Quoting phareous:
Quote:
Is there any way I can tell DVD Profiler how many shelves I have, and how many movies fit on a shelf, and then have it tell me what to put where (I would want alphabetical but it would be neat to do it by release year, genre, etc.)? I have so many movies, this would be a big time saver
It would be failrly easy to use Excel to do this for you, using perhaps some of the statistics you can get from plugin Database Query and / or the Reports function. Combined with the Location and Slots fields, you can make any kind of correlation you want. Main problem with this kind of scheme is that all heck breaks loose when you get new media, unless you leave expansion room at each level in your heirarchy.
Example: suppose you decide to use "Genre", and you have 1000 DVDs of "Drama". If you have 10 shelves holding 100 DVDs each, then you could have shevles Drama1, Drama2 .... in the Location field. Slot would then be numbers 1 ... 100, assigned any way you wanted, say alphabetically by title.
Now, what happens when you get a new "Drama" DVD? Screwed ... unless you leave some empty space. How much space? This is a classical problem that all software programming students learn about.
To help solve this, you can use the built-in database features of DVD Profiler. Create a report, sorted the way you want, or use plugin Database Query to get the totals by each category you want to use for shelving. Then compute the #shelves you need for each category, using a fudge factor to allow for exansion. Example: If the shelf can really hold 100, then divide by 90 instead, so you will reserve extra shelf space. Adjust this based on your gut feeling about how your collection grows.
Then label the shelves and put the shelf locations into the DVD Profiler Location field - you can do this in bulk with plugin BulkEdit. Populate the shelves for that category. Sleep on it.
Next day, if the scheme still makes sense to you, go ahead and repeat for all categories until you are done.
From that point on, you can search/sort/report in any way you want, and can always find your DVD by just noting the Location field contents for the shelf, and optionally the Slot field if you really need that level of specificity.
I hope this wasn't too rambling ...
(By the way, you might want to browse the Home Theater section for ideas on storage schemes - cabinets, shelving and such. Personally, I use electronics. Various models of Sony DVD changers and DVD carousels (Ziotek) - which changer and which slot are stored in the Location and Slot fields, and the physical order does not matter.)