Prompted by Codepope starting to pull out films he wanted to get rid of, I took a break from cataloguing the CDs and did the DVDs instead. All of them. Finished.
Until recently I had an up to date record of our DVDs. For quite some time now I have been using fennel DVDManager as my DVD cataloguing software of choice and a sterling job it has done too; in fact I would still be using it were it not for one thing. At the end of last year Booxter got a new version. I’ve used Booxter for cataloguing our books since shortly after I switched to Mac. Not long after that I found DVDManager to take care of the DVD collection. And I never found a solution for the CDs that I actually liked. Then Booxter went to version 2. And added support for both DVD and CD libraries. Add to that the recent acquisition of a CueCat scanner and a few months procrastinating and we’re well on the way to a complete media inventory. I like Booxter. It’s not perfect but it’s damn good. The fact that it uses Amazon as a prime data source rather than IMDB or CDDB means that I have an pretty darn accurate record of exactly which version of a CD or DVD we have; rather than just knowing that we have a copy of Fight Club I know that we have the 2 disc region 1 version. Smart lists, the ability to define your own keywords and locations, and a wide range of export options (including to iPhone) make organising the library really simple. A quick and easy list of all the DVDs that are surplus to requirements. A full list of everything we own ready to upload to Google Docs so we have a backup inventory list. A smart list of the region 2 DVDs we can play in the PS3 (we really must get around to hooking up the region free DVD player again). There are some small annoyances, but they are incredibly minor in comparison to the benefits. Did I mention we now have a complete record of all our DVDs (and it isn’t a small collection)… Strike one from the to do list. So now I have returned to the task of scanning in the CDs. It’s a little more annoying than doing the DVDs, but that’s down to a) Amazon having a product page for some of Codepope’s more obscure CDs with no cover image and/or track listing and, more frustratingly b) Amazon managing to lose a goodly proportion of, but not all, “A”s and “The”s off the front of track names in whatever weird and wonderful process they use to get track listings onto the product pages in the first place. Oh and c) me having decided that accuracy in Artist, Title, Cover and Track Listing is the vital part of my CD inventory. Obsessive? Me? Just had “if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well” drilled into me as a child…
Mischief & Me 
Sarah, thanks for the kind words re fennel DVDManager. (And yep, it’s “fennel”, with a lowercased ‘f’. Could you fix this in your article please? kthx!) I wish you the best and hope your DVD library will be well cared of by Booxter from now on 🙂 ! Cheers.
Yoohoo, that was fast 🙂 ! Thanks for the fix 😉 !