ITunes Library: Copy items on import for music only (not video)

Question

Hi,
I've just bought a new iPod Touch (and I love it). I'd like some advice on managing my iTunes library though.
At the moment I use an external FW drive for my music (there's a lot of it), and I have iTunes manage that itself. It copies files into the folder on this drive automatically, manages the folder hierarchy, and all is good.
Now, however, I have an iPod Touch, and so need to use iTunes to manage my movie library, which is substantial. Currently I have organised my movies into folders spread across 2 500GB external disks. I'm happy with this setup, but to get these movies onto the iPod, I need to import the movies into iTunes.
So here's my problem. I like the way iTunes manages my music library, and would like it to continue to do so. However, when it comes to movies, I want everything to stay the same as it is at the moment, I can't have iTunes take control of the movies because they're spread over two very big disks, and none of my external drives are large enough to fit everything on (movies + music).
What's the best way to have iTunes continue to manage my music, but to just remember links to the movies on the two other external drives? Also, will I have to be careful about using things like the 'consolidate library' feature because that could really screw things up (trying to move things about when I don't want it to).
Any advice would be much appreciated (I'd love iTunes 8 to have more flexibility and control over libraries, especially distinguishing between movies and music).
Thanks for your advice, it's much appreciated!
- P

Answer 1

No Tom,
I am saying that when no files actually copy to the SAN Volume when in "Copy Files" mode despite the setting being correct (destination is the Library's external media folder).
Original files stay on the portable drive, whatever their nature. But if a file is imported this way and needs optimizing, FCPX does create a ProRes file in an  "Optimized Media" folder it creates within the Libray's external media folder.
If I eject the portable drive, files that did not need to be optimized go offline.
At no time does FCPX indicate that it is copying. In the background process window it shows rendering of the waveforms and transcoding when optimizing but there is never an indication it actualy copies the files.