There are plenty of reasons you might want to catalog your DVD collection. If you frequently loan things to friends, having cataloging software makes it easy to keep track of who has your DVDs. If you have a large collection, making a list of what you have makes it easier to recover if you ever make an insurance claim. Or you might simply be interested in keeping a running tally of every movie you ever watched, which is my primary motivation for using this type of software. Finding a great application for cataloging your movie collection should be a little easier by starting with this list of reader’s favorite DVD cataloging software.
Editor’s Note: Some of the software here is no longer linked to. This is because several of the applications stopped being available.
Reader’s Choice: eMyDVD Organizer received the highest percentage of reader votes in the DVD cataloging software category, claiming 31% of votes. The software supports 35 existing fields for detailed movie information, the addition of cover art and screenshots of the movie, as well as your own custom fields. While this is the most popular choice on the list, it isn’t what I’d call the most convenient solution, because input requires too much manual intervention. Fortunately the switching cost is low and you can easily export data from eMyDVD in a format that imports easily into something else.
2) MovieTrack placed second with exactly 12.5% of reader’s choosing it as a favorite. I’m inclined to wonder why because I find it’s ability to add movies to be next to useless. At one point the software included a feature that supported look-ups via IMDB.com, but I was unable to get this feature to work, which is a deal breaker. At best you add movies by manually typing in every detail about the movie, which is time consuming for all but the smallest collections. This is one case where the wisdom of crowds seems to have abandoned its senses.
Editor’s Choice: Libra received 5% of reader votes and gets my pick as the best free DVD cataloging app. In addition to DVDs, the software also neatly organizes books, music, and video game libraries, making it an excellent resource for cataloging all the media in your home. The feature that makes it a winner is the ability to add new items by scanning the barcode with a webcam. Data is looked up against the Amazon.com catalog of products using the barcode (as well as when doing a search lookup) making it a snap to add large collections of things quickly. The visual display of information (which appears inspired by Mac app Delicious Library) is both pleasing to the eye and an effective way of scanning your library. The search for content in your library is quick even if you have added hundreds or thousands of items.
4) Ant Movie Catalog received 4% of reader votes. Data is input either by searching IMDB.com or by adding data manually. A scripting language allows you to customize Ant Movie Catalog, although it’s pretty geeky. Like other apps listed here you can keep track of who borrowed your movies. The app supports multiple images per movie. If you’re still using an older version of Windows Ant Movie Catalog is compatible back to Win95.
5) EMDB (Eric’s Movie Database) received 2% of reader votes. Features of EMDB map closely to most other apps in the list. The software supports manual input of data or searching IMDB.com for movie info. One interesting difference is that you can get YourName Movie Database as the application’s name by spending $10, which might make a fun gift for someone hard to shop for.
This was one application category that received a high percentage of readers who said they didn’t use this type of software. In fact None tied with MovieTrack at 12.5% of readers. The remaining 33% of readers were divided across 118 different applications.
