joliom

Thinpak conversions are a huge part of the custom cover-making community. You can find hundreds of high resolution custom thinpak covers at the various sites. What you don't find you could just scan and resize yourself. And if the expense seems too great then why not just make plain white paper inserts on the computer with nothing but the title printed on the spine. That's cheap, relatively quick and simple, and gives you that nice, uniform look. And best of all, you don't have to destroy the original covers. Just lay them flat and you can store hundreds in manilla envelopes.

DVD Polizei

I like the idea but resale value does tend to limit things.

Still, it's far from "ghetto". I see ghetto as putting the DVDs in Case Logic 200-disc album books, and tossing all the cases and covers in the community trash bin.

No, this isn't ghetto. It's saving much-needed space. And I totally agree about needing a rather enormous store area--meant to read HOME--for large collections, and at 1,200 titles, yah gotta do what yah gotta dooz.

danicus007

My entire 700 DVD collection has been converted to slim cases. I printed new covers and save my originals in case I want to sell/trade them down the line. It saves so much room it's not even funny. Plus I love the look of having all slim cases.

mr. b_dvd

I think it is a pretty good solution to your dilemma. I am hoping as my collection grows, so will my storage space for them, but you never know. The spines aren't impossible to read, and if you have any sense of order to your collection, it won't take long anyway to find something you are looking for since many are in fact readable.

I also like the idea of making simple uniform covers. You could play with the font size and get just the right one to be able to read any title, you would save the original artwork (What about framing some to hang next to your collection, or have them in a binder to display along side of your collection on a coffee table. They wouldn't be cut or bent, and you could still enjoy them with your collection. There has to some type of plastic protecive sleeve that will fit an entire cover that can be put in a binder). You could even use color paper to print covers to categorize your collection according to color. If you find a way to preserve the covers and cases, you will always be able to revert them back if you ever find more space.

Not that bad of an idea, either way. It's probably one of the best solutions I've seen. Binders and case-logic sleeves should be banned. They will eventually ruin the collection, no matter how careful you are with them.

joliom

I had a handful of DVD's with no covers and since I didn't have enough time to sit down and bang out really nice customs, I just did the plain white paper with the titles typed on the spine thing. I threw a 4 pixel black border around my template so I'd have easy cutting guides and voila! It took me less than an hour to do 10 or so and that's using custom movie fonts for each title. If I'd just gone with basic block lettering, I probably could have knocked out 20 or 30. I have templates in every major case size, so I did a couple of TV season sets for 7-Disc thinpak cases too. I'm telling you, besides lowering yourself to the disgrace of CD wallets, it's the easiest way to go. It might even end up being quicker than cutting your existing covers, since you're bound to be more precise about how you cut when you do that. Plus no cut-off titles or damaged original artwork. The entire process consists of: 1) typing the movie title onto a blank jpeg template, 2) clicking print, 3) cutting along the dotted lines, and 4) sliding it into a thinpak sleeve.

danwiz

Mr. b_DVD said: I also like the idea of making simple uniform covers. You could play with the font size and get just the right one to be able to read any title, you would save the original artwork (What about framing some to hang next to your collection, or have them in a binder to display along side of your collection on a coffee table. They wouldn't be cut or bent, and you could still enjoy them with your collection. There has to some type of plastic protective sleeve that will fit an entire cover that can be put in a binder). You could even use color paper to print covers to categorize your collection according to color. If you find a way to preserve the covers and cases, you will always be able to revert them back if you ever find more space.

So, how about just converting the entire collection to jewel cases and then you have a flat spine where you can type the name of the movie? You could also color code things in jewel cases!! Ohhhh! I like this idea - I'd do it if it wasn't for my custom made shelves which are made for DVD case height boxes. If I ever build a new shelf I might go this jewel case route though - sounds good!

Living Dead

I recently bought 2 spartak 1600 rotating storage towers. They're awesome and save a tremendous amount of space.

Nick Martin

I have all my TV DVDs in one of those disc binders (320 capacity, and I can fit 27 more discs in it if I need to) but would never throw away the cases. I keep the cases where they are normally, on the shelves with the movie DVDs.

I do this solely for convenience, as I hate the awkwardness of accessing a disc from the average TV DVD boxset case, and I don't have the money for all that printer ink and new cases for storing them that way.

Trigger

The OP said these slim cases cost less than 25 bucks for 100 of them. I got two of these at Ikea for around 180 bucks each...



they hold about 60-64 DVDs per drawer and have 6 drawers for a total of about 360+ DVDs which is less than 50 cents per DVD as opposed to less than 25 cents... But, I'm sure it took me much less time to put these two drawer sets together than it would take to transfer over 700 discs to slim cases and having to cut or fold the artwork... I don't know about you, but my time is worth at least something... if you're doing one of these every 5 minutes, that amounts to 6 bucks an hour.

plus, I keep DVDs and CDs in them as well. You could also get these in a wider model for only 20 bucks more and hold nearly 200 more discs. My main problem would be getting rid of all my slipcases and special edition packaging... which is 1/3 to one half of my collection.

The Bus

I guess I'm the only one that likes the OP's idea. This doesn't seem like a bad way to save space, and I'd have no problem doing it with a lot of my cheaper DVDs. Like I really care about the resale price of Runaway Jury which I paid $6 for.

But I wouldn't do it for any of my OOP DVDs or any DVD which is worth more than $10. (Which is probably about half my collection).

That said, I'd probably do it with 9mm double slim cases since those wouldn't require cutting, right? And you still save space...

junyab

they actually look pretty good! almost HD/Blu Ray like

although I'm way too anal to ever trim any of the art work what you've done is quite ingenious...good job!

joliom

Don't forget that the spines will now overlap onto the front and back covers using this cutting method. I don't know about you, but that just looks way too low rent for my tastes.

Brent L

I've never understood why they made DVD cases so thick to begin with. You see a DVD, it's very small and thin, but they decide to package the thing in these big thick cases. It's never made much sense to me.

In theory, I like this idea TallGuy, but I could never do it to my DVDs. I just wish they were produced something like this in the first place.

Subgeniusguy

So what's the best way to fold the 2mm flap. How to do it uniformly for a novice? What do you do for double alpha cases like the old Fox Five Star titles?

Clutter looks low rent even more than this. Someone with 1500+ titles has to have a lot of shelf space but even so I find most people's collections look cluttered. I'm seriously starting to think of doing the thinpak conversion, not for my Criterions, Eureka MOC, Hammer Horror or spaghetti western collections though.

John Galt

I've got about a hundred of these thinpack cases sitting around that I'd be willing to unload to someone on here. They were purchased from Shop4tech and are the 7mm, black, single disc ones. I think $20 shipped would be fair but just PM me if interested.

kstublen

To each his own...I would never do this though.

Abe.

John, have you gotten a reply yet?

I have a lot of "used" movies from Blockbuster, and this could actually save me a ton of space. The rental cases are just way too thick storage-wise.

sman113

Ive done this with most of my collection, into both single disc and 2-disc 7mm thnpaks. Converting to thinpaks saves a ton of space and still looks really nice on display. I've mostly printed custome covers from various sites or created my own from scans.

I keep the original inserts but have thrown away all single disc cases (in case i want to unload the dvd on ebay or something). I am in no way a "collector" of DVDs. I've bought them for entertainment purposes only, and really see no need to keep original packaging that takes up twice as much space as it should.

HistoryProf

This is pretty much where i'm at. I don't care about the "art" for $5 discs i've got....out of my 455 titles, i'm sure there are 100 or so that I could easily transfer to slim cases and free up a ton of room. I have one custom shelf I made for them a few years ago that had two empty shelves and plenty of room on the others that will hold around 480 total. which means i'm about out of space. the only thing that's saved me from having to do something in the last couple of months has been buying HD DVDs and selling off their standard counterparts

I love the HD cases....and it is inexplicable why regular dvds don't use the same style/shape of cases. I'm going to check Sam's next time i'm there to see if mine carries them.

DVD Polizei

Well, I cut my Criterion collection covers (about 57) to fit the slim cases, and I must say, they look pretty good. I have about 10ft of extra shelving space now. Didn't really want to waste the time of printing up covers.

Abe.

Man, you totally got me!

I've decided to do this with my previously used rentals. I need the extra space.

kstublen

I almost had a heart attack. No joke. That isn't the least bit funny.

DeputyDave

I'm about 30-40 standard DVDs from being completely out of space (and no room for new shelves), so I need to do something. I just don't know if something THIS drastic is the answer. Several of my movies ARE my daughters or were given to us by various people and I plan on selling them (I just can't bring mysself to throw them away). But that only accounts for about 25.

Maybe I should make a list of movies I just don't care about but still want to keep or watch again and do a test with them. I'll start small and "thinpak" 20 or so.

But then another part of me wonders how they would look mixed in with my "regular" movies. Maybe I would keep them together in a separate section.

Abe.

What would look better... clear or black?

kstublen

There must be another way. Don't resort to DVD-mutilation. The only thing worthy of such a fate are the snap-cases of the past.