Dick Laurent

I have about ten empty DVD cases with "Laurent (well, my real name) DVD" printed on the front and spine. I use them as carriers for DVDs I take with me or lend out. I never lend original cases. I hate holes on my shelves.

I get the, "You're like Blockbuster" joke every time.

Travis McClain

I've kept a couple, it's our default policy to trade in the DVDs. In some instances, it's a no-brainer. For instance, when I bought The Thomas Crown Affair for my wife for her birthday, it included the exact same DVD disc. No reason to keep a second DVD in a second case taking up space. If I ever get around to buying the Grumpy Old Men/Grumpier Old Men double-feature BD, you can bet I'm parting ways with the full screen DVDs.

One instance where I have kept the DVD is The Departed Two-Disc Special Edition, because it includes the Scorsese on Scorsese documentary feature that wasn't ported over to the Blu-ray.

I will never in a million years watch a DVD in a car. It's hard enough to get my wife to turn off the TV and just listen to music at home, and I'll be damned if I'm giving up the one setting where I still get to just play music! (And even at that, there are all the times she gets or places a phone call, or just doesn't understand the value of cranking up a song and singing along without holding a conversation.)

The one part of this where I do come out on the short end is, I got in the habit in the last few years of watching movies with commentary tracks in bed at night. I don't know why, but I find it a lot harder to pay attention to a commentary in the living room, and the bedroom much more conducive to getting into them.

And, to be honest, I have no interest in taking movies with me to someone else's place. If I want to watch something--especially something I already own--I'll stay home and watch that something. If I'm visiting a friend or family member, it's to see that person. I hate watching movies with people in a home environment, because there are always entirely too many distractions. Someone always feels the need to ignore the feature and just carry on as if it were background, and I can't abide doing that. It's a carryover from high school drama class, I think; the first lesson we were given was how important it is to be an attentive and respectful audience. To this day, I have a hard time ignoring a performance be it in person or on a screen.

As for lending DVDs, that just about never happens. I rarely trust anyone with them, because even my closest of friends seem to have a hard time keeping things from happening to borrowed items. We lent Aqua Teen Hunger Force Volume One to a couple of friends once. They returned it, and the tab at the top of the cardboard spine was bent outward, as if they'd tried to open it instead of sliding the package out of the slipcover. I never said anything about it, but it bugs me. The one friend who has consistently returned things in the condition he borrowed them has now also upgraded to Blu-ray, so if we upgrade a title and he wants to borrow it, there's no format issue.

Once we reached the point of needing the three shelves we have now, I decided it was high time to give up on categorizing. Everything is alphabetized by DVD title. For instance, The Adventures of Indiana Jones box set is in the A's for "Adventures." It was really the easiest way I could think of to solve the dilemma of alphabetizing collections with multiple titles.

There are two areas of alphabetizing where I frequently go back and forth, never satisfied with what I do. One is numeric titles. Currently, I'm alphabetizing based on the phonetic spelling of the title. You would find 300 in the T's for "Three Hundred." But then there's The 4400 - Season One (for some reason, the only season we own of that show, which I really did enjoy). Is it "The Forty Four Hundred" (as they actually said it on the show) or is it "The Four Thousand Four Hundred?" Semantics, maybe, but the former way places it between Forrest Gump and The 40-Year-Old Virgin; the latter, between The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Fox and the Hound.

The other thing that bugs me are performance videos. Does Craig Ferguson: A Wee Bit o' Revolution go with the C's for "Craig" or the W's for "Wee?" I still don't know; are names part of the actual title or not? (I actually e-mailed Ferguson one night about this, hoping to get an on-air response of some kind. I didn't expect anything helpful, but thought it might amuse those who follow the Craig Ferguson Appreciation Thread in the TV sub-forum. Alas, if he ever read it on-air, I missed it.) Further complicating matters, I discovered that my local Half Price Books store alphabetizes these things based on the last name of the performer. This title would be found in the F's for "Ferguson!"

My CD library is currently alphabetized by artist, with two exceptions. All compilations are at the end, after Dwight Yoakam. Soundtracks follow those, except a few soundtracks that are alphabetized by artist. For instance, Sideways is in the K's for Rolfe Kent, the composer. Batman - Motion Picture Soundtrack is in the P's for Prince. I keep meaning to commit one way or the other; all soundtracks filtered in with the rest of the library that way, or all soundtracks grouped at the end.

In any event, I absolutely love that you describe the ever-changing nature of your organization as "organic." I can't think of a better adjective.

worrywort

made me think of this
http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/s...d-fincher.html

Trevor

Totally with you on the alphabetizing 'difficulties' MinL. I also spell-out all numbered titles, and am never sure how I want to file performance titles.

There is one section, I think in the 'three' area, where it gets pretty complicated, and I have like ten titles alternating between normal alpha titles, and numeric titles. It drives me a little crazy when larger numbers are alphabetically before smaller numbers. I may have a stroke when I get around to filing all of the recent '9' movies.

JJE-187

i would have totally run out of space if I hadn't swirched 95% of my collection to thinpak. Now I have almost all my collection in a single 10x8 shelving unit. I still have like 400 in binder like lock boxes but most are on the shelf

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I picked up an 8 ft tall shelf the previous tenants left next door, in addition to one of the cats they abandoned. The only thing I managed to do with that shelf was get all of the titles that start with 'S' off the floor. Perfect fit for A-S. T-Z are still on the floor next to it.

They built the shelf themselves for what really looked like DVDs. Perfect fit and the shelves are slightly deeper than stuff from the stores, so some of the larger box sets fit fine. It also gives me some ideas for when I get around to building my own. Then I'll throw this one away since it doesn't match anything in the house.

Viper187

I have 7 Sauder cabinets, but only 6 fit in this room easily. The 6 in here are filled with DVDs except for 1 door on the last one. The spare cabinet in the other room is for the VHS tapes I haven't been able to replace yet, and I've been putting DVDs that I intend to sell in there. I'm not a big fan of these cabinets anymore for 2 major reasons: 1. they require too much empty space on each side for the doors to swing open, and 2. if you put anything heavy on top the damn doors won't open at all. I never liked the idea of wide open shelving. I think things just get dusty faster that way. I haven't found anything else that would suit me and wasn't overly expensive for the task.

I'm a little more OCD about packaging and disc condition, if anything. I hate snapcases, digipaks, and anything similar to the point I'd rather pay more to import a keepcase BD release form another part of the world than buy a digipak here. I want keepcases and slimcases, and I prefer the Paramount/Waner style "pluck hubs." Pisses me off those are next to impossible to buy more of. I've received many floaters in the mail over the years, and it's always the ones with the push button hubs, like because the case gets squeezed during shipping. The cheapy cases with the octogon style push button hub seem to be particularly easy to dislodge discs from. The more common yin-yang style ones usually aren't as bad.

I pick and choose which SDs to keep when I upgrade to BD. I only keep good anamorphic transfers on single sided discs; no matted, no fullscreen, no flippers. Those are usually good reasons for upgrading in the first place, IMO. If I'm keeping something, I swap the BD case to a double BD so I can put the SD with it.

SethDLH

I do 99% of my organizing with Alphabetizing, starting with format. Blu Ray #-Z, DVD #-Z, VHS #-Z. Though my boxsets are on a single shelf (now starting to pile up on top of each other) and all of the formats are mixed in there by alphabet. There are a few exceptions though as my Leatherface: TCM 3 dvd is with the other Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies and The Rambo movies are together in chronological order. Though, Citizen Toxie (Toxic Avenger 4) isn't with the other Toxic Avenger movies... I don't know why.

Edit to add: This is all on a shelf about 8-9 feet tall and 4.5-5 feet wide that I built. With the boxsets piling up on top of each other they're almost at the ceiling. Still about 1.5 shelves of space left.

bse

DL thanks for the pictures, I think i'm going to try and set my collection up like that, it looks amazing! do you happen to know off hand what kind of shelves those are? and the count per unit? Thanks!

snausages

DL those pictures are magnificent! If I ever find the room, I would love to set up my collection like you did with yours. Right now most of mine are in boxes, mostly labeled. I have a few steelbooks and collectible exclusives just like the Watchmen Nite Owl ship and batpod, etc. displayed.

Cheato

I vote for DL as collector of the month. Or maybe just #1 collector at DVD Talk. Not necessarily #1 collection, or biggest collection, or best quality collection, or anything like that--just a master collector.

In just a few pictures and a couple posts, I have seen genius at work: a categorizing system that would make a librarian quiver, masterful use of dividers to be both effective and non-obtrusive, and finally, a brilliant way of loaning out titles without fear of losing the cases/inserts and reduced fear of them not coming back. Truly something to aspire to.

On the other end of the spectrum, I still urge massive collection owners to go with binders. Besides the fact that I live in what almost all of you would consider a tiny apartment (this is Japan, after all), I still think back to my old 3BR house in the U.S., with the big living room and the big study, and I remember how filled it was with DVDs and I just think how much nicer my place would have looked if my collection had been packed away in binders. For any collector dealing with space issues who only sees their collection growing in size in the future, this is the ONLY way to go. Everything else is just a halfway step and is going to be more time-consuming in the future. (A more hardcore step is, of course, going purely with downloaded media, but I think that's for a generation or two after my time on this planet. I'm sure my grandkids will one day be saying "why did grandpa have all those discs?")

And I'll tell you, once you stop worrying about the packaging, you can save money by going with less deluxe versions, and then you can buy even more stuff to watch. And it won't matter if the case is cracked or the hub is broken or anything. And when I move, it will be SO easy to just move these binders. At that point, I might take the next drastic step of chucking the inserts that I've filed away in the file cabinet. Go pure disc only. I don't know if I could actually do that, though.

JamesDFarrow

One thing I just noticed. You don't leave "spaces" between sections. I used to do this but got tired of shifting a couple of hundred DVDs every time I bought new DVDs that fit in the middle. I now leave a good space between genres so that if I get, say Iron Man 2, I only have to shift the DVDs (in that genre) a little bit (left or right). Eventually the space gets filled in but at least I don't have to shift the majority of DVDs every time.

James

Trevor

Yeah, I do the same thing, saving space in each section for future additions. Of course, I'm still constantly filling that space and having to shift entire rows around, but it helps somewhat.

I hate almost hate bringing up new sub-topics when I feel like we could talk for pages about what has been said already, but this reminds of something else I'm doing.

For some sub-genres of my collection, I'm using what I call 'mixed media shelves'. For example, I'm a big MST3K fan, so in addition to all of the DVDs I also own a book or two, a lunchbox, and some figures. I have all of that together on a shelf or two, instead of the books with books, DVD sets with sets, etc.

I need more and larger bookcases or systems to get to where I want to be, but eventually I hope to have ten or so shelves for the various 'collectible' areas of my collection.

Star Trek - all the films, season sets, graphic novels, models
Classic Horror - all the Universal and similar DVDs and my Creature busts
Disney - all DVDs and graphic novels and plushes
etc etc

Dick Laurent

Thanks! I got lucky with the shelves. There was a video store that went out of business in my home town, and they sold their interior furniture and fixtures. I was only about 17 years old at the time (I’m 33 now) and I had the foresight to snag a couple and stash at my Mom’s house until I had the room (sign of a true collector? Or disease, maybe?). They appear handmade, and fit VHS much better, but they work for what I need.

Thanks for the compliment! Believe me, I have a lot of overflow that doesn’t look quite as nice, but the main shelves are great eye candy.

Oh, stop, I'm blushing... I've really considered the binder route, but collecting for me is very tactile. I enjoy going to the shelf, perusing, picking a title, admiring the artwork, opening the case, etc. It's an event for me. But I definitely say go with what works for you!

I used to leave spaces, but I found I kind of enjoy sorting DVDs when it’s time. It gives me an excuse to clean and really appreciate what’s there. I usually let about 10 or so pile up before sorting them into the system. Since I’ve been scaling back the numbers, it’s been easier taking one out and replacing with a new title. With shelves that wide, it’s also really easy to slide titles across.

My Steelbooks and music DVDs are on a separate shelf, I’ll have to take a pic of it all together. The plan for the future will be to do the same with BD and HD DVD, but using blue/red poster board dividers to match format. I’ll wait until the HD collection beefs up a bit more. OCD collecting... fun for all!

hasslein

I would never go to binders, because the artwork is half the fun. Also, I noticed, DL, you have Ghostbusters 1 & 2 under horror! Fascinating! The pics are awesome!

Dick Laurent

Yeah, that's one that jumps around genres, but it seems to be most at home in the horror section. I believe scary make up and FX trump laughs in that one. But I tend to do things my own way, like who else has a section of DVDs dedicated to Jena Malone?

hasslein

That would be an interesting addition to this thread, a film or television series you feel strongly belongs in a catagory that it may not normally be filed under.... I was debating on whether to put MASH (both the series & movie) under War or with the sitcoms... I have the JLO CD & DVD combo pack The Real Me, but I refuse to put it with Music, because the music is terrible, I only own the videos for her physical beauty...

Travis McClain

I have to say, I actually like having the entire library alphabetized. This way, whenever I (or anyone, really) look for something to watch, it's harder to just gloss over an entire section. The upshot is that lesser fare gets more attention this way.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

We have a video store that does a stupid thing of organizing movies by actors. When I first found out about this, I thought where would Blazing Saddles go?

Worst thing is Blockbuster since they removed the horror section and randomly put titles in with all the other genres.

smurr05

I don't have photos but I keep my music DVD's in one large rack in the living room, My other films in SEVERAL DVD racks which take up most of my "media" room along with our computer and all my TV DVD's in 4 Sony 400 disc players, 3 of which are filled to capacity and the fourth half full. Could use a bigger/extra room especially with a newborn due in 2 months. And yes my wife is still trying to get me to convert the media room into the babies room...sorry I just cannot do that no matter what you guys think of me! UH the DVD's came first!

Dick Laurent

My problem is I usually want to watch a "type" of movie or genre. At my house, we pick movies to watch by what we're in the mood for. But that can make it difficult if you're looking for a certain title and don't remember what genre you filed it under. I was looking for Chumscrubber the other day and forgot I moved it from Drama to Comedy. Comedy seems to be a catch all, "light-hearted" genre. Not just funny jokes and gags. Of course the dark comedies get tricky.

I personally dislike sales stores that combine all of their DVDs together (Half Price Books comes to mind). I'm always on the hunt for original (cardboard insert) Anchor Bay releases. But that little sailboat spine can be hard to spot in a sea of misc. titles. Most places just have them all jumbled together.

But you make a very good point about lesser fare getting more attention with your organizational system.

JamesDFarrow

The other thing to do, in a year or so, after you get your entire collection organized, catagoriezed, placed all nice on the shelfs, etc... is to re-do it all over again. LOL!

After a year or so I get tired of looking at the same set up/display so I change it all around. Add/delete genres, sub-genres, special sections etc... A hell of a job (usually takes all weekend) but I get a really great satisfaction from it. Besides you get to handle all the DVDs/Blu-Rays so you can look at them, say things like :Oh, I forgot I bought this", etc...

I know, I know. I need to get a life. LOL!

James

Hazel Motes

I have a sort of unorthodox way of organizing my collection.

First at the top I have North American/British (ish) Film Makers. I organize them chronologically. Starting with the filmmaker whose debut feature is the oldest, and ending with the filmmaker whose debut feature is the newest. Now of course this isn't an exact science, or at least I don't treat it that way. It starts with people like Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, ands ends with people like Sofia Coppola and David Gordon Green.

After that I have a section that a combination foreign filmmakers and criterion films. Seeing as so many films by Godard, Kurosawa, Bergman, Melville etc, are all released on criterion, I found it acceptable to merge the sections. It starts with Criterion/foreign filmmakers, to just criterion (not director specific), to just foreign. then finally documentry. All chronological within their each sub section.

Next I have a section that I would just consider "dramatic classics". It starts chronologically with the original Scarface, and ends with American Gangster.

After that I have a mixture of horror/sci fi/comic book/comedy.

Next is franchises/box sets. Everything from The Exorcist box set, to all the Batman films, every Rambo/Rocky and the Bourne Trilogy.

Next is actor box sets. Brando, Dean, Newman, Eastwood, Pacino etc. followed by Warners Gangsters box sets, film noir box sets, fox film noir collection and criterion eclipse sets.

Following that is 2 rows of television.

a row of MMA (UFC 1-100)

And finally 10 wrestling dvd's and my last remaining 75 vhs tapes.

All in all I figure it to be a total of around 1100 dvd's and vhs.

Dick Laurent

Great pics, Chadm. I like that you put a lot of thought into your collection. It can be as unorthodox as you like, as long as it works for you. I see a lot of sim' between our inventory, though you have the Twin Peaks set, and I still have the seperates. It's also great to see VHS at the end. Mine are in there as well. It's evident that you put a lot of care into what you have.

Cardsfan111

^ Agree DL with the comment that 'as long as it works for you' - I wish I had more space to better organize things, but I'm fairly certain I can find any title in my collection in short order and that's what's most important to me.