My Movie Library is that kind of a software. The free software for Windows crawls selected folders on the computer for movies, uses algorithms to detect the movie title, looks up those titles on IMDB and fills out the relevant database fields if a match was found.

It cannot scan my physical movie collection but the virtual movie collection, that’s a start.

The program displays several options after start. The Add folder button can be used to initiate the aforementioned process. Just select a folder and My Movie Library will do all the work to find, identify and add movies to the movie database.

The other option to add movies to the program is to use the Add button. This is a semi-manual option where you need to enter a movie title that the program then tries to find over at the IMDB website.

It displays all matches in a listing. Movies are added by selecting them with the left mouse button, a click on Get Info and another click on the Add button.

Get Info retrieves information about the movies from IMDB. All information, which includes the movie actors, directory, rating and a cover are displayed directly in the search interface. This means it is relatively easy to identify the movies when it is not directly clear which movie is the right one.

The listing of movie titles remains even after one has been added to the movie database. This is great to add multiple titles to the application. A basic example would be a search for Star Wars. All six episodes are listed in the search result listing which means it is possible to add all of them one after the other without searching again.

One interesting option is the ability to pick a file path for a select movie. This links the movie information to a copy on the hard drive. This feature triggers the play movie option in the application.

Movies started this way are launched in the default media player of the system. A search is provided in the main interface to search the movie collection. Various filtering options, for instance to only include movies of a specific genre, an actor, director or media location are available.

You can display a list of all your David Lynch movies stored on the computer’s hard drives in seconds for instance. Backup and restore options are provided as well.

The settings come with several interesting options. Here it is for instance possible to configure filename conversion settings which helps the program determine the correct movie title (e.g. always remove Divx from the title) or switch to another skin.

So what’s missing? The program could use a rent or lend module, a wish list and custom movie categories. It is for instance not possible to have a group of movies for children, the only option would be to sort by family genre. Movie identification is not always spot on, and it may take some manually editing to get it right.

My Movie Library nevertheless speeds up the creation of a movie collection database, especially if the movie file names on hard drive can be linked to existing movies on IMDB.

You can download the latest version of the program from the developer website. It is compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Tweaks are accessible from the tools menu after installation. They are divided into the categories General, Ratings and Reviews, File Sharing and Styles.

General Options

• Age – Adds age, Tropical Zodiac Sign, Chinese Zodiac Sign and more
• Lookup – Mouse over movie or person link to lookup info
• More Photos – Adds more photos to actor pages on an inline window (from Google Images)
• Print MyMovies Lists – Removes unwanted elements to print MyMovies
• Print Style – Removes annoying parts of page for cleaner printing
• Weaver – Correlates information from related IMDb pages

Ratings / Reviews

• Movie Collection Manager – Manage your Must-See lists, DVDs, etc.
• Ratings Adder – Adds ratings alongside titles on IMDb search results
• Rottentomatoes Info – Adds fresh/rotten info to IMDb title pages
• The Movie Dude – Cross-links movie sites so you don’t have to

File Sharing

• BuyukBang Bar – Search for subtitle, fileshare, torrent, etc.
• KG – Powerful and rich search & cross links bar
• Movie Torrent Search Linker – Adds torrents and movies/trailers
• Torrent & Subs Search – Adds direct search for many different sites

Each option can be enabled and disabled individually. The IMDB Enhancer add-on could be interesting for users who regularly visit IMDB. Advanced users might prefer to download and install the individual userscripts instead which has the additional benefit of reducing the browser’s resource usage.

IMDB Enhancer can be downloaded from the Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

The Google Chrome extension IMDB Plus tries to remedy the situation by embedding movie trailers from Youtube into IMDB movie pages.

The functionality is available right after installation. Each IMDB movie page contains a link to view trailers right beneath the movie title. Clicking that link will display the movies on the same page so that they can be viewed right there without having to load an additional page.

The movies are embedded on the page which means that they all can be played right away.

The View Trailers link is also shown on other pages of IMDB including the top 250 movies of all time listing or the frontpage. These movie trailers can also be played directly on those pages which makes the service even more interesting as it saves the user quite some time.

The option to view trailers is also available on the actor and director pages so that trailers for the movies of a specific actor or director can be viewed comfortably as well.

IMDB Plus is available at the Google Chrome extension repository. It is compatible with Google Chrome 4.

IMDB Movie Explorer tries to solve that problem for you. Now everyone would be able to sort the movies manually but this could take quite some time especially if the movies are not known or if there is not enough time to make a manual selection.

The portable program for the Windows operating system can scan a folder on a connected hard drive to compare the file names of all file types with movie titles at IMDB. The length of the process depends on the amount of files found in the folder of the hard drive.

The initial release is working best if the file name is identical to a movie title at IMDB. It creates some false positives or will not recognize the movie at all if the file name is different. It should also be noted that it works best with English movie titles as those are predominant at IMDB. IMDB Movie Explorer will furthermore display a rating for each movie that has been identified which the user can use to make the selection.

Movies with a checkmark can then be copied to another hard drive. The idea is to sort the movies by rating and copy only the movies with the best IMDB rating. The program works as it is but the limited identification routine makes it less useful as it could be. An option to identify movies manually would be handy.

Other options that the developer should consider are copying movies that total a specific file size or identifying movie genres along with ratings. IMDB Movie Explorer can be downloaded from the program’s Codeplex profile page.

IMDB Movie Review is a Firefox add-on that aids the Internet user in this task. It basically offers a shortcut to the IMDB site by selecting the movie title, right-clicking the selection and triggering the IMDB Review link that is appearing.

This shortcut actually works not only with movie titles but also other information that are stored at IMDB including artist biographies, directors or tv shows. The add-on will open a new tab and load the IMDB website in it or use an already existing tab if IMDB is already loaded.

The add-on does not provide any other options beyond that functionality. It nevertheless could be interesting for users who look up movie information regularly on IMDB. IMDB Movie Review is compatible with all Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 versions (heck it is even compatible with Firefox 1.5x). It can be downloaded from the Mozilla Firefox website.

Update: IMDB Movie Review Shortcut has been discontinued. An alternative is the excellent Search IMDB add-on for Firefox.

We would like to encourage you to post additional tips and hints about website manipulation in the comments of this article so that the page becomes as comprehensive as possible. All methods of manipulating websites have been tested with Firefox 3.5x and 3.0.x. Most will probably also work in previous versions of the web browser.

1. Userscripts and Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey and its userscripts are probably the most popular and known method of manipulation website contents in real time. Thousands of userscripts exist that add, remove or modify elements and features of web services. Some classic examples are changing the design of Gmail, adding new features to the Internet Movie Database IMDB or skipping the wait time at popular file hosts.

Generation of scripts requires web development knowledge, especially of html, JavaScript and CSS as these are used to alter the contents of the websites.

2. Platypus – Modify Websites Without Programming Skills

Platypus allows a user to modify websites with any programming skill requirements. This limits the reach of the Firefox add-on a bit as it is not possible to reach the depth of Greasemonkey. Possible options are to permanently remove elements from websites, change style attributes, change the font and background colors to black and white or to remove fixed sizes and positioning on a page.

3. Stylish – Modify CSS

The Stylish add-on for Firefox and its accompanying userstyles directory provide access to new styles that manipulate the CSS of a website.It can be used to remove, add, move and manipulate elements on a website permanently. The screenshot above shows the popular Atistic Google userstyle.

4. Yet Another Remove It Permanently

Yet Another Remove It Permanently is an add-on for the Firefox web browser that makes it possible to remove elements on websites permanently. Can for example be used to remove advertisement from Google Search results or images from websites. Basically any element can be removed with this add-on. A similar add-on is Nuke Anything Enhanced.

5. Firebug

Firebug is first and foremost an add-on for Firefox that presents lots of useful information to web developers. What many do not know is that it comes with the capabilities to manipulate elements on a website. It is probably not the first choice for this kind of manipulations but this comes in handy when testing different kinds of layouts, color combinations or fonts.

6. NoScript and Adblock Plus

Both the NoScript and the Adblock Plus add-on for Firefox are primarily being used to prevent scripts and advertisements from being displayed on the user’s computer monitor. This does make them limited tools for modifying websites.

7. Aardvark

Aardvark can be used to isolate or remove elements from websites.Has been primarily been designed to remove unneeded elements before printing a website.

Verdict:

There are definitely a lot possibilities to modify websites in Firefox; Certainly more than have been mentioned in this post. Probably the easiest possibilities are in the form of Greasemonkey. If you know of any additional add-ons that should be mentioned let us know in the comments.

It is possible to search the database or browse the lists either in alphabetical order or by genre. A click on a movie title will open the page of that movie with basic information including the writer and genre of the movie. The link to the movie script is located on the very same page as are user comments about the movie.

Each movie script is displayed on an extra page resembling a plain text document which makes it easy to copy paste them or download them as html to the computer system. The movie script database contains a long list of popular movie scripts from Ingenious Bastards and Braveheart to Basic Instinct and American Pie.

IMSDb is a great resource for movie fans and writers who think about writing a movie script. The design could be better and it would be nice if movie script export or download options were available though.

Scorsese original documentary was shot more than thirty years ago and influenced many film makers including Quentin Tarantino who used one of the stories of the documentary in his Pulp Fiction movie (the one with the adrenalin shot to the heart). Since the movie was never officially released Pallotta had to collect materials from other sources like Bittorrent or Youtube to get the film done. While he did get a master copy of the film from Steven Prince himself he discovered an even better copy on the Bittorrent network.

The movie can be directly downloaded from Bittorrent. The torrent is linked at Mininova. The movie has a size of about 420 Megabytes. It is already listed on IMDB with a 9.1 rating although it probably will go down when more users start voting.

IMDB, the Internet Movie Database, is one of the most popular movie review and information websites. A search on the userscript website reveals more than 300 different scripts for the IMDB website. The following article contains a selection of the most interesting IMDB userscripts that are currently available.

• IMDB Pirated Version (link)

Probably the most popular IMDB userscript. It displays additional links to subtitles, torrent websites and file hosts.

• The Movie Dude (link)

Movie Dude puts up links to other movie review sites in the header of each individual movie on IDMB. This is great for cross-referencing movies. Supported are more than 30 different movie sites with the possibility to customize the display so that only the desired sites show up on IMDB.

• IMDB Age (link)

Adds the age of the actor next to the movies they appeared in. Useful features for visitors who often look at artist’s filmography on IMDB.

• IMDb Image Deblocker (link)

Some images on IMDB are blocked by a transparent gif which makes it impossible to save them using the usual right-click save-as dialog. This userscript removes those transparent images.

• IMDB enlarge actor pictures on hover (link)

Displays a bigger image of an actor on IMDB when hovering the mouse over the thumbnail.

• IMDB Weaver (link)

Adds two options to the movie pages on IMDB. The first is to display the actual age of the actors of the movie, the second to perform some research on those actors.

• Google Images in IMDb (link)

Adds links to Google Images which open in a new tab in the web browser.

• IMDB enlarge (link)

Will display the large image of images on IMDB when hovering over an image thumbnail.

• Remove Ads (link)

Removes some of the advertisement on IMDB.

• Netflix Links in IMDB (link)

Adds links to Netflix on IMDB movie pages.

• IMDB Ratings (link)

Adds movie ratings to search result pages on IMDB.

• IMDb Movie Collection Manager (link)

Very helpful userscript for registered users who manage their movie collection on IMDB. Offers options to quickly add movies to the movie collection, highlight those movies and multiple other interesting features.

Many users like to look-up movie information when they are browsing on other websites. This can be on shopping sites like Amazon or eBay, forums where movies are discussed or general websites that offer movie recommendations or lists. One usually would have to copy the title of the movie, open the IMDB website, paste the movie title in the search form and hit enter to retrieve the information about the movie.

The extension IMDB Movie Review for the Firefox web browser optimizes the process. It adds an option to the Firefox right-click menu that will directly perform a search for the selected phrase on IMDB thus eliminating the need to copy and paste the information.

The Firefox add-on IMDB Movie Review is compatible with Firefox 2.x and 3.0.x versions but unfortunately not with the latest 3.5x betas. It was however not a problem to force compatibility with the Nightly Tester Tools.

Update: IMDB Movie Review has been discontinued. The add-on is no longer available at the Mozilla Firefox add-on repository. Search IMDB is an alternative that is compatible with all recent versions of the web browser. The extension offers the very same functionality.

EMDb is closely tied to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) which can be used to search for and fill out most of the information about a movie. It takes only 15 seconds from entering a movie title to searching IDMb to adding the movie to the user’s collection.

It can take more depending on the information that the user wants to add or change before the movie gets added to the database. A hit on IMDb usually fills out many information about a movie like actors, plot, director, year, genre(s) and duration while other information that are source specific have to be filled out by the user himself.

Source specific meaning the medium the disk is on, for example DVD, CD, VHS or a computer video format.

All movies that are added are listed in one central database which can be sorted in various ways. A search function is available to search huge movie collections by using various parameters like genres, titles or actors. One interesting feature of the search is that all information that have been added are available in menus which means that a user could either enter the director manually or click on the name in the list.

The movie database comes with an export and print function and can also keep track of loaned movies easily. Eric’s Movie Database is fast and responsive. It might appeal to users who want to quickly organize their movie collection without the added noise that other applications in the category produce.

Everyone should however notice that most of the full movies and tv episodes are only available to US viewers. Pretty much everyone else will see a grayed out inactive Watch It button on the movie pages which could be confusing for some users who might believe that they could watch the movie but are missing something, for example a user account at IMDb.

The main reason for this move is that most content comes from other streaming media services like Hulu which are also only available to US viewers or those who know how to use a VPN to view the contents.

There seems to have been some recent changes as well which are great for all users. Trailers and clips of movies are now prominently displayed on the right side and everyone can watch them without restrictions. That’s an interesting feature for many users who used to visit the Apple Trailers website to see the latest movie trailers.