EMDB

Keeping track of a large DVD collection is no small job, especially if you also like to save and collect credits, historical data, and trivia about your favorite movies. Eric's Movie Data Base, aka EMDB, is a free database program specifically configured for managing your DVD collection. But EMDB does more than that: it also imports tons of cool information about each title from the Internet Movie Database, or IMDb, including images, credits, and technical data, and saves it in its database. You can access the full listings any time you open EMDB instead of having to go online and look each movie up every time you need to know something about it. It can also keep track of the DVDs you loan to friends so you might actually get some of them back now and then. The latest release of Wicked & Wild's EMDB supports Windows 8.

EMDB's user interface displayed three empty shelves that fill with DVD cover images as you add them to the database. The shelves are nicely rendered in a realistic wood grain, but if you don't like the look, clicking View Mode on the toolbar changes the view to a classic database list view, including a header for tracking Loaned videos. Of course, empty shelves aren't much good, so the next thing we did was add some titles from our DVD collection. This is easy: Click Add, type in your movie's name, plus an alternate title, if there is one, and press Search IMDb. EMDB returned a list of results with similar names; we simply had to click the right one to import the DVD's cover picture, credits, and other information and automatically populate the program's data fields. Of course, we could edit the data or enter it directly, add more images, and even specify technical playback data such as codec, region code, aspect ratio, and video format. When everything was just right, we could click OK to finish or Add and Continue to add more movies.

DVD collectors should check out EMDB. It's a fun way to manage your movies.