNAP

Allow 2 x WinXP Laptop's as well as one High end Deskstop WinXP and 1 x macbook to see the Library with artwork and games obviously they will all have to have the same iTunes account , be able to add music to the library and others will see

I'm ussuming that i'll have to map the directory on each to the NAS as well as library file ( which file would that be , which folders should i take accross from VAIO to NAS etc )

As well as Playstation 3 ( PS3 in some case can pick up artwork), PSP , Nokia N95 can playback only

[GhostWorks]

Anyone?

[hansenwernersen]

Hi Ghost,
itunes was never designed to run in a multi computer environment. It is still designed to run one library on one computer. And therefor it have never designed for a multi OS environment. It is design to run one library on a Windows computer and another library on a Mac.
That is why not possible do add and manage your Itunes database from more than one computer without any risks and problems. That is what I have found out, because I have nearly the same type of computers as you. Just see this thread http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2684 here in the forum. The first thing is, you have to decide which is the master OS, windows or MacOS. In your case, I would say, windows should be the master OS, because it is easy to share one library in the same OS and everyone can add files to itunes. And then run on the Mac a script to update your Mac library. There also some tools available for windows which are doing the same.
Which are the problems and risks:
If you link one library to several windows pc's, this library can be "opened" from all this pc's at the same time. (Opening means not the file is really opened, it means it is in the temp file on the local hard drive of the windows pc). Now imagine, everyone of this several windows pc's adding differnet files or is doing some changes in a playlist in their open itunes at the same time. Now the first is closing itunes and the local temporary library will be saved to the original place, with the changes this user made and overwrites the existing one. A few minutes later the next user is closing itunes. Now happens something very ugly. The local temporary library of the second user will be saved also to the original place and will overwrite the library, which have been saved just a few minutes before and all the changes have been made of the first user is gone. And so one...
In a multi computer environment you have to make 100% sure that only one user accesses the itunes library at the same time, which means that only on windows pc itunes is opened at the same time.
If you allow itunes to adminstrate your files and when the users (doesn't matter windows or mac) change information in itunes (e.g. name of the artist) the file get moved on the share. If you do it in windows, mac will not find it anymore and when you do it in a mac windows won't be able to find on its own.

If you want, just post your ideas on this issue and we can discuss them. Maybe you found a solution which is really working properly
cheers
hansenwernersen

[GhostWorks]

Thanks in that case I'll only have Windows XP in use, the mac can access read only via nas iTunes server
I'll probably only have two xp in library control