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Media Cataloging Software?
Rich0 asks: "I have a growing pile of CDs/DVDs holding hundreds of GB of files. I would like a linux-compatible software solution to cataloging and searching these disks. Lots of solutions exist for music/video, but not so many for files. The software should have the ability to easily scan disks: pop in disc; software reads disc; software prompts for a name (with something sensible defaulted); software ejects disc; software tells me what if any label to write/apply to the disc; and software is ready for the next disc. I've seen one or two packages out there but they usually require lots of manual disk labelling, or their search capabilities are limited. Windows-only software won't be of much use to me. What are others using to manage their media collections?"
...copy them all to one or two terabyte HDs and be done with it.
I have a growing pile of CDs/DVDs holding hundreds of GB of pr0n.
There. Corrected typo in story.
Man you use CDs? Really?
:)
You've mentioned hundreds of gigabytes - that transfers to 999GB of data - this is not THAT much. Actually right now you can get like a PC (with lowest spec - these are not important here) with 4 disks of 500GB capacity each. Use SATA2 devices - they are fastest in cheap range. When you'll get your 4 drives put them into PC. Install OpenSolaris and spawn them into Z-RAID and ZFS - you will get yourself quite cheap storage.
You will get 1TB of redundant and self-healing data storage. Comparing to bunch of CDs you have much faster access time - like disk seek vs. your hand seeking the CD which and you don't even know which one you seek.
Then transfer all your data to this system. Use some open source indexing system on it - if you want to index the contents. But if you only need to search for filename just use "find" command.
I used Pirem CD Cataloguer under Windows before but it's not updated anymore. I still haven't found an alternative that had all the features without being bulky (open source or closed source).
You need to try wine. There are three alternatives; red, white and RPM. Depending on the time of year either is acceptable. After several Wines you'll not care about your growing pile of DVDs and be much less stressed. If all that fails Wine will also allow EvilOS software to run on your X86 Linux machine. If you combine Wine in red or white with wine in RPM then you'll not be aware of the shortcomings.
Also, seconded for copying everything to a huge disk and being done with it. If it's that important to you keep it online and backed up to a huge tape library for the (un)likely event that the disks crash.
I drink to make other people interesting!
Now I can from any computer in the world access my database of media items, add, modify and delete them. I have even created a service that consults the free music database to get the song titles when I enter an album title. Yes, it takes some work, but believe me , it's a LOT more satisfying than using a 3rd party software with a lot of features I don't need. And acceesing the database via web i SWEEET.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
He needs to learn to throw things away.
How we know is more important than what we know.
find /mount/cdrom > cd_name.txt
/s /b e:\ > cd_name.txt
wrap it in a shell script if you want to be prompted.
or under windows: dir
It's not that hard, you don't really need any special software.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
While I realise this isn't answering the question based on my experiences with disk catalog software I would say that unless you are very short of money copying the drives to hard disk is the way forward.
The problems I found were...
If you have been unorganised when assembling these CDs full of files then a catalog of the contents doesn't help much. If you don't know a filename (and the filename is obfuscated) then you're going to have a hard time finding it.
If your search brings back several potential results then having to insert all the CDs to find the correct one, rather than opening or previewing from the network is very inconvenient.
If you decide you want to make things easier to find and do some organising you can't do this while you're still storing things on the same cluttered media.
I copied everything to an array and it's much better. As a bonus I'm able to do backups of the files and am not at the mercy of bitrot on the CDs. I do still keep the occasional CD or DVD but only where there are only one or two things on the disk and so the disk can manually be labeled with the contents.
#!/bin/sh /dev/cd > pr0n.$x
while
do
# software prompts for a name
echo "insert next disk and type in a name"
read x
if [[ $x == "" ]]
then
x=midget # sensible default
fi
# software reads disc
ls
# software ejects disc eject
# software tells you what if any label to write/apply to the disc
echo "Write '$x pr0n' on the ejected disk."
# software is ready for the next disc
done
I used CD Offline, a Windows based freeware for quite some time.
http://cdoffline.webz.cz/download/index.html
It is not polished and even has some spelling mistakes in the UI. But it does what it is supposed to do and I have not found any other alternatives. I have almost completely moved to Linux these days but manage to run it fine with Wine. I am looking for native Linux alternatives though.
Rich0 asks: "I have a growing pile of CDs/DVDs holding hundreds of GB of porn. I would like a linux-compatible software solution to cataloging and searching this porn. Lots of solutions exist for music/video, but not so many for porn. The software should have the ability to easily scan disks: pop in disc; software reads disc; software prompts for a name (with something sensible defaulted [porn]); software ejects disc; software tells me what if any label to write/apply to the disc ("Now That's What I Call Porn 56"); and software is ready for the next disc. I've seen one or two packages out there but they usually require lots of manual disk labelling, or their search capabilities are limited. Windows-only software won't be of much use to me. What are others using to manage their porn collections?"
It ain't Linux, but it's a very good piece of software that will do everything you want, and more.
p ort_project
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediaportal/
If you are really set on Linux, XBMC is being ported to Linux but you will have to wait a while.
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/?title=Linux_
I run an old Gen 1 XBOX modded with XBMC and it does everying I need for CD, DVD, media management. The only draw back is the low end hardware of the XBOX. There are limitations with running HD video etc... It may address your needs too.
Cheers.
Mark
It works for me, I have been using it for at least 4 or 5 years.
The nice thing about it, is on debian based distros it is never any farther away than apt-get install gtktalog
vi +
Ever hear of WINE?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I have built my own:
d ex.html
http://www.os10000.net/fs/java/app_discindexer/in
* backed by relational database management system (Apache DERBY RDMS)
* java (multi-platform)
* client-server (index several computers at once)
I hope you like it.
Oliver
what i started doing was I got this little utility that generated a text file of all filenames/paths on a dvd.
I've got apache, mysql and php running
The utility saves the text files to a folder under the web servers documents and i run a php script that renames the text files with a random number/letter combo, enters every line of text as a unique record in the database parented to the unique name of the dvd itself and I write that unique string on the dvd label.
Its pretty straight forward and only took 2 weekends to get 75% of my stuff labelled.
so now I can just use some basic sql queries in phpmyadmin to find out what which has what I'm looking for.
But in the future I'm just going to buy a bunch of external drives and hook them up to a mac mini.
My system isn't a system at all. Because of the LARGE amount of legal optical media I own and my "custom" discs, i've run into this problem lot's of times!
Usually, i start sorting things out on my HDD. Once that is at capacity, i've moved them on to CD's. Now with DVDs cheap as dirt, i've been using those for a while. My problem has always been the different DVDs.
So what I do now, is have about 5 logictech cases of 320/420 disc capacity. Each one is broken down into a "theme." I have 3 other smaller cases, maybe 120 disc capacity. One is for my Mixed Martial Arts, another is for my "video," another for my music videos, another for my "audio" and books on tape, another for software. Then in my smaller one's i have my necessary tools -- software i throw on every install i do.
That doesn't sound very helpful, but it really is! Each disc is labeled by folder name/type and number. So for example, MMA d1 would have say, early pride fighting vol 1. MMA d2 would have early pride fighting, vol 2. MMA d14 could have pride 26.
I try to keep these in order, because it's much easier after i create a list of what each folder contains to keep track of. I've seen list managers, but none do what i want, and most are for HDD solutions anyways. This allows me to constantly add to my collection easily without having to make it a big deal. Stick disc in, ls and print to file, append to "master list" and voila! It's updated.
When i am looking for something in particular, i just search for the title and it shows up, telling me what folder/volume it's located on. It may not be pretty, but it works really well, for me.
At one point i was making a website i could share with "friends" so they could see what i had, if it was of any use to them, but it was very time consuming. So i gave it up and never found a better solution.
Right now i'm at 750GB on my main system, and under 500 on my bsd box. I've been burning to dvd like crazy because i like to binge on the news groups! And as of late i've been into torrents because i found some interesting Japanese animation (Go Baki and Hajimi no Ippo!) So they'll be added to my collection soon.
Soon, i hope to have the time and considerable money to buy some large HHD's, a low watt-efficient cpu/PS setup that'll allow me to throw everything on a few TB HDD's and allow me to have it directly hooked up to my tv.
Good luck!
My abilities are only limited by my imagination