Videobrary, an easy way to catalog your movie collection

By George Ponder
published

Videobrary is a simple to use Windows Phone app that lets you catalog your home movie collection. The layout is simple, user interface straight forward and your movie database can be backed up on Dropbox.

If you're looking for an easy way to catalog your movie collection, Videobrary might be worth a look.

The layout for Videobrary is as simple as you can get.  There is one page listing your movies with alphabetical indexes and another to list any T.V. Series in your collection, again listed with alphabetical indexes.  To add your home movie collection to Videobrary, just tap the "+" button that sits at the bottom of the main pages. A search engine will be pulled up where you can search IMDb, Cinoche.com or Allocine for you movies and television series.

Searches can be done by keyword or title. Tap on the correct movie or television show from the search results to add the title to your collection. In adding the movie or television series you can add information for the media type (DVD, BlueRay, VHS, BetaMax, etc.) and any notes on the movie/t.v. show.

As you build your collection, movies are listed on the Movies Page and television series are listed on the TV Series Page. In tapping on an individual listing you will view a page overviewing the title, a list of actors, the movie/tv poster, and a list of episodes (for the television series).

From the main pages of Videobrary you have three button controls. One to add a title, one to search your database and one to randomly generate a title from your library for those times you just don't know what to watch.  When you dive into the three-dot menu on the main pages of Videobrary you have options to back up your Videobrary file on Dropbox, download any missing posters, and access the settings. Settings allows you to identify the default search provider and set up your Dropbox information.

All totaled, Videobrary is a easy way to catalog your video library. Separating movies and television series is a nice touch and the data saved on each is fairly extensive. It would have been nice to save the posters as wallpapers but not a deal breaker.

The app ran smoothly for the most part but at times Videobrary seemed to get stuck in a search loop that would result in an error. The issue cleared once you exited the search screens and tried the search again but it was a little frustrating.

Videobrary is a free app for your Windows Phone 7x or 8 device and you can find it here i (opens in new tab)n the Windows Phone Store.

QR: Videobrary

George Ponder
George Ponder

George is the Reviews Editor at Windows Central, concentrating on Windows 10 PC and Mobile apps. He's been a supporter of the platform since the days of Windows CE and uses his current Windows 10 Mobile phone daily to keep up with life and enjoy a game during down time.

48 Comments
  • Would be great if they add a barcode scanning options which will then automatically searches the net for the information.
  • thats what I cam here to say
  • Me too!!!
  • Great minds think alike.
  • Ditto.  In fact if they wanted to make a pro version that included the bar code scanner I would totally pay that in a heart beat for a good home media collection software.  There is a great one on iOS but that is the only platform it is on.
  • And Skydrive integration. 8)
  • Barcode scanning is a great suggestion! Would take too much time for me to manually add in my entire collection otherwise
  • As the app syncs to Dropbox, you can easily write a program that indexes the movie collection on your hard drive into one or more files.
    Some time ago I wrote one that indexes my Movie folder ([LANGUAGE]\[TITLE]\[FILE]) into a *.txt file that I would put into my Dropbox too. Then I could view the index on my WP7 (via browser or another app..)
    If someone would like to try, that's the code:
     

    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.IO;
    using System.Linq;
    using System.Text;
    namespace DirectoryLister
    {
        class Program
        {
            static string root = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();
            static void Main(string[] args)
            {
                string output = "";
                StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(root + "\\movies.txt");//this could be a file in your dropbox
                foreach (string dir in Directory.GetDirectories(root))
                {
                    output += "\n\n" + dir.Substring(dir.LastIndexOf('\\') + 1) + "\n";
                    writer.WriteLine("==============" + dir.Substring(dir.LastIndexOf('\\') + 1) + "==============");//seperate different root-level folders.. Like English/German, or Movies/TV Series/Music-Videos
                    writer.WriteLine("");
                    foreach (string mov in Directory.GetDirectories(Path.Combine(root, dir)))
                    {
                        output += "\n" + mov.Substring(mov.LastIndexOf('\\') + 1);
                        Console.WriteLine(mov.Substring(mov.LastIndexOf('\\') + 1));
                        writer.WriteLine(mov.Substring(mov.LastIndexOf('\\') + 1));
                    }
                    writer.WriteLine("");
                }
                writer.Dispose();
            }
        }
    }
     
  • Exactly what I ws going to say... where's the scanning and WTH is up with DropBox but no SkyDrive?
  • Wait, how does it have Dropbox support when Windows Phone doesn't?
  • What? The phone has SkyDrive support. Because SkyDrive is a Microsoft product. Drop box isn't.
  • Wish they had a bar code. I have a movie room with. Collection of 1900ish movies maybe 1950.
  • Collecto FTW.
  • What is "FTW"?
  • I know its a lot of work but try Binging it. Wow, bing does not work well being a verb
  • It sounds fine to me.
  • For the win.
  • thx m8 :-)
  • You should give "collecto" a try. It has a barcode scanner and backups your data on a separate server. And: you can share your collections send them via mail as an excel-file :-)
  • Love the app so far! Just wish it had seperate options for "computer file" like mp4, avi, etc.
  • We need Xbox video and iTunes video support.
  • i want to see excatly 0 support for apple stuff, thanks
  • That's just you, and you don't have to enable that... But ¾ of my music/videos is on iTunes. And I'm not alone.
  • Even my die-hard apple fanboy friends know iTunes is a terrible terrible program, awful design, bad all around, etc. And it runs poorly on windows, which makes it a bad program that runs like shit for windows users. You... Should be looking for ways to escape, not telling other people to support the crap you tied yourself to.
  • I don't like it either, but my whole library is there. Microsoft should exclude iTunes stuff because some people don't like it.
  • For those who need barcode scan, take the library app COLLECTO, not the best one, but surely do the job
  • Won't download for me. Keep saying "Attention Required".
  • Don't use dtopbox and no SkyDrive? See ya next app please....
  • Very nice app - I agree SkyDrive support would be icing on the cake though!
  • Sorry devs but SkyDrive is better than dropbox and all WP users have one and most likely use it. Dropbox support is a nice *second choice*, but you still need to include SkyDrive. No exceptions.
  • Nice app, gonna take some time to add movies though!!!
  • Does me no good if I can't number my movies.  I have a stack of about 400 movies, each with their own number.  I would like to be able to browse my collection on the phone and then find it in my collection with the number so I wouldn't have to sort through all of the disks.
  • I sort my movies by alphabetical order for this reason. But I started doing it that way from the beginning so that I wouldn't have to reorganise it later. But for your situation, you could probably use the notes section to add in which number it corresponds to in your collection.
  • Yeah...you best start alphabetizing those before you buy any more movies. Your arbitrary number system is doomed to fail.
  • I use BetterMovieManager because I can still access/edit my collection from the website in addition to the app. I can also keep track of movies I've lent out too. But I'll definitely give this a try since it's free.
  • Hi everyone,
    I'm the (only) developer of Videobrary. I'd like to thank WPCentral to have presented my app !!! I was wondering today why I was receiving a lot of e-mails and reviews ^^.
    I'm taking notes of everyone's suggestion, but as you can see, I can't make everything happen in the near future. I'm definitely looking to add a barcode scanner in the next update, as it seems to be the most wanted feature.
    As for Dropbox vs SkyDrive, to be honest I wanted to add SkyDrive support in the very beginning, but when I started working on the synchronization feature, Microsoft didn't have an API. When they released it, I was releasing 1.0. I thought it would be OK but since it seems important for most people, I'll add it :).
     
    Also, for those interested in Lock Screen Background and Live Tiles, my app can update them with posters from your collection. There is no word about it in the article, but I thought it's a great feature (I worked hard too !).
     
    I'm really focused on the most wanted features, as I'm making this app for movie lovers. I really appreciate any feedback from anyone.
     
    Again, thanks to you all !
    It really made my day :).
  • There's nothing better than positive feedback, isn't it? =)
    To scan Barcodes you can use Silverlight ZXing.
    There's also a NuGet package, called TCD.Device.Camera that I wrote to wrap Silverlight ZXing for easier implementation.You can set it up to scan for barcodes in a few lines (more info).
    hope this helps; have fun coding ;)
  • I'll definitely look into it, thanks !!
  • I hate to ask this but for your next project maybe have a windows 8 (computer) app of the same thing?
  • Yeah I really want to do the Windows 8 version, but I don't know when I'll have the time to do it.
    If Videobrary was done, I'll start right away but there are at least 10 features missing, and the list never stops growing. However, it will end one day, as I don't want my app to be too complex to use.
  • Definitely nice work. Suggestions that come to mind: links in to IMDB website/other review site after you add to collection for reviews and trailers, bar code scanner, SkyDrive, feature suggestions based on collection that the user has e.g. if someone has Shrek in collection suggest Shrek 2 or other similar genre movie. I know some things are not always easy to implement but I also know that the wpcentral community has tons of cool ideas. Keep up the great work!!!
  • One of these 4 video would be awesome!!!
  • None of the barcode scanning DVD collection apps works for Australian anything (DVDs, blu rays, games on any platform etc). Does anyone know of an app that will work for me?
    Have tried collecto, DVD collector and geek library.
  • Been using the app, like it a bit better then Collecto. As others pointed out bar code scanning and Skydrive support would be nice. The IMDB searching seems to miss at times. I have a few movies such as Hero with Jet Li and some older Clint Eastwood movies it can't find. However if I search for them using the IMDB app they show up so something is missing in videobrary
  • I'll take a look at it. Thanks !
  • When I search for "The Simpsons", I only have the options of adding seasons 16-25 to my collection. I guess the problem extends to other shows with a comparable number of seasons. Hopefully, this is easy to fix.
  • This is a known issue. It will be fixed in the next release. Thanks !
  • For game collections check out "find+collect" --- It's FREE as well
    http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/find-collect/416011f5-9cd3-4...