What movie manager do you use?

[Sowser]

I have a fairly substantial movie colection that I'lmplanning to burn to my new PC and I'm wondering what programs you guys are using for movie managment. I'd like to have something that would give me a brief description, a nice image, and the ability to search by Title/Dirrector/Actor if possible. What do you guys use and why? Also is there a prefered format in which to store movie files? I have 5 TB of space in a RAID 5 array and playback is on a 32'' 1080 P flat screen.

[Major_A]

When I rip a movie to my HTPC I use AutoGK. It's easy and fairly quick. There are better alternatives out there that offer more options but I don't think I need them.

Easiest way to get a nice picture (sorry no description) is to create a folder. Name it the title of the movie. Name your video file the same name as the folder. Find a picture of the DVD folder (it has to be a jpg as far as I know) and name it folder. Drop that picture into the folder and now you have a thumbnail of what is in the folder.

Example:


As far as a manager I use SageTV. It does give descriptions of files but they have to be MPG or MPEG files to have it. Then again this PC was built to record TV and watch movies on (DVD player, file player, etc...).

[KnightRid]

With a 32" screen, I think autogk would be fine also. For the highest quality, you could iso the whole dvd and use vlcplayer to play the iso ;) If you have a nice surround, you may want to make the movies at least 2 cds in length while using at least the 5.1 audio option.

I do not really know about the movie manager programs, I just use an OpenOffice spreadsheet to keep track of my dvds since I would not have enough money to buy the hard drives needed to put them all to digital with keeping the entire dvd structure in tact - I have a 50" plasma, so I would need higher quality than an xvid/divx i believe.

Oh 1 movie manager I have looked in to was at collectorz.com - the movie manager that is there is neat. I also have used the libra one that lets you use your webcam to scan the upc and it auto enters the info that way.

Mike

autogk is free, so give it a try and see what you think compared with the original dvd. Only problem I have with divx and xvid are the black areas - I ALWAYS get blockiness in the black areas.