I was wondering if you could help me or point me in the right direction.

As a preface I will describe my set-up. I am using a Mac-mini (8BG), with a 2TB fire-wire external HD as my media server. This external HD is shared across my home network. The EX. HD is the location for my iTunes library. Other computers on the network (all PC’s), use the exact same location / directory (2TB external HD) for their iTunes library.

The problems is, when I purchase iTunes content on one of the PC’s, although the file downloads onto the 2TB external HD connected via fire wire to the Mac-Mini, when I use Apple TV (which is using the iTunes library of the Mac-mini), which is what I use as my media “interface”, it will not “see” the file because I have not added it to the library on the Mac-mini (remember the file was purchased from a PC whose library resides at the same directory / location as that for the Mac-mini).

How can I configure the Mac-mini to at a keystroke scan for or import new files in my iTunes library?

Many thanks for any help or suggestions.

Simon

You answered this but I can’t open the link

The “right-click” option isn’t mandatory for the script to function properly. It’s just a simple trick to have quick access to the Automator script ;-)

As mentioned before you only have to create the Automator script. See the screenshot for the instructions.

Posted by Robert | October 26th, 2009

If you are experienced with the Terminal you could try the following command (execute it in the drop box folder) to change the modified timestamp to the current date:

find . -type f -name 'test.txt' -exec touch `date +%m%d%H%M` {} \;

I don’t know if the above problem can be fixed using Automator. I’ll have to look into it.

@ Frank: It seems the contextual menu option is no longer supported in 10.6 Snow Leopard. Since I’m still on 10.4 I don’t know how to solve this problem.

You may find the solution on this page: automator-and-finder-interactions-in-os-x-10-6

I’ve updated my post concerning this issue.

I have another question, instead of adding music files into itunes from an external harddrive, I would like to use a special folder (dropbox folder). But it should be the same but instead of the external harddrive I say the automator to find finder items which are music files.

Every thing works fine but when I chose the aspect that I only want to chose files which have been modified within the last 2 weeks I have the problem, that sometimes I have files which are modified a longer time ago but are new to me, and so these files won’t get improted into iTunes. Do you have an idea how to change the timestamp or to make it possible that it only tries to import newer files. You are right the progress of reloading all files will take too much time!

And I am using Snow Leopard, I can’t use the right mouse click on my desktop to chose automator! Do I need to activate it somewhere?

Thank you very much!

Markus

Could you tell me how you fixed the problem? There are several other people that have the same problem as you did and probably could use your info ;-)