14 DAY TRIAL // Few are the applications worthy of your attention when it comes to creating a database with all your movies. Several of them are quite extraordinary as they bring all the movie details to you and users no longer have to manually insert information about an item except in special cases. In fact, this is the general tendency with these programs: reducing user input to a minimum of typing in the name of the movie and clicking here and there.
I remember the times when I used to edit my movie database and I had to go through every detail, from list of actors, producer or director to video type, location in the collection, synopsis etc. It would be a tiresome task and I would often blackmail my sister or brother into typing in all the details. But, there were times when I could not dodge it.
Fox Movie Manager comes back to Softpedia with new features and improvements all over the place. The name says it all: it will store all the movie details you need and create not only a good looking movie database but also an accurate one spiced with information about the movie, including list of actors and their characters as well as trivia facts and goofs discovered by viewers.
The price of the product has not dropped since our last review but the overall state of the features has been greatly improved. The interface preserved the slick look and generally, all features are available. It still has some mischiefs to be corrected and with a little effort, they will be corrected with the next version.
In the right side of the screen you have the quick links for displaying all movies available in the database, new releases (Fox Movie Manager automatically detects them according to release date in Edit Panel), new arrivals, unwatched, unrated and a top 100. Depending on the information appended for each item in the database, Fox Movie Manager will display all movies fitting the Quick Links criteria.
In the opposite side of the application window, there is the Movies on Loan panel where all the items that have been lent to someone will be on display. This window will only show basic loan details like the name of the movie and the name of the person the item has been lent to. For a complete list and additional details (includes the date of the loan) you should check out the link at the bottom of the panel.
The middle part of the interface is occupied by the search bar and the list of movie genres available in the database. It is a quick way to find a certain item in the list. Using the search bar or browsing them by genres will result in the same effect: a new window will pop up and a list of all movies fitting your search/genre will show up.
Movie Strip is a visual exciting way of viewing the elements of the database. The downside is that only items with posters will be displayed here and for the less fortunate ones you will have to appeal to the search bar or genre search. One important feature of the movie strip in Fox Movie Manager is that you can slideshow the images. The controls allow pausing the movie or starting it.
These are the most visible elements of the interface, but there are also expandable panels on the sides that hold other important features. On the right you have Random Picks, a handy solution when you do not know what movie to watch. The application will automatically and randomly pick up titles and present them in the panel.
Underneath Random Picks there is Quick Statistics window showing a graphic with owed/purchased movies. On the right side there is Your Queue panel with all the movies you have lined up for viewing some time in the future.
Adding a movie to the database with all the details is extremely easy. Suffice to press F12 twice (once for accessing Edit Movie panel and twice for downloading movie information from three different sources on the Internet), type in the title of the movie and press Enter. It takes a few moments to gather all the details and display them, but you will find that it's worth it.
Hovering your mouse over the primary source results will show you the available posters. The second source is IMDb. The third source is for downloading movie posters. You can combine all three sources to get most information on the movie.
Settings area of this section allows you to choose which information should be appended to the searched element. The options here are actors, audio tracks, cover images, directors, disc features, genres, goofs, trivia, runtime studio etc. You can practically get all details on a movie within a few clicks.
Of course, all this information can be added manually, but I do not think you really want to carry out the job this way. But you can make corrections to the information, like trimming the list of actors, adding a few more trivia facts or enriching the list of goofs.
And improvement of the software is that it will allow users to input the location of the disc in your physical movie collection. No matter your organizing methods, you can input the details for fast finding of the disc. Also, Fox Movie Manager automatically numbers the items added to the list. The downside of this feature is that once you delete an item all the other elements preserve their initial ID from the software. I don't really know how to classify this as it can be important to check out if there is an item missing from the database (although there is no option to display a full list of all numbered items) or it can be a fluke that should be fixed.
Application Settings is not as rich in options as one would expect. You can set the search slideshow delay in seconds, define the time for new releases and new arrivals to expire, set a default rating, disc packaging media type and disc count.
In Stored Values tab there will be all the genres, video and audio details collected from the Internet and you can trim them up. Or, you can send some of them to Ignored Values so that they will not be shown immediately after the download.
Backing up of your data is an available feature in Fox Movie Manager and so is importing. Backing up is not too interesting, I mean it will get the job done and that is it. With importing, there is something different as you can choose a program to import the database from. For now, the list includes DVD Profiler, Eric's Movie Database, Movie Collector and MyDVDs.
More than this, if you use a program not listed you can send the developer the name of that software and select the file containing the database for converting to Fox Movie Manager format. It can't get easier than this.
However, despite all the improvements there still are some issues to attend. Clicking repeatedly on the Search button in Download Movie Information window will cause an error screen to pop up. The software will not crash and the screen can be closed easily but it is disturbing.
Also, the application will not refresh the movie strip as soon as an item is eliminated. Its picture will still be available for a short while and clicking on it will cause an error screen as well. This too can be closed with no problems (press continue) and Fox Movie Manager will not crash. The software will refresh the movie strip if you move to a different quick link and then return to the initial one.
The Good
Fox Movie Manager has great improvements and the most important feature is that it downloads all movie information from the Internet. You can add trivia facts and goofs from IMDb along with the list of actors and the characters they play.
Two F12s and a few mouse clicks is all you need for all the details about a movie to be appended to the database.
The looks are amazing and the movie strip with slideshow view is a very ingenious innovation.
The software can provide you with a random movie to watch and also stores the "must see" titles.
Exporting the database to HTML looks is extraordinary as you can select the details to appear for each title.
The Bad
The only way to take a look at all the movies in the database is accessing Print function and using preview window of the document. How about clicking on a title and getting you to it immediately so that you can see other details about it?
When in maximized mode, the Fox Movie Manager will enlarge all items of the interface save those in Movies On Loan window.
There are a few bugs to fix, but there is nothing major (refresh of movie strip after a title has been erased, revision of the numbering of items).
Exporting to TXT is not well achieved as there is really no space between the titles and if you choose to add some elements in the list (like synopsis), then you are not going to like the result.
The Truth
Great improvements and it seems that Fox Movie Manager is all for the better. The minor issues detected can be fixed (and hopefully they will be) and do not hinder the user too much.
All in all, Fox Movie Manager proves to be an extremely good movie database creator, and a good looking one, too. You have 30 days of evaluation with full functionality of features and options.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
