Hope this is the right forum.

I'm after some software that I can use to catalog my DVDs. I'd like it to pull data from a database (imdb etc). I've seen a few such as "all my movies" but I was looking for a free/open source version

anybody use one?

I've thought about coding it myself as Ive got a PDA i could use as a remote interface/browser, but I dunno how to get data from IMDB and I cant be bothered :P

Search is your friend. There are a couple of threads in this particular forum discussing the topic.

Try here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1000393&highlight=organize

or here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1055674&highlight=organize

I've looked at this A LOT. Here are a couple of important questions to ask yourself (or at least know how important they are to you):

1) do you run Mac or Windows?
2) do you want a local instance of the software in question (i.e., it runs on your machine) or do you want a web-based tool . . . or both?
3) do you want said software to be able to not only catalog but play your movies
4) do you want to pay? for said software/service or are you looking for something cheap/free?
5) how important are 'extra' features of the software -- things like publishing your library to the web, keeping track of loaned out discs, view counts, iPhone access, etc?

Those are some of the salient questions to think about.

Right now, I haven't decided on which software to use (I'm a "Mac person" so this limits what's available to me) as I haven't finished wiring my house nor have I completed my NAS, but the two threads above have TONS of suggestions/recommendations . . . have fun and report back with what you've decided upon.:)

thanks for the help I'll admit I do suck at using search.

answers to your questions
1) windows
2)local or web based I dont mind
3)no, Most of my catalog is DVD so I just need a list because it'll require me getting the disk anyway
4)no, I'm looking for freeware or open source
5) I'd ultimately like it to get data from IMDB or somewhere similar, the only extra field I'd need is if the movie is DVD or AVI format, so I know where to look lol

DVD Profiler is what I use.

When I became aware of existence of movie organizers I went to download.com where there were plenty of such programs. For me as novice it was difficult to define what the best movie organizer and what the worst one were. To be honest, I used different movie catalogers, such as Ant Movie Catalog, All My Movies, but I set my choice on Movienizer (http://www.movienizer.com/). By its functionality Movienizer is better for me. Even better, it's freeware.

Bumping this back up. I am searching this out right now. No, I haven't exhausted my search options just yet, but I'll still pose this question since I am here and the thread is relatively short. For my case, I don't need a database that will play the movies, although if I had that option, I would love to be able to link to downloaded to ripped trailer files in the info screen. My interest is in being able to catalog movies on various formats. (First, when I mention RIPS in this thread, I am referring to titles that I own but have ripped for playback due to them being frequently watched, like Disney titles, not rentals that I ripped) I have laserdiscs, standard DVD, DVD rips, Blu Ray, Blu Ray rips, HD-DVD, Apple TV purchased titles, Netflix Streaming (titles drop out of the queue sometimes so this would have to be updated). I would like to be able to specify what format the film is in and, like I said, if I could play a trailer file, that would be a big bonus.

Reply away.... Now it's back to the search.

I'd second the DVD Profiler recommendation. Though it's not free, it's fairly cheap for a lifetime license.

It doesn't do the trailer thing out of the box, but if you look around their forums, people have written code to do exactly that. In fact, thanks to the ability for users to create their own windows with HTML, there are a TON of things you can do with it.

Additionally, the program supports plug-ins and there's a lot of functionality there as well.

In it's current version you get DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray out of the box. The next version in beta testing allows you to add custom collections, so you can have a separate tab for some of those media types you mentioned. The only downside is that you won't be able to automatically download a profile for those other types since the database only contains DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray. But you could manually enter whatever you desire or just download a DVD profile from the database to represent your laserdiscs or whatever.

At the very least you should download the trial version. I believe it it's pretty full featured until you hit the 50 profile limit.

You can check it out here: DVD Profiler (http://www.invelos.com)

I recently decided to catalog all my media files (homemade HD-DVDs, purchased HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/DVD, home movies in AVI, etc) and found DVD Profiler to be limiting for such a wide variety of media formats.

I've been using CATVids and am quite pleased with it. It's not as shnazzy and sexy as dvd profiler, but it's incredibly flexible...it's essentially a very robust database front end.

Chris

I've been using CATVids and am quite pleased with it.Chris,

Will CATVids search for info using only a UPC? If true, can you scan in the UPC using a bar code scanner? I could not find any UPC info on their site.

CATVids can download info about a movie using its UPC. I'm not sure about the barcode scanner option though...

http://www.fnprg.com/catvids/

Chris