Media Library Software?

[elfurbe]

I'm reaching a point where my library of video is beyond my ability to track with trivial methods like "remembering". I need software. I'd like something that really indexes the heck out of it all as well, meaning file sizes, codecs, bitrates, all track info (for mkvs), create/modify dates, etc and it'd be great if it had some information gathering juju that fetched data from IMDB and whatnot as well. I wants it all, precious. I had very little luck locating anything on Google and a quick search for "media library" here didn't yield anything either. Is there a good (preferably free) piece of software than can scan all my media and put them in some sort of searchable database? I'm indifferent to platform fundamentally, I'll do what it takes for the right software, but most of my media is on a Windows machine, so that's the preferred platform.

Oh, and if it came with a free unicorn, that'd be ideal.

[mikeytown2]

Start Here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_theater_PC

[elfurbe]

I don't actually need it to play media, I just need it to index. I've got a Popcorn Hour A-100 for playback, my Windows PC is just an unnecessarily complicated NAS in my media loop. My problem is remembering what I have.

[CWR03]

I just use Excel - I store in boxes, on spindles and in albums, and I just enter the title and location. It's easy enough to scroll alphabetically or to sort by storage. It would be a lot more manual than what you're asking, but it works.

[elfurbe]

I started working on an Excel workbook but the hideous amount of data collection and entry talked me off the ledge. I think if I was going to go manual data entry, I'd probably lean toward a database solution (Access, OpenOffice Base, MySQL with basic CRUD, etc). I'm just really hoping someone knows of software that makes with the auto-magic...

[RunningSkittle]

"All my movies" is supposed to be really good.

Ive used this in the past:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mecat/

[dialysis1]

All my movies is pretty decent.
I also use Ant Movie Catalog.
http://www.antp.be/software/moviecatalog/

[elfurbe]

Ant doesn't seem to have any sort of automatic scan-and-add sort of thing. All My Movies looks to be DVD/physical media based, I'm dealing with backup encodes in MKV containers almost exclusively. MeCat, same deal. Ant's page referenced Extreme Movie Manager which, while it seems to do what I want, has a really cluttered interface which is not exactly pleasing to work in, plus it costs cash money. Beggars can't be choosers, I know, but I can continue to hope for more.

Thanks to everyone that's replied, at least I'm getting a picture of what's out there.

[grail]

Maybe try the Personal Video Database
http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php
I don't use it myself, but I did try it out once upon a time and it happily scanned my movies and retrieved the data from IMDB.

[olyteddy]

A second vote for Ant. I like the scripting to automatically fill the data by just providing the movie's title.

[elfurbe]

Maybe try the Personal Video Database
http://www.videodb.info/forum_en/index.php
I don't use it myself, but I did try it out once upon a time and it happily scanned my movies and retrieved the data from IMDB.

Yeah, this right here is as good as I've found. Scanned all my files, read the multi-track MKVs like butter, imports data from IMDB and Amazon (covers), pretty good searching/filtering. Very nice. I'm still kicking around in it a little, but as far as I can tell, this is as good as it gets.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

[khaoohs]

Media Companion http://billyad2000.co.uk/ is OK. It's mostly for creating XBMC compatable .nfo files and downloads cover art. But it is a decent media library without the XBMC tie-in. Look in the forums under announcements for the latest version. The download link hasn't been updated in quite a while.

[AlexAlexAlex]

Hi,

I suggest you to take a look at http://www.binaryworks.it/extrememoviemanager/

it has the ability to scan your Hard Disks /CD /DVD in search for movies, read automatically codes and, if you have Original DVD, to read the UPC/EAN code and query automatically AMAZON or DVDEMPIRE to download everything you want.

It can also download info from maby sources in many languages, like IMDB, OFDB, MYMOVIES.IT etc...

Just my cents...

[ChickenMan]

I originally had an Excel spreadsheet list of my movies and gathered data from IMDB for each manually. It was just taking to long, so I've now using AllMyMovies as it was able to import my Excel file and gather further data from IMDB etc. It can handle DVD's, AVI's, Blu-Ray, etc, etc basically anything.