[Mike.Bowden]

Ok here's the deal. My wife and I have three Mac computers.

Mac Pro
iMac
MacBook

My wife handles taking most of the pictures and I do the video. Normally I just use some type of sync software to synchronize the libraries together that way we both always have the same content. But that's becoming harder and harder, plus it takes up far too much space.

The next logical step was for me to move the iPhoto library onto our backup hard drive that is networked using our Airport Extreme Base station. I've got it setup like this currently, however it's painfully slow.

So my questions are this, is there a way to speed this up? (I don't want to upgrade our network, so please don't suggest that)

Or is their a simpler way to share 1 iPhoto library across multiple computers?

[israces]

I've been wondering how to do this myself.

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by Mike.Bowden 

The next logical step was for me to move the iPhoto library onto our backup hard drive that is networked using our Airport Extreme Base station. I've got it setup like this currently, however it's painfully slow.

So my questions are this, is there a way to speed this up? (I don't want to upgrade our network, so please don't suggest that)

Or is their a simpler way to share 1 iPhoto library across multiple computers?

If you're sharing it wirelessly, you're not going to be happy with the performance.

With that said, the AirPort disk sharing is pretty slow. Turn on file sharing on your Mac Pro and share the iPhoto library off your Mac Pro. It'll be slow on the two wireless machines (but faster than the AirPort disk), but full speed at least on the Mac Pro (presuming you've got a wired connection between the Mac Pro and the AirPort basestation).

[mpancha]

This might not be what you're looking for, but maybe a change in your workflow might be better suited.

Do you have to have the files (photo and video) available on all the computers at any given time? If not, since your wife does most of the photo work, why not stick to always dumping photos on her machine. And since you do most of the video, always stick to dumping video on yours.

Then if you want to view (and again, this is assuming you don't want the photos available 24/7 on all machines) you can just use the built in "share my library" feature in iPhoto to view those on any Mac. And, for video, you can always just use file sharing and stream them over your network.

Other than that, even though you don't want to, it sounds like an upgrade to gigabit ethernet and wifiN is the way you need to go.

[Mike.Bowden]

Originally Posted by Cadaver 

If you're sharing it wirelessly, you're not going to be happy with the performance.

With that said, the AirPort disk sharing is pretty slow. Turn on file sharing on your Mac Pro and share the iPhoto library off your Mac Pro. It'll be slow on the two wireless machines (but faster than the AirPort disk), but full speed at least on the Mac Pro (presuming you've got a wired connection between the Mac Pro and the AirPort basestation).

I've thought about doing it this way, but I'd like for all the files to be kept on her computer and not mine, but I'd still like to access them whenever I want to, without having to get on her computer to do so.

Originally Posted by mpancha 

This might not be what you're looking for, but maybe a change in your workflow might be better suited.

Do you have to have the files (photo and video) available on all the computers at any given time? If not, since your wife does most of the photo work, why not stick to always dumping photos on her machine. And since you do most of the video, always stick to dumping video on yours.

Then if you want to view (and again, this is assuming you don't want the photos available 24/7 on all machines) you can just use the built in "share my library" feature in iPhoto to view those on any Mac. And, for video, you can always just use file sharing and stream them over your network.

Other than that, even though you don't want to, it sounds like an upgrade to gigabit ethernet and wifiN is the way you need to go.

This is actually the way we had it setup to begin with and I didn't really care for it. Most of the time we took video and pictures on the same camera and it would get hard to keep up with what needs to go where. This is why we're looking for an alternative.

I think upgrading our network might be what we want to do.