Any software for DVD catalogs?

On 28-Dec-2006, at 13:21, Kees Huizing wrote:
> Soon after I bought a DVD-recorder, my DVD library went the same way
> as my video tape shelf: a mess. Although it is still better than the
> tapes, I would hope that there is some program out there that helps
> me with cataloging the disks. The programs I have seen so far seem to
> focus on movie disks, whereas my disks contain also recorded shows,
> series, small stuff, etc.

Well, for purchased stuff, Delicious Library really is excellent.
For other stuff though, I used to use something called, as I recall
CDFinder, which read the contents of a disc (CD or DVD) and built a
database. Not sure of the name, but this could be it.

<http://www.macupdate.com/CDFinder>

You might also look at DiskLibrary, though I have no experience with
that application

<http://www.macupdate.com/DiskLibrary>

No, wait,t he one I used was called DiskTracker back on OS 8. There
is an OS X version.

<http://www.macupdate.com/DiskTracker>

However, what I would do now would be to roll my own little php-
webface talking to a simple mysql database on the back end. But I
realise that's not the answer for most people :)

The other thing you can do is force spotlight to index a disk, by
keeping a catalog of the disk somwhere special, though this requires
some very minor cli-fu (that is, using the dreaded Terminal.app).

First, make a directory somewhere in your home folder, like say ~/
Documents/CDVD.Indexes/

then, open up the terminal, and do

find "/Volumes/Name of the disk" -ls > "~/Documents/CDVD.Indexes/Name
of the Disk.txt"

what this does is finds ALL the files on the disc "Name of the disk"
and puts them into a plain text file that spotlight will index. This
has the advantage of being very simple and quite effective, but also
might not be as flexible as creating your own little database of your
discs (for example, I would want to have names of actors, directors,
and imdb links on a divx movie file)

On Dec 28, 2006, at 9:21 PM, Kees Huizing wrote:

> Do programs like this exist?

Yes and no.

As the earlier post has stated, for comercial DVDs there are many
options. My choice is DVDPedia (I have tried most of the options
available. Look on VersionTracker or MacUpdate and you will find a
bunch of them).

But the problem you are describing is completely different. These
programs for movie disks read a special code that references the
movie and is unique (like de ISBN for books), but they don't read the
actual contents of the disk. Therefore you won't be able to catalog
your disks in automatic mode like you were suggesting.

The other type of applications mentioned are general disk catalogers.
This apps read the actual index content of the disk you insert and
some of them even look inside compressed archives (.sit, .zip,
etc...), so you can actually find specific files on them. But your
recorded DVDs are in movie format, not data format, so the files
inside them will have names that don't have to match the actual title
of the your recordings. This means that disk catalogers won't do much
for you in the "automatic" side of your problem.

You have another option, but I don't know if it will appeal to you.
It consists on putting all your DVDs in a hard drive, converting them
to some of the multiple formats available (I would recommend H264)
and have them in iTunes. There you will have dates, titles and
everything you may want. There is a new application from the people
of Flip4Mac called "Drive-in" (http://www.flip4mac.com/drivein.htm)
that can automate part of the process. The great thing about this
option is that now with Front Row you can have a really nice DVD
collection "online".

Maybe there is a special piece of soft I don't know of, but I think
you will have to use something like DVDPedia (or any other movie
cataloger) and create your info manually.

Victor Bottacco victorskios.es

Thanks for the help. One of the problems is indeed that the files on
a disk I recorded in my DVD recorder have nondescript names. And
conversion is not what I intended. So I guess it has to be a
database. Good reason to lern using FileMaker. Or has someone an
example lying around...?

Kees