Buying HD TV Show series on ATV has clogged up my MBP

Question

I had a shock this morning when working on my MacBookPro and the 500gb hard disk was full. I'm currently using it as my main computer and so it has my main iPhoto library (approx 80GB), my iMovie files (approx 230GB), and my iTunes (until recently I thought this was 50GB)
After a bit of paniced searching I noticed that my ATV was also nearly full which suprised me as it normally just has the 50GB of iTunes stuff.
Anyway, it turns out that as I'd recently started watching TV shows through the ATV and had downloaded Heroes series 1 and Glee series 1 I'd added another 50GB of content that had then synced to my iTunes on the MBP.
Question : I want to keep this content (I paid for it afterall) but I can't keep it on the MBP. How do I conveniently store this (and only this - ie all TV Shows) on an external drive.
Many thanks,
Dan.

Answer 1

DJH2007 wrote:
Thanks. But is there a way to move the files, without having to move/delete/re-add them?
you will have to manually delete the moved files from their original location, but yes !
*Chris CA* suggested this in another thread:
In iTunes 9.
iTunes prefs -> Advanced.
Set the iTunes media folder location to the external.
Then select the movie files (or any files in iTunes) and right click Consolidate.
This will copy only the movies to the external location.
After it finishes, iTunes prefs -> Advanced and set the iTunes media folder location back to the internal. This will tell iTunes to use the internal drive for new files.
You can then delete the movies from \Music\iTunes\ on the internal to free up space.
To copy a movie back to the internal, simply right click - Consolidate (since you pointed iTunes back to the internal).
just edit these instructions to fit your need.
as long as iTunes knows where the files are stored, you don't need to delete/re-add anything.
edited by the Jolly Green Giant (where Green stands for environmentally friendly)