I tunes library / external hard drive / apple tv

I have copied my itunes library on to an external hard drive as the library is to large for my macbook.(I am adding my dvd collection to itunes to 'tidy up').
I have connected to apple tv no problem at all.
My problem is that if i want to watch a film from the library on the extarnal drive i have to copy the file into itunes on my hard drive. I dont want to keep doing this.
Is there a way that I can make apple tv or itunes see itunes on the external drive rather than on the hard drive?
Thanks in advance.
Tegbert

I posted an issue about this very same thing.  My iTunes media is on an external drive as well and it seems like all the trouble started to happen right after I upgraded to iTunes 10.4. I have a case open with Apple on it right now and it has gone all the way up to the engineer level.
I have replaced my external drive along with the USB cable and even plugged the drive into a different USB port.
If I copy one of the movies to the internal drive I do not have an issue so...  it seems like the trouble has to do with the content being on an external drive.  Apple does support this because they even have an article explaining how to do it properly: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
My entire Mac locks up when this happens so I have to hold the power button and restart the entire system.

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