Tips and tricks

Small things that are not obvious, and that make a large collection much easier to live with.

Getting data in

• Add titles first, details later. A scan with Add movie titles only, or a spreadsheet of titles, gets the collection into the program in minutes. Batch update then fills in cast, plots and posters overnight.
• Use the original title when a search fails. Local release titles often have nothing to do with the original, and that is what the databases index.
• Paste the URL. If you have already found the film's page in a browser, paste the address into the URL field and press Enter — no searching, no wrong matches.
• Drag and drop. A video file dropped onto the movie list starts a new card for it.

Keeping it tidy

• Merge, do not retype. Three spellings of one country or one studio become three branches in the tree. Select them in the directory and merge.
• Find the gaps. Ctrl+F9 lists movies with no cover, Ctrl+F10 those with no URL, Ctrl+F11 those with no video file. Three keystrokes, three cleanup lists.
• Duplicates. Quick filter › Show Duplicate Titles catches the film you bought twice and the import that ran twice.
• Group editing beats editing one card at a time. Select a shelf's worth of discs and set the media location once.

Living with it

• Mark things seen. It costs nothing and turns Quick filter › Show Unseen into the answer to “what shall we watch?”
• Personal marks cover what no standard field does: “needs a better copy”, “Dad's”, “show the children”. They can be filtered on and grouped by.
• Save your searches. Any search can become an advanced filter and then a one-click item in the Quick filter menu.
• Let it choose. F8 suggests something you have not watched.
• Fill in the price as you add discs, and statistics will tell you what the collection is worth — which is what an insurer asks for.

Protecting it

• Turn on automatic backup and point it at a cloud folder. Keep the working database itself on a local disk. See Making a backup.
• Watch the file size. The format stops at 2 GB and it is the images that get you there. Storing images outside the database (Expert options) makes the problem go away.
• Compress after big deletions, and whenever anything looks odd. See Compressing the database.

Getting more on screen

• Ctrl+Alt+Z hides the card panel and gives the list the whole window.
• Ctrl+Z moves the list to the top, which suits long titles.
• Ctrl+Num + and Ctrl+Num - scale the card; the Large Print template exists for exactly this reason.