Ant Movie Catalog is an open-source application that helps with managing a large collection of movies on DVDs, CDs, and tapes. You may create movie catalogues by either entering the information manually or grabbing it from various online sources and media files.
The utility is free and can be run on all Windows platforms out there. Ant Movie Catalog stands out in the crowd of CD/DVD catalog software by offering support for advanced importing/exporting options, suggestive movie images, loan management, statistics with bar and pie charts, sorting and grouping options, as well as detailed information about each movie.
Installation
You may opt for a full installation mode or manually select the components you want to deploy on your system, namely language files (translations), scripts, printing templates and report designer, as well as HTML export templates. The process is finished in no time.
User interface
The GUI may look a bit overwhelming at a first glance because it provides comprehensive details about movies, such as media label and type, source, date when the item was added or watched, borrower, rating, original and translated title, director, producer, writer, composer, actors, country, year, category, certification, length, URL, description, comments, file path, video format, video bitrate, resolution, languages, and subtitles.
However, the layout is cleverly structured and you may get rid of the abundance of movie facts by using different view modes.
You can hide all details and view the movie titles displayed in a list or with the aid of thumbnails. The thumbnail mode proves to be particularly useful as it provides a visual representation of all films using suggestive images so you can easily recognize them.
The tool lets you sort movies by number, source, actors, year, length, category, description, languages, subtitles, producer, director, original title, year or other criteria. An advanced mode allows you to apply multiple sorting criteria at the same time.
In addition, you can group movies from your collection using a wide range of filters, such as number, color tag, country, year, length, comments, creation date, title, or source.
Importing/exporting and printing options
Ant Movie Catalog allows you to import movies from CSV/XLS files, Ant movie catalog (XML or AMC file format), eXtreme Movie Manager, BaseDVDivx, Origons, Microsoft Access Database, DVD Profiler (XML file format), GCstar, or media files (e.g. AVI, DIVX, XVID, MKV, MPG, MPE, TS).
When it comes to exporting options, you are allowed to save the information to HTML, CSV, XLS, SQL, pictures, Origons, AMC or XML file format.
Advanced printing options are implemented for helping you print the information using various templates, such as 2 movies per page, 3 columns, CD cover, DVD, and paper case. The designer can be used for generating your own templates that may include custom pictures, text and lines.
Dump movies into your catalogue
You may opt for either typing in the information about each film, which may be prove to be a lengthy and time-consuming process, or import the information from video, image or movie cover files (FILM file format).
The easiest way for grabbing movie details is to add data from the Internet via scripts. You are given the freedom to choose between an impressive number of online sources, such as Amazon, AllMovie, Cinemagie.ro, Cineteka, DVD World, IMDb, MyMovies, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! Cinema, and AnimeFrozen. With just one click on a target source, you get general info about the script authors, site address, and language, comments, as well as license.
You may add color tags so you can easily sort the movies, perform searches, adjust the size of the thumbnails, show or hide the title of the movies in the thumbnail preview mode, display a random movie from the list, save each movie picture to JPG file format, perform searches on the Internet via your web browser, and copy/paste movie information to/from the clipboard.
Several extra tools and configuration settings
Ant Movie Catalog includes support for additional utilities that help you add custom fields in case the preset ones are not enough for you, manage pictures (e.g. copy picture to catalogue folder and link it to catalog, rename images , delete items, convert photos to JPG and resize them if needed), and renumber movies.
A loan manager gives you the option to keep track of borrowers, add the selected movie to a borrower’s list, while the statistics section enables you to view general information about the total number of movies, average and total movie length, as well as generate bar and pie charts based on different criteria (e.g. source, borrower, rating, title, country, actors, writer, director, producer, year, length, category). The statistics can be saved to WMF, PNG or BMP file format.
You can also work with a built-in HTML editor, select the icons that appear in the main toolbar, create a backup copy, make file associations (AMC file format), store loans history to CSV file format, as well as configure a set of options which are related to title, grouping, movie information, importing/exporting, scripting, and folders.
The Good
The program allows you to keep track of multiple catalogues and store data in its own binary format or XML, import information (e.g. audio and video codec, bitrate, resolution, framerate, size) from various media files, print data using customizable templates, and store pictures inside a catalog or link to external files.
It works fast and eats up a moderate amount of CPU and memory resources. If you work on GNU/Linux, you can have a look at Moviefly, which is a fork of Ant Movie Catalog made with Python.
The Bad
The GUI cannot be described as highly intuitive and the learning curve is not that easy to follow. You need to save some extra time for experimenting with the built-in features. Its comprehensive feature pack may scare off less experienced users.