Cataloging Your Disney Collection

[MJW]

What program or website do you use to catalog your Disney collection (if you are obsessed enough to do so )?

I've seen a few members link to their collections on DVDAF.com, but does anyone out there use Listal at www.listal.com or something else? I have an account on Listal and I really like it. The site lets you catalog movies/tv shows/games/music/books that you own or have just seen/read/played/heard. It then automatically creates lists of your most watched actors, directors, etc. It's really cool!

I used to just use Microsoft Excel to keep track of my collection, but it's nice to use something that shows covers, additional movie details, etc.

[sunhuntin]

i only have one copy of every movie [with a few small exceptions like sequels and home on the range where i dont have any copies] so i just use my memory.
also, when i hear of a movie coming out that i want, i reserve a space on my dvd tower with a post-it note, so looking at them helps remind me what i need to be looking out for.

for the different toy lines i collect, its impossible to remember it all, so i just use microsoft spreadsheet. makes life easier.

[Alcazam]

I use the Collectorz.com Movie Collector. It's not as cheap as it perhaps ought to be, but it has a clean, good design and the movie search library seems to cover many more releases than most other programs. I got myself a pretty cheap barcode reader on ebay and the cool thing is that I can search directly by scanning the barcode, and with the newest version of the program you can even do a google image search to find the right cover, which means you don't have to download and import images separately. It might not be necessary to have your own barcode reader if you only have a few dozen movies, but right now I probably have 3-400 movies waiting to be catalogued and scanning barcodes are much faster and precise than typing in titles (often a barcode is associated with a certain edition of a movie, while searching for a title means you have to go through all the different releases).

First I tried avoiding getting a barcode reader by using my webcam and programs like barcode moster, but it really took a lot of time to get a precise scan (sometimes the digits didn't match the digits under the barcode) and it was actually easier just typing in the titles.

The good thing about Movie Collector is that you have a "personal" section where you can fill in info about the purchase price and location, current value, if you've seen it and your personal star rating. You can also see statistics that show you the total price and value of the collection (my jaw dropped when I realised how much I had actually spent on this insane hobby), average value/price, number of movies divided into different genres, etc.

I have tried a lot of programs, both freeware programs and trial versions. It is really hard to find a program that fulfills every collector's needs, but I did choose to pay for a program because I couldn't find a freeware program that was on par with the commercial programs.

If you decide that you want to check Movie Collector out, you can try it for free with some features deactivated and a limited numbers of movies. If you do decide to purchase it, remember to google any vouchers or discounts. I found a discount code on a web ad which saved me at least $10

[reyquila]

Movie Collector all the way!

[dvdjunkie]

Why pay someone to keep track of your Disney Collection anyway? This is such a great example of Laziness............All you need to do is get a bookcase with at least five shelves and just alphabetize your movies by title. All the live-action and then all the animated ones. You can use Microsoft Office and it will do the same thing that these other sites charge you for. Then you have more money to spend on DVD's and your collectibles. It is so simple to do, but some people just overthink themselves into doing something that they really don't need to do.

[littlefuzzy]

www.dvdaf.com is free, and really pretty good (as far as a straight list of DVDs goes.) It may or may not be moving towards an "IMDB" style "filmAF" that will combine DVD info with film info (allowing for searches and lists for actors, directors, and so on.) I'm kind of miffed, though, as the head honcho recently closed the forum that was associated with the site: film-talk.com.

I used to use DVD Profiler, and the free version was actually pretty good (ad supported, but most features of the full version.) However, they changed to a really crippled free version (that lost a lot of functionality after 25-50 movies.) If I had the $25-30 now (the cost of 1-2 DVDs), I'd probably pay, it's still a good program.

One good thing about a program compared to an online cataloguer is that you don't have to worry about the internet or the webpage going down, and you could concievably enter all the information on a DVD yourself, including cover art.

Programs allow for great sorting and searching, you cold have a DVD Profiler collection with an "Animated Movies" folder, and then have subfolders with Disney, CG, Anime, and so on. After that, you could sort by year, search for actors and directors within your collection, and many more options.

The big problem with Microsoft Office or something is A. It's not free either (actually, it would be several times the cost of a DVD collection program), B. it requires some knowledge to use, C. you would have to enter ALL information you wanted included (which would be a task with 3000+ movies), and D. I don't know how well it would handle cover art, searching for actors, genres, etc., a title in multiple folders, and so on.

[milojthatch]

Why pay someone to keep track of your Disney Collection anyway? This is such a great example of Laziness............All you need to do is get a bookcase with at least five shelves and just alphabetize your movies by title. All the live-action and then all the animated ones. You can use Microsoft Office and it will do the same thing that these other sites charge you for. Then you have more money to spend on DVD's and your collectibles. It is so simple to do, but some people just overthink themselves into doing something that they really don't need to do.

Amen! I just keep them up to date with MS Excel. I don't need to spend money I don't have on some internet service to do the work for me.

[Cordy_Biddle]

I'm still lamenting the closure of the DVDSpot website - sooo cool, with features that also helped you keep track of movies you've loaned out to others, and ones you've recently watched. At the moment I'm on DVDAf., which is great but nowhere near as comprehensive as the earlier site.

On the recommendation of MJW, I scurried over to Listal and created another account there - still navigating my way through but it seems quite good, though their DVD selection isn't as large as it could be. Lots of holes.

[Neal]

Microsoft Word

Times New Roman, size 12

Table > Sort > A to Z

voila! My Disney movies are cataloged, for free!

[Lazario]

I'm not sure I understand what, in this instance, the cataloging system is being used for. To keep exact numbers of how many you have? To display them, online? To remind you what you have when you can't turn your head and see for yourself?

I could care less about who my most watched actors are. And, how could a catalogging service read your mind anyway? You'd have to log in and tell it how many times you watched said-movie for it to know for sure who you're watching the most.

[milojthatch]

Microsoft Word

Times New Roman, size 12

Table > Sort > A to Z

voila! My Disney movies are cataloged, for free!

BRILLIANT!

I'm not sure I understand what, in this instance, the cataloging system is being used for. To keep exact numbers of how many you have? To display them, online? To remind you what you have when you can't turn your head and see for yourself?

I could care less about who my most watched actors are. And, how could a catalogging service read your mind anyway? You'd have to log in and tell it how many times you watched said-movie for it to know for sure who you're watching the most.

I don't know about asking some service to keep track of who your most watched actor is, but I can tell you, for people like me that start having LARGE DVD collection made up of over 1,000 titles easy, not having some kind of catalog system isn't very smart. Especially if you ever lend out any of your films to anyone!

[Lazario]

Well, I have half of your collection- so, I'm safe with my simple DVDaf. But... all that really does is remind me what I have. And it doesn't have every single DVD that I own. I remove listings when I just don't like the movie anymore / at all.

I always thought of a real catalog as something that would tell you exactly where to get the DVD. Such as a library's system where every book has a number and tells you what shelf it's on. I've met people with even larger DVD collections than you seem to have, so... they might need something more specific.

[Scarred4life]

Well, I don't use anything because my collection really isn't large enough to catalog. I just put things on my self and remember what I have.

[MJW]

And, how could a catalogging service read your mind anyway? You'd have to log in and tell it how many times you watched said-movie for it to know for sure who you're watching the most.

It bases the "most-watched" actor/actress list on how many titles you own that feature said star. For example, my collection includes Titanic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Holiday, Revolutionary Road and Flushed Away. Therefore, Kate Winslet (my favorite actress) shows up towards the top of the "most watched" list since I own 5 movies starring her (or for which she provided voice work). I know it's not really a necessary feature, but I do find it a fun extra and it's interesting to see which actors/actresses you tend to favor.

I have a relatively small collection, but I'm obsessed with list-making. Do I need to catalog them? No. Do I do it for fun? Yes! Listal.com is free, so although it's not as simple as Excel or a pad of paper, it doesn't cost me anything to use, and I enjoy spending time messing around on the site.[/i]

[Escapay]

I use DVDaf, and separate the collection into folders based on studio. For minor distribution companies (or companies where I only have one or two titles), I keep them in one of three miscellaneous folders.

In addition, I keep a detailed list on my computer that I update and often rewrite. It includes a "master list" of all the titles I own, as well as a purchase schedule (that unfortunately doesn't have specific dates for some spots between 2005 and 2007), to track when I got a certain title and how much I paid for it.

And there's also lists I keep regarding specific studios (e.g. "20th Century Fox DVDs" or "Universal DVDs"), which include titles I own/am interested in purchasing, as well as including specific lines within the studio (e.g. "Fox Studio Classics" or "Warner Bros. Ultimate Collector's Edition") that includes which entries in the line I don't have, which I want, etc.

And if that weren't enough, I also catalogue certain titles by an actor, director, or producer. It starts off with a complete filmography listing (including the year, the producing studio, the current distributing studio (if it changed between its release and today), and the director), then a list of the official DVD releases that are out (also listing its tech specs, supplements, SRP, print status), followed by a list of which titles I have, which I don't have, and which I want.

Finally, I've also got an all-purpose "DVDs to sell/DVDs to upgrade/DVDs to give to family & friends" list that is very disorganized and out of date.

I've got a lot of lists and not enough time to make sure they're always up to date. But the important ones get updated when necessary (the master list, the purchase schedule, a few of the actor/director/producer lists).

Regarding Disney, I used to separate them the way that UD did (Animated Classics, Other Animation, Theatrical Live-Action, TV, Direct-to-Video, TV Animation, Documentaries, Treasures). Then I realized I didn't care to categorize them that way (especially since all my other DVDs are categorized by studio), so my Disney section is all chronological, just like my other studio sections.

albert

[Alcazam]

Of course you could use MS Excel or something like that (as already mentioned, it's not free)

I tried DVD Profiler and the problem I found was that the movie library wasn't as extensive as I wanted. One thing I always do before deciding on a cataloguing program is to find one of the limited editions that are actually limited and search for it. Also, as I am quite interested in art house and European cinema I need a movie library to return searches for more than the most common Hollywood releases.

I think the advantage of the Movie Collector is the search tools and that its online library seems to be updated regularly by dedicated film fans. That is as important as anything else to me.

To be able to search in your own collection for an actor, director, screenwriter or change the status of a bunch of DVDs from "Wanted" to "in collection" to "For sale" makes things a bit easier. Sometimes its easier to just scroll through the collection and pick the movies you want to get rid of or want to upgrade than start looking through boxes of DVD covers etc.


Add to that the ability to see a list of cast and credits, release date, region, current value and you've got something that a simple Excel spreadsheet cannot do. I am a bit picky with the info and if I have a UK edition of a movie I don't want the US cover art to show. But then again, I am probably going a bit crazy, seeing as I am probably the only one here that decided to spend money on a barcode reader for cataloguing my personal movie/book collection (I love the beeping sound and the magic of seeing the cover of the dvd appear on screen)

I still haven't found a perfect solution yet, but it's good enough for now. As long as I can import my movie database to another program in the future, I'm not wasting my time (You can import DVD Profiler databases into Movie Collector)

[DarthPrime]

I use DVDAF now. Its nice, but I miss a lot of things that DVD Spot offered.

[King Louis 2010]

I don't use anything like this. I have over 2000 DVDs but I just have the majority of them in alphabetical order, I find they're fairly easy to locate that way. There are a few things [like the Bond films] I list seperately in the order of release and I do have a slightly seperate animation area. The Disney Animated Classics are all in release order, than I have the rest [Dreamworks, Blue Sky, Don Bluth, etc.] in alphabetical order.

[littlefuzzy]

I tried DVD Profiler and the problem I found was that the movie library wasn't as extensive as I wanted. One thing I always do before deciding on a cataloguing program is to find one of the limited editions that are actually limited and search for it. Also, as I am quite interested in art house and European cinema I need a movie library to return searches for more than the most common Hollywood releases.

I think the advantage of the Movie Collector is the search tools and that its online library seems to be updated regularly by dedicated film fans. That is as important as anything else to me.

It's been a while since I've used DVD Profiler, but when I was using it, it had just about every DVD imaginable. It is a user-supported program, if you don't see the exact edition, you can enter it yourself and upload it so that others can use it.

Obviously, I don't know what DVDs you searched for, or how you phrased the search, but it's possible you mistyped something, or (which was fairly common) searched only a specific portion of the database like "Region 1" instead of opening it up to all searches. I recall many threads on the support forums that were like that "XY isn't in the database!" "ORLY? I searched for it, here it is!"

That is sometimes common with DVDAF as well, depending on where the user is from, and if he is looking for a disc that is in a different region than where he is located.

Of course, both DVD Profiler and DVDAF (and probably most other programs out there) are going to have a user base that is largely English-speaking from North America or Western Europe (Britain, etc.) While there are many film fans who are interested in European cinema, it may be hard to find very specific releases from some regions, particularly if there is a "better" release from a larger region.

[Alcazam]

littlefuzzy: of course the fact that my dvds are available in one program and not the other doesn't necessarily mean that one database is bigger, it could simply have to do with the programs having different selections. Movie Collector is also user-supported so of course the databases will be regularly updated. But I am quite sure I didn't simply spell the titles wrong in DVD Profiler, the movies were simply not there.

I regularly come across films that are not in the Movie Collector database, in which case I will add the title/info/cover art, but as it takes more time I prefer a database with as much breadth as possible. Which means releases from Criterion Collection, Masters Of Cinema, BFI etc should ideally already be in the database. I think many of the Walt Disney Treasures were missing from the DVD profiler database.

I'm not saying DVD profiler isn't a good program, and I would probably have ended up using that program if it wasn't for Movie Collector. However there are tons of other shareware/freeware programs out there that just don't work very well. Then again, one of the most important things to me when I choose a program is (aside from the core features of course) is that it looks good and can display cover art etc because that makes it easier for me to navigate compared to a pure text-based program with ugly looking icons