I had mine alphabetical for the longest time, I finally switched to genre, and it is MUCH MUCH better. The only problem I had was I had to buy another shelf so that I could leave room for growth.

My genres are:
Sci-Fi
Fantasy
Comedy
Action/Adventure
Suspense/Thriller
Horror
Drama
Western
Sports
Gangster
Martial Arts / Fighting
TV Mini-Series
TV Shows

The only exception is that I have all my Star Trek Movies with the TV shows (TNG, DS9, Voyager, TOS)

I think I should put the Gangster, the Sports, and the Martial Arts movies in different Genres, simply because I hardly have any of those (maybe 5 a piece).

I don't buy any family, and hardly any animated movies, so I just put them in the genre their most suited for.

Hey, why not? But really, grouping them together on the color of the spine looks a lot better than say mix matching colors to where you'd get a UPC symbol look.

I use genres to sort them the way that works best for me. This is my breakout on DVD Aficionado. Some genres are a bit odd but this is how everything is broken down on my bookshelves.

TV Series | Comedy | MST3K | Drama | Action | James Bond | Horror | Classic Horror | Fantasy | Science Fiction | Mystery | Hitchcock | Anime | Foreign | Jackie Chan | Westerns | Disney Animation | Animation | Family | Documentaries | Music | Misc.

music
wrestling
home burned DVD-Rs
movies

Yep - alphabetized within genre.

My categories (in the order they are at my house ):

Animated Disney
Live Action Disney
Animated Non-Disney
Family
Period films and miniseries (usually bbc dramas)
Romantic Comedy
Comedy
Sci Fi/Fantasy
Action
Drama
Musicals
James Bond
Holiday

Funny - no reason for most of the order of the genres, just the way it happened.

Forgot James Bond films - and my tv sets are mixed into the appropriate categories, although I keep toying with the idea of separating them. Especially since I like to put films in chronological order (like indy) no matter what the titles of the sequels are, so I've had a hard time with my Buffy and Angel tv dvd sets. Do I mix Angel in with Buffy? Do I put them right after? Leave alphabetical? I haven't decided.

I have mine alphabetical domestic, alphabetical foriegn, disney, misc.

I use genres too. I use:

Action
Animated (All kinds)
Comedy
Drama
Family
Horror
Documentaries
Sci-Fi
Music / Musicals

Then I separate the following:

Snapper Cases
Digipacks
Multi-Discs
MGM Midnite Movies
Collections that are not in a box set (i.e. Universal Monster Movies, Wes Craven films...)
TV Sets
Box Sets

By genre? No. I remember years back, when my parents were getting ready to open a video store, and we had to catagorize and number about 3000 videos. What a chore that was, and there were a surprising number of films that straddled different genres or just couldn't be easily catagorized. Anyway, that pain in the ass experience totally soured me on doing this with my own collection. Right now, its just strict alphabetical order for films, TV and music. But I'm thinking of separating my Japanese and HK DVDs. That's not genre, but country of origin, so its much easier to figure out (except for those pesky co-productions )

Mine are all alphabetical within genre...

Cartoon, now changed to, Animated
Family
Comedy
Sci-Fi
Horror
Action/Adventure
Drama
Criterion Collection
Special Edition/Collector's Edition & Box Sets

I split mine out as follows:
Criterion
Action
Drama
Comedy
Childrens
TV
Music/Performance
Odds & Ends (Super Speedway, DVD Demo discs)

I agree that it helps make it easier to help in deciding what to watch, especially with other people.

Lots of good ideas for genre tweaking here. I'm thinking of adding a Crime Drama subset to Drama and breaking Horror out from Sci-Fi/Fantasy and combining Horror with Thriller, as I saw one member has done.

However, will someone please help me get my finger on a good definition of a Thriller? What differentiates it from a typical horror or drama flick? Is it the lack of gore/supernatural that distinguishes it from horror? Is it the hyped suspense that differentiates it from your typical drama. Basic Instinct would be a prototypical thriller, yes? And is there any difference between a Thriller and Suspense flick, or are they just synonyms?

I have mine broken into categories and everything is in abc order in each category.

Action: 2 racks
Sci-fi/horror/thriller: 1 rack
Drama: 1 rack
Comedy: 2 shelves
Box sets (ex. Alien, Godfather): 2 shelves
Cases of odd proportion/slips/double discs that are in weird cases/digipacks (ex. Fargo S.E., Jackie Brown, Master and Commander C.E.)

My system seems to work fairly well except sometimes I have a hard time distinguishing movies in the drama or suspense/scifi/horror categories.

I have on rack 1:
Top - Oversized (Tins, etc.)
1 - Disney (animated, then live-action)
2 - Classics and Musicals (including old comedy - Stooges, L&H, etc.)
3 - Anime box sets
4 - Anime box sets (cont.)
5 - Anime box sets (cont.)

Rack 2:
Top - Anime box sets (cont.)
1 - books
2 - oversized Hollywood box sets
3 - Anime box sets (cont.)
4 - more books

racks 3 & 4 (mini-sized):
1l - Horror (unwatched special packaging)
1r - Criterion
2l - Anime orphans (incomplete series)
2r - TV Shows
3l - Hollywood special packaging
3r - Animated & Family (non-Disney)
4l - Horror (watched special packaging)
4r - Sell/Trade 1
5l - Christmas/Jackie Chan & Asian
5r - Sell/Trade 2
* - Music Videos (all 3 discs) are crammed in open holes on these racks

Another mini-rack (5):
1 - Animated TV (Simpsons, Futurama, etc.)
2 - Anime (Leiji Matsumoto, Lupin III)
3 - Anime double alpha cases, Louie the Rune Soldier
4 - Abbott & Costello, Wheeler & Woolsey

Home-made shelf under the piano bench (made out of a cardboard box):
This has the majority of my Anime collection, along with most of the Monty Python stuff.

Closet:
Most of the Hollywood box sets, along with some TV box sets and Anime sets, as well.

If I had enough discs, I would have a separate section for Star Trek. I only have 2 seasons of TNG, and 3 of the movies at the moment, though.

Regular Hollywood fare (including comedies, sci-fi/fantasy, action, and watched horror) is kind of weird right now, with all watched single keepcases stuffed in a box, watched snappers in the same box, and watched titles in special packaging (digipacks, slipcovers, double alphas, etc. are shelved. Box sets are crammed in a closet.

I also have another box with unwatched titles, and I pull from it when I want to watch something, and then I put it in whichever area is appropriate.

I had three shelves for general Hollywood stuff, but I used those for anime boxsets.

Ah ha! I need these too! This is why I came to this thread...

Anyone have any info on who sells/makes these?

btw, here's my genre categorization:

Disney | Animated | Educational/Children | Action/Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Suspense/Horror | Superheroes | Westerns | Drama | Comedy | Gangster/Crime | Music/Musicals/Documentary | Music: Old School Rap/Hip Hop (I know, "huh?") | TV Shows | Christmas

my biggest genre is Disney, Comedy, and Gangster/Crime. I'm not a huge horror or sci-fi/action fan, so that's why those are all together.

my collection:
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.ht...=mikemckiernan

I don't see why you can't just print out the genre name on a piece of paper and put it in a standard amray case......... simple.

TV Shows
Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Action/Drama
Comedy/Family

I've run into this problem too. Where to classify Ed Wood? I usually let out a laugh everytime I see it, but it's not a comedy. Maybe if I had enough biopics, I'd throw it in there on my DVDAF list.

As far as my mini-rack goes, I got them displayed by genre.

I used to be a strictly alphabetical guy, but after I got some new shelves around Christmas, I had a lot of extra room, so I split it up into just a couple of sections.

TV
Anime
Animated (Traditional, Stop Motion, CGI)
Music
Everything else

Have mine alphabetized on the shelf, but I have them broken down by genre in DVD Aficionado.

wow... why didn't I think of that?

thanks for the suggestion, I think I might do that!

Ok...I'll chip in!!!

I am a big stickler for alphabetizing. This comes from many years of comic book collecting! I have Marvel, DC, Valiant and other with everything alphabetized in those different subsections.

With my dvd's I decieded to sort by case type (keepcases, snappers, boxsets, foldouts, etc.) and then alphabetized. This worked for a while but like alot of you I have had to keep tweaking the sort system!!! I no longer have any snappers as I printed out covers and put them in keepcases (Yeah baby!!) So the former snapper movies got folded into the keepcased movies.

After reading this thread and many others like it I think I will go back and reorganize again. I am thinking of keeping it simple and seperate the dvd's into TV, animated (cartoon, anime), and the rest with everything alphabetized of course!! I'll try this for a while and see how it floats my ship!

Thanks to everyone who posted in this thread!!!
Take care all!!

I've been building my library and organizing it by genre and director for several years now...it's been the only way to fly, especially since alpha gives it an un-kept look. I like filing titles in many genres...and a few examples would be:

Euro-Horror
Swashbuckling
Classic Crime
Film-Noir
Nunsploitation
Shockumentary
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Musicals
Stop-Motion/Harryhausen
War Related
Rome, The Bible & Beyond
Living Dead
Lesbian Vampire


...and many other, more generic sections.

Alphabetized by Genre:
Action/Adventure
Animated
Family
Comedy
Comic Book
Drama
Horror/Thriller
Television

Thats easy for me. It's Ed Wood. It goes right in front of all of my Ed Wood movies. I have Ed Wood in his own little genre world, where he belongs.

On the shelf, they're all alphabetized, but at DVDAF, they're by genre. These are my genres:
Action/Adventure
Comedy
Criterion
Disney
Documentary
Drama
Gay Films
Horror/Mystery
Music Video
Musicals
Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Super-Heroes
Television