How easy is it to get iTunes to store and play podcasts from a NAS?

MikeHunt79 · 22 Dec 2011 at 17:04

Right now I've got quite a few podcasts, and I'm tempted to move the whole lot to the NAS.

This makes sense as I can then also stream them using my iPod if I wish.

Anyway how easy is it to get iTunes to scan my NAS for podcasts and add them to the library?

Failing that, are there any other music players similar to iTunes which can play back my podcasts from a NAS?

Thanks.

slinxy · 22 Dec 2011 at 17:18

not sure I know what you mean and I don't do podcasts either, but you can change the libary of your itunes folder by going here

Just have a share on your nas and automount it by dropping the login items of the user account in users & groups.

unknowndomain · 23 Dec 2011 at 14:09

On a mac you might be able to put in a symlink that points to the NAS, not sure though.

whiskycycle · 23 Dec 2011 at 14:20

slinxy said:
Just have a share on your nas and automount it by dropping the login items of the user account in users & groups.

This.

Got my library sitting in the Music share on a Synology DS211j, automount the share on login items and redirect iTunes there. Sometimes takes 30 seconds or so to fire up iTunes, but only really after a full restart.

Other than the niggle above, it pretty much just works.... music, videos, the lot.

MikeHunt79 · 23 Dec 2011 at 14:32

slinxy said:
not sure I know what you mean and I don't do podcasts either, but you can change the libary of your itunes folder by going here

Just have a share on your nas and automount it by dropping the login items of the user account in users & groups.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I really wanted to avoid moving my entire library really as I have a lot of other music that I want to be accessible when I don't have access to my NAS. It's a shame the whole library has to be in a single folder as I have ~200Gb of podcasts.

unknowndomain said:
On a mac you might be able to put in a symlink that points to the NAS, not sure though.

Thanks, I'm running OSX, I'll have to have a little experiment, I may be able to do something with a symlink or an alias which will allow me to do what I want.

Failing that, I can just drag the entire folder of podcasts on my NAS into VLC, but the volume controls are far less precise than iTunes and it also doesn't remember the place in the podcasts like iTunes does.

undergroove said:
This.

Got my library sitting in the Music share on a Synology DS211j, automount the share on login items and redirect iTunes there. Sometimes takes 30 seconds or so to fire up iTunes, but only really after a full restart.

Other than the niggle above, it pretty much just works.... music, videos, the lot.

Ok, I think I'll have to have an experiment, this may be the way forward after all if I can find some way still having it work when I'm away from the NAS.

slinxy · 23 Dec 2011 at 16:09

looking at itunes plist settings, I don't think its possible to have just the podcast on the nas without redirecting.

There is a way to automount network storage pre-login to speed up the connection issue, but I need to look at that when I'm back at work as its on the server machine at work.