Ant Movie Catalog

Description

Ant Movie Catalog is a program created by Antoine Potten back in 2000. According to the official page, since 2011 it has been improved with the help of Mickaël Vanneufville.

The main purpose is to help people to manage their own collection of movies from DVDs, CDs and tapes. It is a free, open-source application also available in many other languages. It has a large list of features added in over a decade of development. Just a shortlist with the main features: it can store a catalog (list of movies) in its own format or as an XML file, and it can import lists from popular movie websites (IMDB, DVDFR, Allociné, Culturalia etc.). It can export to other formats such as HTML, CSV and others. It can store images (pics format: png, jpeg and gif) using the existing catalog or by linking them to external files. It provides statistics using pies and charts. You can find the entire list of program features on the official program page. This application works on almost all Microsoft Windows versions but if you need older versions check the official source.

Ant Movie Catalog Review

This application is available only for Windows users and it comes in two versions. An installer and a portable version. Downloading and installing this video library manager is easy, even for novice users: thanks to an intuitive software interface.

There are three main areas that keep everything simple.

At the top you have all-important buttons, right-under you can add all details and on the left side you have the list of your movies. This is the default view but keep in mind that you can always switch to thumbnails which for some people will make it easier to navigate through a large movie collection. For advanced users, there are several scripts that they can use in Ant Movie Catalog forum, section - "Scripts".

The most important thing to remember: make sure that you create a backup of your collection. This way, if you want to format or reinstall your computer hard drive you won't lose your list with movies saved in that collection. You can always import saved catalogs in a newer version or after a reinstallation. Considering the number of features and years I would rate Ant Movie Catalog as the best software from this area. I did not check similar commercial software from this niche but at least from free, open-source projects, this one is the best.