iTunes freezing when adding new media to library

Question

I have a macbook that I use to sync with my iPad. I want to start to get some of my media (music and movies) onto it. These files are located on a network share that is available through Finder. The share is on a Windows Home Server.

When I try to "Add Folder to Library..." I can select the folder, and click Add. This is where iTunes tries to get all the Album Art and Determine Gapless Playback ...blah blah - and this goes on for hours with hardly any progress (gapless was at 300 of 8355 after 5 hours).

What can I do to speed this up? It's on the same gigabyte switch so the network shouldn't be an issue.

I saw this issue on Apple's forums, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't anything I was missing. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2564964&start=105&tstart=0

Answer 1

I have been down this same road and arrived at the conclusion that iTunes cannot be used in this fashion. If it wasn't just one of dozens of major flaws in this execrable piece of software I might think Apple had crippled it on purpose.

I suggest you keep your iTunes library locally on the macbook and mirror your iTunes folder to the server so the music also available to other devices on your network.