Hi I'm looking for something to organize my fast growing video collection as i now have a TB of storage and it keeps growing, I've been using just windows and having a complected folder structure which has worked fine but i feel its getting a bit long winded finding things i want to watch.
Does anyone have anything that they use or have used that they could recommend?
Thanks for any help.

Dave

The only thing I can suggest is desktop search engine. Google should have one, I've never tried it, but if it works like I think it does, it should index your files so you can have instantaneous searches. You'd still need to organize the files, but at least you will be able to easily search your folders in a matter of seconds.

When I used Windows as my main OS I had Ant Movie Catalog installed to get a better overview of all my movies, those on the hard drive as well as my DVDs. I liked it.

That Ant thingie looks way too complicated, whats wrong with a sensible folder structure.

I have mine broken down like a library does - sections makes it much easier to find what you are looking for as by definition there will be less things in each folder.

This is how mine is broken down.

_Series
1-E
F-N
etc etc

Inside the above folders I have a folder for every film with the film inside it, this is very useful as some films are in more than one part, or there maybe a trilogy in a single folder.

Series are broken down further with every episode of "series 2" in a folder simply called series 2.

Eventually I will have to break my library file system down into smaller sections, 1-E will become 1-C etc etc, and one day I will end up with 27 sections one for each letter and one for Series.

For a while I tried to use Genre's but that failed miserably as films might end up in sections that later on dont make sense, as that film can fall into many categories and takes longer to find.


Andy

How about this?

http://www.getlibra.com/

If you have Window MCE or Vista with VMC I would recommend MyMovies.

If you haven't yet tried using a Media Center front-end, I urge you to try out MediaPortal, GB-PVR, and Meedio.

Personally I used many movie catalogs and all of them either were paid or didn't suit me because of their lack of functionality. I'm using Movienizer for several months and love it. This program automatically downloads information about movies and actors from databases like IMDb.com., Amazon.com and others. And it works great both on XP and on Vista.

What's the point of breaking it down into subfolders as opposed to just sorting alphabetically?

A very very long scroll bar is not desirable, as it is I have to scroll each section, but when I am done browsing I simply hit the "up" button, and then start on the next section.

It might seem pointless, but if you open a folder and then start a film and then change your mind its much easier to find where you were. And just like in a library not all letters are even, so when you walk down the isle looking for the Q section you first have to find the end of the P section, which might be 3 entire bookcases and round the corner. And before that you need to walk halfway accross the library to find the P section. But in reality its down to choice, I find it easier to work with, others may not.

I cant believe its been 18-months since I said that I will need to break my collection down into smaller sections, and still have not. Its a good reminder, thanks.


Andy