Forgive me if this has been covered to death, maybe I'm bad at searching, but didn't see an answer.

I have too many DVDs to store them in their cases, so use binders, the type that have a place for the insert/booklet.

When DVDs don't come with an insert, I usually just do a photocopy of the DVD cover or back cover.

What do the rest of you (that use binders) do?

Are there any sites that have these images online and easy to print?

My scanner isn't the greatest, and I'd love a one-stop site to print all my inserts.

Most of the major custom cover sites have inserts. If you have Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro you can also just scan or download the cover (or movie poster) and paste it into a pre-measured insert template. If you give me your email address I'd be happy to send you the template and a quick tutorial for scanning & converting covers and Inserts.

Thanks! ygm

Hey Trevor,

I'm probably the wrong person to ask, since the storage and organization of media interests me as much or more than actually watching and/or listening to it, but I don't think this has been "covered to death" at all.

Up until now, I've just used different binders for different types of DVDs. For ones that have inserts, I use Univenture's standard DVD binder, which has 20 pages that each hold one disc and an insert or booklet. For ones that don't have an insert, I use a different binder with pages that only hold discs -- the one I use holds 40. That's worked fine, since my criteria for transferring discs out of their cases and into a binder was based on whether the artwork on the disc and/or insert was the same as the cover art.

Now, I'm getting down to the DVDs where there's an insert, but it's just a chapter list instead of a "movie poster" insert, and also the DVDs with no insert where the artwork on the disc doesn't look anything like the cover art. I've got a feeling that those will look pretty plain by themselves, especially the 2-sided discs with no inserts, which thankfully I won't have to deal with for a while. I still haven't decided how I'm gonna handle that, so I guess my post won't help you much. However, in the spirit of open discussion, I thought I'd share my thoughts. My apologies if I'm just wasting everyone's time here -- you can stop reading now if that's the case.

I would say that printing out a "fake" insert for discs that didn't come with one might be a good idea, although depending on the quality of the printout, the fake ones will probably be easy to spot. Don't know how much that would bother you, but it's something to think about. One thing that I'm surprised I haven't been bothered by is that because I'm storing DVDs in different binders depending on their packaging, they're not all in order. If I used all the same binders and printed out inserts for the ones that didn't have any I could do that, but too many identical binders would be just as annoying to me as too many DVDs in their cases on a shelf.

To be brutally honest, I think what I might end up doing is just tossing inserts that aren't the same as the cover art. Full-size booklets are a different story, but if it's just a sheet of paper with a list of the chapters on it, it's probably gonna go. Most DVDs have a chapter menu that's much more easily accessible than flipping through a binder, so I don't see chapter lists as being all that important.

I will say that for TV season boxes, especially if I have every season, I'll be putting together a special binder just for that show. I'll just design a cover that can be slipped into a customizable binder, and order enough pages to hold all the discs I have for that show. That eliminates a lot of DVDs that don't have inserts and would normally go in one of the dedicated DVD binders. Sometimes each set has an insert, and chances are I'll probably keep those in the same binder with the discs.

Another dilemma I'm mulling over is that I have several DVDs that have 2 discs plus an insert or booklet, and while a lot of binders will hold up to 2 discs along with an insert. the ones I use don't. It could be a simple matter of switching to a 2-disc-plus-insert binder for those titles, and come to think of it, that's probably what I'll do. Of course finding a binder I actually like that has that capability isn't gonna be easy, because most binders I find in stores are pretty flimsy, and I really don't want to go with one of the many zippered "disc wallets".

I'm sure there's no shortage of images around if you do want to print out inserts, so hopefully you can find all the ones you need. Good luck!

Not if he does it right. If he starts with a high res source image of sufficient size (300 dpi or higher and not blown-up), prints on premium photo paper, using the highest allowable printer settings, it will look pretty darn good. Assuming he has a decent printer, that is...

Mike, thanks for the input! I think that every one of us has a different scheme when it comes to storing our collections, with little strange rules as to what we save and what we toss.

I'll bore you all (well, only a couple reading probably) with my way of doing things. First off, binders are an absolute necessity until I get a bigger place. I would prefer to store all my DVDs in their cases on nice shelving, but I simply don't have the space. Binders let me store my ~1000 movie titles in a sixth or so of the space.

My collection is maybe half TV season sets, and they are all still in their original cases arranged by genre on bookcases. Binders don't save me as much space there, since most are already packed smaller space-wise as movies.

Over the bookcases I have 35 of so DVD cases, each with 3 binders that store 18 sleeves for insert/disc. I put all my non-TV DVD in these. I used to store them by genre, but just switched over to a straight A-Z.

I like to have an insert or "fake insert" for each disc, so that when I or others browse thru the binders we can easily identify the titles and perhaps the special features. In lieu of an insert, I often copy the back of the DVD that lists all the features. And on multi-disc movies, I'll sometimes include both, the insert or copy of the front cover for the page with disc one, and a copy of the back of the DVD case for disc 2.

I save all my cases offsite for either selling/trading, or that magical day when I have enough space to leisurely display all my collections.

Another part of my ocd-ness is that I'll often cut out the little stickers on the plastic wrap of DVDs, usually only if they say something significant (like a list of special features) and put those in the inserts over disc 2/3/x.

I'm not going for high quality, just something nice enough to show me what disc is in the sleeve while quickly flipping thru the albums.

Thanks for the email, won't have time to really check it out for a week or three (work), but I much appreciate it and will use them much come January.

My ex and her sister helped my open about 200 DVDs tonight and sort them into the binders.

But I have a pile of maybe 300 DVDs without inserts where I have to make my own.

Hit the major cover sites first before getting started making them all yourself. You'll probably find quite a few already done for you. All you'll have to do is download and print them. Otherwise just download a good scan or custom cover and cut and paste the front cover art onto the blank template I sent you. That requires a little more work, but it's still better than having to scan and filter 300 DVD covers yourself.

Yeah, especially in the plastic sleeve of a binder, fake ones may be indistinguishable. Of course no matter how good the output from some photo printers is, next to genuine inserts they may still be obvious, perhaps because they'll look better than the real ones, or there may just be a subtle difference in color or contrast. Still, in casual browsing it may not be annoying at all.