A couple of tools I have used to manage my collection of movies & videos. I’m concentrating on portable apps here – they don’t need to be installed and can run from my external had drive.
Subtites
Finding subtitles for a movie
http://www.subtitleseeker.com/ – search’s through some of the more popular online subtitle engines and displays all the files it finds.
http://subscene.com/ – prefer it, just because it takes fewer clicks to serve up a subtitle
Subtitling
Subtitle Edit – a brilliant piece of software for getting your subtitles in order. Need to syncronise a subtitle or join 2 into 1.
A tool for joining 2 or more video files together.
Great for adding cover art and movie info to your movie folders. Point it at your movie folders and it will try find cover art, movie data and write it to the movie folder. This way most movie players can access the data.
Other Software
Joining multi-part Zipped or RAR archives or How to extract multi-part Zip files
May have a .z01, .z02 etc extension. Make sure you have the main header zip, it includes the instructions on how the zip should be put back together again.
Something like:
- my.multipart.zipped.zip
- my.multipart.zipped.zip.z01
- my.multipart.zipped.zip.z02
- my.multipart.zipped.zip.z03
Most software that will extract files from a zip or rar file will extract from multi-part compressed files. Such as winzip, winrar, 7-zip etc. I prefer WinRAR
What are the different video release standards
CAM release
An abbreviation for CAMera. A low resolution version shot with a video camera, often with very poor sound shot in the cinema/theatre. Audio will contain any cinema noise, laughter or conversation. This means that the audio may contain the audience’s laughter and conversation.
TS release
From TeleSync, usually comes out shortly after a CAM release. It’s a mixture of the video from a Video CAMera and line audio from the audio jack that is available in the seats of some cinemas/theaters.
DVDSCR release
DVD Screener releases are rips from pre-release DVD’s, usually for awards screening or copies that are given out to family, friends or commercial entities with ties to the movie’s producer, of the final retail copy is in stores.
Not usually of the best quality and often containing a watermark or intermittent text on the screen, to deter piracy.
R5 release
These are a newer category of releases that sceners have decided to create since the increased influx of releases which have a source coming from Asian countries that leak the DVD earlier than the release date. The video is seldom of bad quality and resembles a DVDSCR or DVDRip. The audio, which is sometimes dubbed in another language than English may be synced with that of a lower quality release, so be wary of downloading R5s! Make sure to download the sample beforehand to check the audio.
PPV release
Pay-Per-View videos which have been recorded from Hotel rooms.
These releases are brand new movies which have not yet been released to Screener or DVD but are available to view by Hotel customers.
DVDRip release
DVDRips are rips directly from a retail DVD. Often on the same day or a few weeks before the actual DVD is out in stores. The quality is inevitably very good, sometimes in two CDs in order to do the movie justice, especially if it is a longer one. If you want to watch a movie in decent quality without wasting huge amounts of disk space or bandwidth, a DVDRip is preferred.
BD-Rip or BR-Rip release
A compressed version, can be at varying reolutions, of Blue-Ray release of the movie. If you have the bandwidth and disk space, this is the copy you want to keep. Usually the last to come out as Blue-Ray discs are slower to be released. Size: 1-10GB depending on resolution, encoding may require greater processing power to decode and play.