DVDpedia alternatives?

[Varmann]

I have used Dvdpedia for more than 15 years, but it seem to be in a development hiatus the last five years.
Are there any good alternatives to keep track of your movie collection (4000 movies ripped and transformed to .mkv containers).

What I like with Dvdpedia:
- use your prefered player app (in my case VLC)
- Import movie data from online databases for new movies.
- Works nicely offline and without fancy AI-functions.
- I love "coverflow", my last app that still can use it
- Pretty fast

 

[ScanTheNavian]

Are there any good alternatives to keep track of your movie collection (4000 movies ripped and transformed to .mkv containers).

In a postapocalypse I'll come and live near you for amazing movie nights. I'll even bring popcorn.

 

[loby]

One of the issues with good apps suddenly becoming silent in continued development is that (I know it is hard to believe), technology (Mac) has been around for now about 50 years.

Unless the Developer states that they are done and has moved on, maybe the Developer moved on and off the planet (died). I had an app I loved and it was popular and all-of-a-sudden it got silent with no updates or activity. It was a journaling app that I used for probably about 10 years. Thankfully, there was an export option to at least export the entries into .txt format (plain text only) to import into another app (one at a time), but at least the journey entries were not lost in the vortex of the now discontinued app.

Check out: Movie Explorer

 

[Varmann]

Thanks a lot!
I have started to try out Movie Explorer, So far it looks promising.

Yesterday I checked the DVDpedia website where the developer had posted a letter that he was taking a family break, five years ago. Not surprising for a small company. You certainly have different priorities in the 20s, than 15-20 years later.

 

[Varmann]

I have worked several hours with "movie Explorer" now. Many nice features.

Things I not that fond of:
- Very fickle with correct naming as it gets entries from online databases
- Almost impossible to put in entries manually (You have to add them to one of the movie databases online)
- it is hard to sort/search by director or group movies together (like the Alien or James Bond movies), you then have to aded that to the file name and use the text table view.

 

[loby]

Not sure there is motivation from developers to invest in This kind of app anymore when streaming, Apple services and other third party services are now the norm for most..

We might have to just take what we can. I don’t use the app much, I saw this as one of the decent apps for a collection database, but not the time to input my collection. My do so for fun in the future.

Hope the developer takes note of your suggestions and implements them.

 

[Varmann]

I guess I am one of the dinosaurs that keep clinging on to physical media.

Today lots of people think "everything is online", with 100 millions songs on Spotify, that must be the case?
But you do not need to dig for very long to prove the opposite. TV Series on streaming services might suddenly disappear, I lost access to some favorites when HBO was reorganized, of course, they were not available on disc either.

I will try to push for a "very limited" possibility to add entries.

One alternative I pondered for a decade or more is to give up and just use Finder as movie organiser. But the low res image you get if you set a cover image to preview icon is a bit off putting, and the Comment field in "get info", is not that suitable for metadata.

 

[loby]

Actually, there are many who still use physical media. Companies like Apple etc. want everyone to go to their streaming services and have put out over the years a false narratives that said, physical media is dead or promoted to move on to digital as it is the new thing. Plus, they battled Sony for rights to blu-ray technology back in the day, so they wanted everyone instead to move away from physical media.

I lost digital music on Amazon after they switched to their current platform some years ago. They were trying to get people to switch from Apple etc. so they had incentives to buy CD's when they first started. They said, If you buy a CD, we will give you the digital equivalent for free. Once they stopped doing that, my digital media disappeared with no trace.

I would try to contact the developer and suggest your ideas for improvement. There is another forum thread that discusses physical media and if users still use it, and there still are a lot of people that have big libraries that still hold to it. I would suspect it is the older generation, but trends come and go, and I heard the the tread is back with Albums and physical media (CD's/DVDs). Unless the companies go back to creating CD/DVD's we just have to settle with a monthly subscription to a service (I don't like). Good to hold on to physical media if you have room to store.

I bought an old CD I use to have for $2.50 a few days ago. That beats monthly streaming fees and a one time buy.

 

[loby]

JUST opened up the news and this is what I saw...

"Sony has announced it will begin phasing out shipments of Blu-ray disc recorders starting this month. The company says the decision reflects a drop in demand, as streaming services have become more popular.

Blu-ray discs, once seen as the next-generation of DVDs, are used to record and play back large amounts of high-definition video.

In the 2000s, many electronics makers entered the market, and Sony began selling recorders in 2003, ahead of its competitors.

According to the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association, or JEITA, domestic shipments from all companies fell to 620,000 units last year, compared with a peak of nearly 6.4 million in 2011."

 

[Varmann]

I think I can get something working on Movie Explorer. Not as I really wish, but fair enough. Since they do not have any real documentation, but only tips and FAQ, it took some time to understand the basics. Their support is pretty fast.

 

[Beerstalker]

Check out MyMovies. I've used it for years keeping track of my physical media collection, but I believe it works with ripped movies on a media server as well.

My Movies

My Movies - Home Entertainment Software Solutions for Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Phone.

www.mymovies.dk