Ask Slashdot: Huge Digital Media Libraries

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."

Comments

That's alright

[sneilan]

You can admit it. Slashdot understands that you have a large *personal* media collection *AHEM*.

Fedora Repository

[oneiros27]

Just use what the libraries use:

Fedora

What you're looking for in general is either a repository (if you want it to manage the files) or a catalog (if you want it to just track info about the files). A catalog might also be called a 'registry' when dealing with sciences archives, where the term 'catalog' is used for something else.

For more options, see any of the following lists on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_institutional_repository_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Digital_library_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_next-generation_library_catalogs

iTunes

[aclarke]

I'm likely going to be flamed and modded into purgatory for this, but I use iTunes for most of this-at least, for music and videos. Some PDFs are starting to go in there if I want access to them on the go on my iPhone or iPad.

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 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:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what I've done as well.

We have pretty much sold our soul to Apple just for the convenience of not worrying about pulling stuff when we need it. We create a significant volume of recordings of interviews, meetings and design brainstorming discussions during software development. We upload these to iTunes to keep them organized. We use Home Share from a (reasonably old) Mac Mini so everyone in the office can get them when they need it. Additionally, just bought Apple TV's for two conference rooms so we can use AirPlay to play back presentations to the room we are in.
One more step though, we use IDentify from Justin Pulsipher to edit tags on the videos and podcasts. This means that if we ever need to rebuild the library (which we've had to do a couple of times), we don't need to tag items again. The tags are embedded in the file and will work irrespective of which file they are in.

Re:iTunes

[Mister Whirly]

You realize that most "fireproof" safes are designed so paper will not burn - at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. If you read the fine print, the temperatures in those safes can hit well over 250 degrees, which I am sure your DVDs would not survive. Unless you bought a Fireproof safe specifically designed to protect DVDs, keeping them in there is probably a colossal waste of space and only provides a "feel good" solution that will not actually protect them from damage. I know becasue a friend of mine had a fireproof safe with computer backup DVDs in it that all melted into one big lump when he had a fire.

P.S. I can save you the time/money by letting you know all of Glenn Beck's books are absolute crap. No need to buy them in the first place - unless you like to be frightened by really dumb stuff.

Re:Oh really?

[ledow]

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.