Ask Slashdot: Huge Digital Media Libraries 361
An anonymous reader writes "Like many slashdotters, I have several TB of digital media: music, books, movies, tv shows, games, comics, you name it. I've put it all in a few HDs, but handling it all has proven to be less than optimal. I'm covered when it comes to music, since [pretty much any music player/library manager] allows me to quickly find songs by interpreter, album, genre... For everything else, all I have is a series of hierarchical folder structures, but hierarchies have limitations. I can find Blade Runner easily, but what if I wanted all of Scott Ridley's films? Where is 'Good Omens', in the Terry Pratchett folder or in Neil Gaiman's? Furthermore, in a collection with hundreds of similar items, it would help to have some extra clues such as covers (for comic books) or synopsis for TV shows' episodes. Do you have any software to help you handle digital media libraries? Specialized software (say, something that only work for comics, something else for movies), or generic media libraries? Opensource alternatives are preferred, but commercial software is fine as well."
purge (Score:4, Insightful)
How much of it do you really re-watch? You'll spend the rest of your life transferring it from medium to medium. Is it worth it?
iTunes (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand that Apple's universe isn't perfect, but for me it all works together pretty nicely. I replaced my high-maintenance, increasingly noisy, power-hungry media PC with a second-generation Apple TV. This works great except that it won't play many video formats. Therefore, I've had to go through the obnoxious step of using VideoDrive [aroona.net] to transcode videos into an Apple-approved format. However, it's not the end of the world.
Otherwise, I guess everyone's different, but personally I want to spend my time doing fun stuff like riding my bicycle or spending time with my family, not categorizing my "vast media collection". I guess I'm just getting old, but iTunes does a good enough job, with less work than any DIY system I've successfully maintained in the past.
Re:Gotta agree with purging it all (Score:4, Insightful)
You will apparently be shocked to discover this, but some people actually re-read books! And re-watch movies!
There are a handful of movies I've seen over a dozen times (Not including the family ones my son demands we watch on occasion). Some of them I still haven't got all of the juice out of (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover), and some of them I just enjoy watching over and over (The Princess Bride, Amelie). I reread Fool On The Hill and Lord Of The Rings about every second year. Our library is tucked away in the basement out of the way, and isn't going to impress anyone. We have as many books as we do because we enjoy them, read them, and share them with friends.
Purging is great, but don't apply your opinions to the rest of us. Some of us have different points of view.
Re:Oh really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I own the David Attenborough Life Collection. It's 24 DVDs. Even assuming they are the single-layer type, that would be:
112.8 Gb. Roughly.
Now say I own, say, several boxsets of comedies, series, documentaries, a few dozen movies, maybe even a couple of dozen free promotional DVD's with full-feature films on them that are given out when the film stops selling.
Now, *NOT* including anything I've recorded from TV / Movie channels for my own consumption, not including any home videos, not including ANY Blu-Rays, etc. I can *EASILY* fill terabytes of data without even blinking an eyelid.
Hey, I could probably fill a terabyte or two with DVD images of cartoons (proper children's cartoons) and stuff I watched when I was younger (I have the complete set of Dangermouse, Batfink, etc.) and that's hardly something I go out and buy every day and keep buying. A terabyte, or even half a dozen terabytes, is NOTHING. It's just when you have to copy it all into a single place, like this guy is doing, that it appears to be a lot.
It's just that he's obsessively backing it up and/or converting it to free formats so that he can just browse from a media library, like the ones he desires, so it's all on one hard disk (or more likely RAID). It's not "abnormal". It's nowhere near "evidence of piracy". It's just a media collection stored on disk instead of the original DVD's.
Re:Are you with one of the **AA's? (Score:5, Insightful)
No. "technically" DVD and BR rips are fair use.
Your attempt to hand Apple a stranglehold on the future on a silver platter is not appreciated.
Re:purge (Score:4, Insightful)
I spend very little time organizing and transferring my media library.
The current array that it resides on has been pretty much untouched for close to two years, just chugging along (getting a bit cramped for space though).
Yes, you can definitely take it too far but just keeping copies of your favorite TV shows, movies and CDs in one place can also be extremely convenient. Of course, I mainly organize it into "film/movies", "film/TV", "film/documentaries", "music/singles", "music/albums" and let the applications I use deal with sorting (as long as you name stuff properly software like XBMC or Plex can figure this out for you, downloading metadata from the internet).
I see it as an issue of balance based on various factors. Either extreme (no media at all or a copy of everything you ever come across) can be inconvenient (although I'd rather go with "no media" than deal with keeping a gargantuan 15+ TB library accessible), you just need to find the right balance.
Re:Gotta agree with purging it all (Score:4, Insightful)
Some stuff gets "expired" from Netflix. The same goes for Hulu.
When you decide you want to watch something again, it might not be readily available.
This is usually the reason for having your own media collection. This seems pretty obvious for Music but it seems like a real revelation for anything else.
Re:Calibre (Score:4, Insightful)
What really drives me nuts about this is that there is no consistent way to apply parental ratings to content in a way that it is recognized by OSX and Windows. This keeps me from sharing my videos across the home network since there is no way I can easily block certain videos from my son's Xbox and his iMac.
Your son isn't going to die if he sees some gore or some tits. If he's too young to see something, he won't be interested in it at all. If he's interested, it's your job to provide context, not censorship. Parental controls are for lazy parents. Parenting is your job not the computer's.