tinyMediaManager

Managing a large movie collection can be difficult and it can take a long time, especially if you decide to catalog your movies when you already have several hundred titles. tinyMediaManager can help you keep track of movies and TV shows on your hard drive much easier. It allows you to catalog your movies and TV shows in a database and it can retrieve numerous details about each movie from the Internet.

The software is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platforms and it is offered free of charge. Its hardware requirements are modest, so you can run it even on older machines. Installing tinyMediaManager is a quick and easy process, but you also need to install Java on your compute, if you don't have it already.

The user interface has an efficient layout and its controls are easy to understand. You can organize your movies, TV shows and movie sets on separate tabs. To import movies and TV shows, you have to specify their source folders, in the general settings menu, which can be accessed on a fourth tab. You can target several source folders, after which you have to click a button, on the Movies or TV shows tab, to add their contents to the database.

Found movie titles are displayed in a list, on the left half of the interface, along with their years of release and other general specifications. Information about a movie is displayed on multiple tabs, on the right half of the window, where you can also find the movie's poster and fan art. The software displays a huge amount of information about a movie, including its plot, cast, crew, web links for trailers and more.

Once your movies are added to the database, their entries will be blank by default. You can add the aforementioned details yourself, on a separate window, but an easier and faster way is to use the software's "search and scrape" function. All you have to do is select a movie and hit a magnifying glass icon, which is located above the movies list, and the program will look for the information you need on IMDB or other online sources. Once it finds the information, you can choose what details to include or exclude and assign them to your database entry right away, with a single click.

TV shows can be cataloged in a similar manner. An interesting feature is the possibility of creating movie sets. For example, if you have a trilogy, you may create a movie set with its name and use a search function to retrieve information about the entire trilogy. Additionally, you can tick an option to assign the movies themselves to the movie set, if they exist in your database.