How do you sort your collection? (2 Viewers)

[StephenA]

I sort by DVD case type. I put keepcases, snappers, etc together in different sections. Looks better to me that way than to mix the different types.

 

[Dale MA]

Mine is sorted by numerical & alphabetical order, I have my TV DVDs seperate from my movies and I have certain sections in my collection, for example all my Cary Grant movies are together under "C", my Alfred Hitchcock movies are under "A", I also kept all my WB gangster collection movies together because the spines look much better that way on those particular DVDs

 

[Jeff_HR]

On the shelf, by Studio.

 

[Brian PB]

Always interesting to read posts from fellow obsessive-compulsives justifying the manifestations of their disease ...

The bulk of my 800-some-odd collection is sorted by director (I'm an auteurist at heart) and then by release year. The process of choosing a movie is supplemented by DVD Profiler, which can sort by genre or language or or date-last-watched or studio (with difficulty, in its current form), etc. I have two IKEA bookscases, or a total of 18 shelves (including the top surface of the cases), which is enough room for roughly 900 single Alpha cases.

A second, smaller shelving unit houses TV-on-DVD sets, Animation, Experiental/Avant-garde, and Music-related titles.

My current arbitrary, absolute limit is 1,000 titles, so I periodically weed out DVDs I know I can live without and sell them off.

 

[seanOhara]

Autobiographically, in the order I bought them so no one but me can find any particular disc.

No, wait, that's how John Cusack sorts his music in High Fidelity. My bad.

I separate TV shows from theatrical films, and subdivide them by animation vs live action. Everything's alphabetized within the proper section, though I do make occasional and arbitrary exceptions for sequels -- for example, I keep the Thin Man series under the Ts, but Kevin Smith films are sorted individually. I don't have any double-feature sets other than The Killers and The Alien Quadrilogy, so I haven't figured out how to sort cases that contain different titles.

How do people count spaces when alphabetizing? Would you put Stargate before or after Star Trek? What about abbreviations? Does Dr. Strangelove go before or after Donnie Darko?

 

[Paul Hillenbrand]

Organization is the key when you have too many DVD's to handle.

All my dvd's are stored alphabetically by title.

Having 1,583 dvd's and growing, it's the fastest way to find a title and keep track of who took what, with the help of software.

Using "DVD Profiler", I can look up or print a list of titles and/or pictures of the dvd covers of the entire collection, by a particular genre, cast or studio in minutes, then go right to the title chosen.

When a dvd is missing, there is a space where it should be. Looking at what title is next to the empty spot and running a list, I know exactly what disc should be there.

Paul

 

[DavidBC]

Whole words go first. So Star Trek goes before Stargate. Abbreviations go as they're spelled, so Dr. Strangelove goes after Donnie Darko, but The Doctor would go before it. And because of the space rule, Dracula would go after Dr. Strangelove.

At least in my head

 

[Kevin M]

I actually don't get that anal about it, after the Criterion's, oddball's & Box set's I just put them in order by year of release, I don't care if a film that came out in may of 76 is after a film that came out in june of 76......now my MST3K collection is quite different, those are as chronological as I can get them, box set's aside.


...and then there's the ritual of spinning around three times, barking like a dog & opening and closing the DVD players drawer three times before playing the disc.....b...but that's not odd..i..is it?

 

[Greg_M]

I sort mine by year of theatrical release. 1968 being the year with the most titles (15).

 

[george kaplan]

Definitely alphabetically. With 1299 dvds at last count, there's no other way I could find them all.

As far as other type of sorting, well, all of my titles are in an excel file, so I can easily sort that list by genre, or year, or whatever. But I can't even begin to imagine trying to figure out the physical location of a dvd if it were anything other than alphabetical.

 

[Dave Simkiss]

I sort them alphabetical by studio first (20th Century Fox, Anchor Bay, BBC etc) The each studio sub section is alphabetical as well.
TV shows are kept seperate.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Put me in the sort by studio camp.

I would LOVE to sort the entire collection
absolute alphabetical, but it looks so much
better when the outer spines match.....

...therefor, I sort by studio in alphabetical order.
This keeps all my Disney and music titles together.

 

[Harry-N]

The main movie collection is alphabetical by title. Numbers, as mentioned above go wherever their spelled-out word would put them. 2001 HAS to be in the 'T' section.

We do keep a separate section for the big Disney titles, with the Shrek stuff thrown in there as well. I also keep a section of music videos by itself - mostly for space reasons. TV shows are also separated out, and generally in another room in the house entirely - again, simply for space reasons.

I also use DVD Profiler for the sorted lists on paper, but I can't imagine not having the main collection in anything but strict alphabetical order.

 

[Berk]

I sort based on how much I like the film.

I have 5 shelves with the top being reserved for my favorite films and the lowest being my "watch every couple of years" movies.

 

[Steve Christou]

By spine color, starting with whitish or beige spines and ending with pitch black darkish spines, you won't believe how aesthetically pleasing to the eye it all looks...


Naah I lie, roughly alphabeticallally, but also sorted by case size, big fat box sets at the top, horrible snapper cases bottom shelves.

 

[Todd B]

By now, you can probably detect a theme. Most store them alphabetically and then use software to quickly find what they are looking for (by genre, director, etc...). DVD Profiler is a great choice as you can see by all of the "My Collection" links in people's signatures.

Todd

 

[Ryan Peddle]

I have the majority of mine alphabetized.

But I also have three sub sections of Horror, TV and WWE Wrestling.

Horror and TV are also alphabetized and WWE is order chronologically as best as possible.

 

[Holadem]

By studio?!

So you need to remember the studio in order to quickly pickout a specific movie? As in "I wanna watch X -- Hmm.... which studio released that again"? Or "what year was that released?",

Last movie I watched out of my collection is Frailty. I would be damned if I knew (or cared) what studio released it. Thatw as two weeks ago and I still don't remember.

I might understand the studio thing for reviewers and industry insiders. But everyone else...

Weird I tell ya.

--
H

 

[Dustin Elmore]

Yeah, I find the studio thing difficult to understand as well. If you don't have an extremely huge library it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but how does studio sorting help anyone find a movie? Although it does work in the case of Disney, but thats arguably because they only make one genre of film. Even more confounding is when someone sorts by RELEASE DATE. I mean how often do you walk around and say "hey, I'd love to watch a film from 1982, I don't care what kind of film it is as long as that was the year it was made!" I like to sort my movies every now and then (I always regret it by the time I'm halfway through) and usually do it alphabetically within genres. I just change what defines the genres every now and then. Sequels go together always.

 

[MarkHastings]

But if you did sort them by studio, you'd know.

But I'm more visual than anything else. Once I put a film on my shelf (alongside others that have the same spines) I almost always know where to look when searching for it.