14 DAY TRIAL // Ever since digital video entered the market and the general public had easy access to movies and the means to store them on the computer and later to save it on discs, there was a need for a program able to store the information about the movies. With the DVD era in blossom, such softwares are to be found all over the place.
My favorite movie collection software is WhereIsIt as it can store a whole lot more than just information about the movies in my collection. The user can store everything in the database by simply "catscanning" the HDDs or the discs.
There are lots of applications that limit to strictly safe keeping the collection you have. Some of them are free like EMDB or decently priced, like MyDVDs. It is time I presented you another movie database software. Its name is DVD Base and it comes free.
The looks of the application are old and only the Windows theme I have installed on my computer makes it a little more modern. The ancient looks given by the developer are no where near attractive. People tend to judge a book by its covers so the aspect is an essential part when creating a software, be it free and without a sponsor of some kind.
The interface is made of two panes. The one in the left is dedicated to sorting options and the one in the right is for displaying the selected DVD information. Each of these windows is equipped with a number of tabs designed to add flexibility to the software. Sorting can be by genre, region rating or none at all.
In the opposite side, information about the items of the collection is divided into four sections. General lets you append data like the title of the DVD, Genre (very helpful information when sorting by this criteria), the producing studio, the release year of the movie, running time, director, official or personal rating (OFLC - Office of Film and Literature Classification, MPAA - Motion Picture Association of America and British Board of Film Classification), case type the DVD came in, location of the purchase as well as the date and price in American Dollars.
DVD Cover and Summary would be very interesting to see what it looks like and how can that information be added (downloaded directly from the Internet or loaded from the computer). Unfortunately, the access to this window is restricted not because of a limitation of some kind (the application is free of charge). But a bug is preventing us from opening the window and causes the program to inexplicably crash.
The user is more fortunate when it comes to adding the Audio/Video information and is allowed to fill a number of fields like video format, type of the DVD, subtitles available on the DVD and the audio formats included. The field for the audio languages is absent from the list.
Features area contains two sections: one for checking the disc extras the DVD contains (animated menu, commentaries, deleted scenes, theatrical trailer, etc.) and one for checking the disc format (Dual Layer, Dual-Sided or Flipper - is that format still available?).
At the bottom of the sorting window, there are the options of adding or deleting the DVDs in the collection.
The Good
Generally speaking, the application is good and useful and the feature I liked the most was sorting. You can view all the movies placed automatically in a certain category without the slightest effort.
Clicking on one of the items in the collection will provide you on the fly with all the appended information in the right pane.
The list can be exported to a TXT file or into an Excel page due to its exporting capabilities in the File menu.
Easy to use and no special training is needed.
The Bad
For an inexperienced user, it is enough to take a glimpse at an application to make an opinion. The interface is not a strong point of the application.
All those bugs should be fixed and not cause the software to crash. Furthermore, the software has no search tool you can use to find fast and easy the item you want.
The DVD collection cannot be renamed and the users cannot add more than one collection.
Maximizing the window is pretty much of a downfall, too.
The Truth
A pretty good application if it were not for all those mischiefs mentioned above. However, choosing EMDB, MyDVDs or even WhereIsIt is a much better solution.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
