Help! How do you organize your DVDs?

17 years ago

My husband has several hundred DVDs and his collection continues to grow. Right now the DVDs are in boxes and on shelves in no particular order. Help! We need a simple way to organize them so we can quickly find a movie.

Do you categorize movies by genre or do you alphabetize?

We thought about sorting by genre but ran into challenges like, is "Gladiator" an epic, a drama or action-adventure? Is "Das Boot" a war movie or foreign film?

So maybe it's better to alphabetize? But what if you forget the name of a movie? (BTW, does anyone know the name of the docudrama movie where two climbers get lost, fall into a crevice, and one breaks a leg. The one with the Boney-M music)

If you have an organizing system that works, I look forward to hearing your ideas! TIA.

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Comments (14)

dadoes
17 years ago
Alphabetical by title. I don't find a need to sort by genre.

BTW, this is a nifty computer program for cataloging. DVD Profiler
KTKelly
17 years ago
Better options?

1.

A DVD "jukebox" (Pioneer DVF727 300 disc, or better yet the Sony 777ES 400 disc) or multiple units.

2.

Request controller paired with a Sony 777 (or multiples).

Escient controller paired with a Sony 777 (or multiples).

3.

A DVD server (Kaliedescape and others). Quite expensive but absolutely the best way.
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steve_a
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I'm definitely lower-tech than Mr. Kelly, but I use an old Palm III PDA to catalog my VHS tapes and DVDs. It's kept handy in the room where I watch TV. I use the phonebook (contacts) function, and use the various fields as I need them. i.e., Name = title, number = type of media (commercial or home-recorded, DVD or VHS), another field = location in cabinets, etc. It's really quite flexible, and I can enter the data on the computer or Palm, and back it up that way. For your purposes, you could use a field for genre and search that way. Disadvantage to mine is that the screen is not color and can be hard to read. It also eats batteries. But it's an old Palm and if you were to spring for a newer one, all the better. Also, I home-record DVDs and file them in the small slim-line CD cases; they take up less room that way. You do have to flip through them to see the titles. I plan to install a pull-out tray in my AV cabinet to make this easier. Hope this helps, Steve
flyingkite
16 years ago
Well, the best way to organize your DVDs is to store them on the network drive and use media player or HTPC (Home Theater PC) to play your movies. While technically it's feasible, some folks from MPAA, RIAA wouldnÂt be happy with that approach. Current law (DMCA) makes it a crime to rip your own DVDs. Well, there is a company, Kaleidescape that provides desirable and currently legal solution, but their entry level system starts from $10,000 and their future so far is not very bright due to possible litigations.

http://www.kaleidescape.com/
Molly Brown
16 years ago
Alphabetical according to artist, in boxes, with handmade tabbed dividers separating the letters of the alphabet. ie ABC DEF etc.
Molly Brown
16 years ago
OOOOPS......that's how I organize my CD's, not DVD's. Sorry!
black-thumb
16 years ago
I organize mine by genre so if I feel like action I don't have to remember the title of all the actions films I have and search alphabetically. Genre is so much eaiser because it puts all the same type movies in one place. Of course for those actors that I am in love with like Dolph Lungren, Vin Diesel they have their own section or the what I call the eye candy section. The tv section just has all the tv shows together and then the crime shows together, scifi shows etc.

As for whether or not something would be considered drama or action etc. I make that call. I put it in the section I most relate the movie with.
donnar57
16 years ago
Ours are by genre! Like another poster, we make the call if something is both an action and a drama. If we have a lot with one actor in it (my husband loves John Wayne movies) we put all of those together within the genre.

I have one separate stack for just "my" films - stuff my husband wouldn't be caught dead watching.

DonnaR/CA
rivkadr
16 years ago
I do mine by genre, than alphabetically within each genre. Usually, I'm in the mood for a specific "type" of movie, and it's a lot easier to scan all the movies that are similar in type.
clg7067
16 years ago
"Touching the Void", great movie!

I put all my DVD's in a book type case and organize by action, chick flix, documentaries. It's all very general.
krisfl
16 years ago
We just purchased an AppleTV and have converted all of our movies on the computer and they are stored on our AppleTV so they are only a click away! Less clutter!
kristyh
16 years ago
When our DVD collection was smaller I sorted everything by title (ignore "A" and "The" in the title). Pretty soon it began to outgrow the shelves we were using, so I moved all the kids animated movies to a drawer, then all the TV show seasons to another drawer and kept them alphabetized as well. I was happy with the system overall and if I couldn't remember the name of the movie I wanted I'd just quickly scan the shelves for it and usually I'd recognize it on sight. My husband plans on taking it high tech when the TV room gets renovated next though.
marys_2009
14 years ago
Well, all movies on the shelves are organized by disc numbers, and in order to find a particular movie I use a program called Movienizer. There I can specify where the dvd is to be found, the program has a loan manager, and that's a great feature: I can specify whom I gave my dvd to and when I should have it again. Plus it automatically downloads all info about movies and actors, photos, covers from the Internet, I can create reports and do not have to search for the info every time on the Internet, I have everything locally saved in one place. Oh, and it's freeware!
jeterway
14 years ago
I use the cd/dvd jukeboxes. For a list, I use excel - it contains the name of the movie/album and its number in the jukebox. For my dvds I keep a binder in the living room that contains the list along with a page for each movie that summarizes the movie - I print that from one of the movie sites. For my cds, I just have a list of the albums. The advantage of the jukebox is that you are not constantly handling the cd/dvd so there is less of a chance of them getting scratched. It also lets me store the boxes in the attic - so shelf space is reclaimed.

Help! How do you organize your DVDs?

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dadoes

KTKelly

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