Movies – My Movie Library

Our list leads off with what is probably the most practical option out there, and most certainly the one with the most bells and whistles that have some kind of pragmatic purpose. My Movie Library allows you to keep track of your entire Blu-Ray, DVD, VHS, or digital copy collection in one quick and simple to navigate place. The interface is extremely clean and simple, and it allows you to access your information without having to hunt for it. Best of all, by working your way through the Add Movie process, My Movie Library will actually find information about your movies from the internet, pulling everything you need from the International Movie Database online. You can sift through your titles by a number of identifiers like title, director, or even IMDb rating, and the program can even launch movies that are saved to your computer right into your favorite media player. When it comes to collection management software, My Movie Library reigns at the top of the list.

Valuables – Record Tracker

Let’s face it – if your valuables are taken from your home, the only way to expect to get them back is to have a database with information about them. You need to know what company made your items, exactly what they looked like, any distinguishing markings they may have had, and even their value. Without such information, authorities will likely be at a loss when it comes to track your things down. By using Record Tracker, you can take a solid step towards protecting your things and being ready for such an emergency. The program allows you to make customizable fields for your collections and lets you arrange entries by category, like jewelry, artwork, firearms, or anything else you might want to catalogue. As one might expect, Record Tracker also provides a field for notes and an image.

Baseball Cards – Sports Card Collector
This one makes the list simply because hobby software deserves more attention than it usually receives. Keeping your collections in line is quite simple, particularly if you hunt down database programs made specifically for your interests. Sports Card Collector, for instance, provides fields for absolutely everything you might want to include about each item in your collection, and even allows you to create customized fields for data. It allows you to browse your catalog by multiple fields, such as player or brand, and again includes space for an image.

All of these programs provide two things – the ease of intelligent cataloguing and the safety of insurance documentation. If you really care about your collection or want to be able to access it as easily as possible, consider finding software that simplifies the task.

One of the most important aspects of a movie collection manager is how movies are added to the program. This can be a very uncomfortable process if you need to hack in all the movie data manually, or very comfortable if the software does that for you.

Filmotech offers several options in this regard. It is still possible to add a movie manually to the database. You can speed things up however by searching for a movie title or part of a title on the Internet.

The program displays matches in the very same window. Selecting a movie from the list displays all movie information in a table like form. You can use these information to compare your movie with the selected on. Filmotech downloads a movie poster automatically which can be added to the movie database as well. It often lists ten, twenty or even more movie posters that you can select one from.

One interesting aspect here is that you can select the information that you want to add to the movie in the database. If you do not want to add a poster or description you can uncheck the checkbox to do so. It is furthermore possible to edit fields right away in case you want to add information to the movie.

You can add multiple movies at once under Import. Support are imports from files like xml, csv or plain text files as well imports from Ant Movie Catalog. A disk scan option is available as well which you can use to scan a folder on the hard drive for movies. These movies are then automatically added to the database. You may still need to look the titles up on the Internet, but that’s done easily by selecting a movie a movie and a click on the Internet button afterwards.

Export options are provided which can be handy if you want to access the database on multiple systems. Information can be exported as XML and CSV files or in XMBC compatible format.

Each movie can be edited individually once it has been selected in the main interface. All editing options are divided on three tabs. The movie tab lists standard information like the movie title, actors, country, rating and description.

Media Information lists detailed information about the movie media, from the disc format to editions, languages, subtitles and bonus content. Links to the movie trailer (on Youtube for instance) and the actual movie can be added to the listing as well.

Lending information are listed on the third tab of each individual movie. An overview is available under the Lent button at the top.

Three additional core features are available that I’d like to mention briefly:

Statistics – You can access all kinds of movie statistics, for instance about the average runtime, the popular genres or ratings.

Cover Printer – you can create and print custom covers for all movies in your database.

Publish – It is possible to publish the movie collection on a remote server so that it can be accessed from the Internet.

Filmotech is without doubt one of the best movie collection managers. You can download the free program from the official website.

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.

MBase 2 makes it dead easy to add and manage movies. The only input that is required is the name of the movie. MBase 2 will then perform an Internet search for the movie and display results. It is up to the user to pick the best result from the list. All information about a movie, including actors (including pictures), director, movie covers, genre, year or description are downloaded and added to the various fields in the software once a movie has been identified.

It usually takes less than 30 seconds to add a new movie to the movie database. It is still possible to change certain information although that is usually not necessary. A quick link to Wikipedia is provided as well which can be used to add information easily or retrieve additional information and links.

MBase 2 comes with a loan management module to keep track of movies that have been loaned and extensive statistics. MBase 2 is a comfortable portable movie collection software.

Movies are organized into movie databases in the video collection software. Movies can be added by title, bar code or reading a DVD or file with the option to add multiple movies at once to the software. Movienizer will then query movie databases on the Internet to find information about those movies. It starts with a query to identify the movie properly as it is quite possible that only part of the movie’s title has been entered by the user. After that a form with multiple tabs is shown that already lists information about that movie. Movienizer seems to pull those information mainly from IMDB in first place and probably other movie databases if IMDB does not return results.

It will basically retrieve any information found on IMDB including a description, actors, directors, ratings, years, pictures, genres and technical information. All of these information can be edited by the user before adding the new movie to the video collection. The video collection software provides access to some optional custom information about the movie including a personal rating and if the movie is in the collection, seen, wanted or for sale.

The video collection can then be sorted by several means including by actor, movie title, directors, actors, stars, year, rating and a plethora of additional filters. There is also the option to add biographies either manually or by downloading the information from the Internet. The biography not only includes information about a persons live but also references to all movies that he was involved in.

Movienizer offers a great way to organize a video collection. Especially the option to download all the information from the Internet makes it comfortable to use.

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.

The best case is to enter (part of) a movie title and click on the button to search one of the databases. Hits are then displayed in a menu and the user can pick the movie that he owns from the list. All relevant information are then filled automatically. And this can be quite a lot of information including all technical details, cast, plot and rating.

This would take lots of work to fill out manually. Each movie that gets added by the user is shown in the main list which can be sorted and filtered by a lot of parameters.

One interesting feature of Griffith is the poster fetcher. It is possible to pull movie posters from Internet websites and save them as well. Besides that links to trailers and movie websites are added automatically if those information are available. There is unfortunately no way to download the movie trailers as well to the local computer.

Griffith offers a “loan-system” as well which helps keeping track of movies that have been loaned. Another interesting feature is the export function. The movie list can be exported in various formats like pdf and html.

As mentioned earlier Griffith is a multi-plattform software currently running on Linux and Windows. If you are looking for a movie manager you might want to check it out, it runs fast and solid.

Coollector tries to help by providing an interface to organize and manage movie collections. The program is aimed at English movies only but can be used to include foreign releases as well. It requires more manual work though to add those. Each of the more than 43000 movies is listed with information about actors, plot, genre, directors and release versions and it only takes a click to add one of the movies to a movie collection.

Each aspect of the movie can be edited before it is added to the collection. The main way of finding movies is by using the build in search which can find movies and people.

Movies and Persons are always clickable which leads to the movie’s main page or the movies that the person was part of. The database is in no way as comprehensive as that of IMDB for example but it does find most movies.

Filters can be added to exclude certain formats from being included in search results. A user could for instance exclude Blu-Ray and UMD results if he does not own a player for these.

Movies can be rated and added to a wish, loaned and ordered list. The Piclens extension is required to view movie covers or previews at Youtube.

Ant Movie Catalog is an open source tool that makes it very easy to create a database of all your movies because it uses many databases on the web to fill in most of the information automatically. It crawls sites like IMDB, Amazon or tv.com for information about the movie that you added to the catalog. You may then use some or all of the information provided for your database and even download a cover image.

The utility has many features, more than I can describe in this short article but I would like to point out some interesting ones at least. Ant Movie Catalog analyzes and imports information about video & audio coded and bitrate for movies that are stored on your computer and adds those information to the movie information. This makes it easy to check if another version of that movie has better quality and would be worth a download.

You can add comments to every entry with additional information and export all movies to various formats like html, csv, sql and images only. There is an extensive statistics module which displays various statistics about your movie collection.