Author Topic: List of disc catalogers (Read 277,492 times)

mouser · « **Reply #25 on:** April 03, 2007, 07:52 AM »

Maybe we should try to get discounts on disc catalogers for next month?

tomos · « **Reply #26 on:** April 03, 2007, 08:16 AM »

but which ones

$:-\$

Crush · « **Reply #27 on:** April 09, 2007, 01:43 PM »

I started some weeks ago a complete Disc-Cataloger-List (all I´ve found that deserve the name cataloger in my opinion - specialized ones like Music-CD or Movie-DVDs are excluded).

This list has the names, the site-links, perhaps download-links if the sites aren´t existing anymore, Freeware/Shareware/Commercial, the actual/last price, the last update or relase of the program.

I think it will take a while to complete all fields in the list, but only to get you shocked

: There are over 170 entries at the moment and about 1/4 of them are Freeware (sometimes former commercial software)! I expect over the half of the entries are absolutely unknown. This list could be used step by step for reviews.

@Mouser or other Boardowners:
There´s only a big problem: The list is a rather big Opendocument and it would kill the thread with the datas. Is it possible to get it somewhere hosted on Donationcoder? Perhaps others could add updates to this list this way?

mouser · « **Reply #28 on:** April 12, 2007, 06:39 PM »

crush, do you feel like maybe trying to write or team up to write a big long review on these tools?

Crush · « **Reply #29 on:** April 12, 2007, 07:50 PM »

Tomos started this big list and I talked to him - he wants to make a nearly complete list of all catalogers with short reviews and I told him I´ve found more than the few he listed. I see that the interest in such tools and reviews about them is growing, but I don´t think I´ll write a full review of all. Only the creation of the list took more than 5 days fulltime. The list could only be a source for writing reviews if someone likes to. I used it for myself to see how many progs are existing, how good are they and what are the shiny pearls (best features) of them, how many are still in development and I wanted to see the amount of free/commercial software and the prices of them. That´s all.

The list is now nearly at the end with nearly 200 entries. Now it´s the question how I could post it here. The best thing would be if others could update or add new programs to the list.

tomos · « **Reply #30 on:** April 14, 2007, 11:32 PM »

Quote from: Crush on April 12, 2007, 07:50 PM

... I used it for myself to see how many progs are existing, how good are they and what are the shiny pearls (best features) of them, how many are still in development and I wanted to see the amount of free/commercial software and the prices of them. That´s all.

The list is now nearly at the end with nearly 200 entries. Now it´s the question how I could post it here. The best thing would be if others could update or add new programs to the list.

sounds great Crush.
I have thought it would be great if others could add to the list because as you say it's very time consuming (& my list only has 25 I think

)
Doing screenshots for such a large number would be out of the question I think..
also,
while screenshots make the whole visually more appealing, more often than not they aren't very informative.

lanux128 · « **Reply #31 on:** April 16, 2007, 02:04 AM »

just my personal opinion, wouldn't such a long list make a person lose interest? btw, how about introducing some criteria and limit to final review to something like 10-15 apps, the rest can included in an appendix.. we can also suggest that readers who don't like the the first 15 can try out the rest by using the same methods followed for the first 15 and post a mini-review..

Crush · « **Reply #32 on:** April 16, 2007, 05:11 PM »

I don´t think that people lose interest by the size of the list - they lose interest if the tools they look at doesn´t meet their needs.

To make them comparable you have to pick out the most interesting features people are searching for. The first one finds it more interesting to have thumbnails for pictures, the other one is more fascinated in MP3-Tagging-features, others prefer high speed searches over a very big list of files (perhaps with features to look inside archives) and less memory usage. Some wants to give out money for a good product - others don´t have enough money for that and need full featured freeware-versions and so on. I now can say that out of these huge list only a few meets my personal needs and no one has all the features I´d personally like to see. Such complex programs like catalogers are too different to say what are the "best". You can only say there´s a best one for a special usage.

Which one´s the right for you depends on whatfor you want to use it!

You can believe me that most people doesn´t want to spend hundreds of hours gathering all relevant entries (like I did) and then test them on their own. I´m glad to have this list now and others perhaps, too. The list with intensive reviews is gold for everyone who´s in urgent need of a cataloger. At the moment anything comparable to this review-project is available in the internet. You find only the same few of these programs in the shareware-lists, but other very unkown with creamy facilities and outstanding ideas you don´t find within the "normal" commercial progs are also out there. These were the ones I was especially looking for. I made this especially for myself but would be happy to also help others who can profit somehow from this hard work.

The biggest comparison list I found also had only very few and old entries but this was ok: http://www.cdfinder.de/list2.html The only problem is that this list is looking at rather old and only 68K-/powerpc-processor Mac-Software. This type of list is very helpful to make a good decision. A personal review also would be an addition to something like this. What do you think about it?

tomos · « **Reply #33 on:** April 16, 2007, 06:00 PM »

Quote from: lanux128 on April 16, 2007, 02:04 AM

just my personal opinion, wouldn't such a long list make a person lose interest? btw, how about introducing some criteria and limit to final review to something like 10-15 apps, the rest can included in an appendix.. we can also suggest that readers who don't like the the first 15 can try out the rest by using the same methods followed for the first 15 and post a mini-review..

I kind of like that idea
maybe the "best" choice/selection -
a sort of a short list with more details
(no-one is volunteering to do "full" reviews but hopefully someone out there might eventually be inspired to do so!)
& then
a full list with minimal details ...

on the other hand -

Quote from: Crush on April 16, 2007, 05:11 PM

I don´t think that people lose interest by the size of the list - they lose interest if the tools they look at doesn´t meet their needs.

To make them comparable you have to pick out the most interesting features people are searching for. The first one finds it more interesting to have thumbnails for pictures, the other one is more fascinated in MP3-Tagging-features, others prefer high speed searches over a very big list of files (perhaps with features to look inside archives) and less memory usage. Some wants to give out money for a good product - others don´t have enough money for that and need full featured freeware-versions and so on. I now can say that out of these huge list only a few meets my personal needs and no one has all the features I´d personally like to see. Such complex programs like catalogers are too different to say what are the "best". You can only say there´s a best one for a special usage.

Which one´s the right for you depends on whatfor you want to use it!
...

The biggest comparison list I found also had only very few and old entries but this was ok: http://www.cdfinder.de/list2.html The only problem is that this list is looking at rather old and only 68K-/powerpc-processor Mac-Software. This type of list is very helpful to make a good decision. A personal review also would be an addition to something like this. What do you think about it?

the table there http://www.cdfinder.de/list2.html looks good.
Still cant get my head around a list of 200 and how that might look - or be presented

also as you say

Quote

To make them comparable you have to pick out the most interesting features people are searching for.

conversely,
I think the best idea would be to point out the best features/strong points of the various programmes -
then
if someone is looking for something that does good thumbnails of their photos they can dig their way through and hopefully find a recommendation ...

tomos · « **Reply #34 on:** April 19, 2007, 09:19 PM »

I'm in a bit of a dilemma here
(or should i say I have a bit of a dilemma here - english is slowly slipping from my grasp

- dont know if thats from living abroad or the strong beer I just drank too quickly)

Anyways, down to business!
Dilemma is I now have a list of exactly 200 Disc catalogers sent to me by Crush who says I can

Quote

You can do with it what you want

with credit naturally -
thats some list Crush!

but I still unsure how to present it.
Does anyone else have opinion or ideas - HELP

I could show it as a table, putting it in post 2,
that would overlap with post one but ....
Post one could become then the "best of"
Thing is I dont really want to commit myself to such long term caretaking of list
But I guess it could stand as a snapshot & people can reuse any info there if they want

From
[attachthumb=#]

to
[attachthumb=#]

Darwin · « **Reply #35 on:** April 20, 2007, 02:30 PM »

Perhaps you could generate a searchable pdf or html from the Excel (?) file and have donationcoder host it. This is the only way that I can think of to get the spreadsheet into the forum quickly and easily. Then you could just link to it from your original post, which could be modified and maybe retitlted (and moved?) to reflect that it's a resource for people looking for alternatives rather than a review. You could indicate that updating the list will be a group effort - we just need to figure out who's going to admininstrate it!

lanux128 · « **Reply #36 on:** April 25, 2007, 06:31 AM »

i'm in a catch-22 situation, since all these CD catalog programs involve putting in the CD/DVD and ejecting.. basically i'm doing the very thing that i want to avoid, hence the need for these programs for..

anyway, i'm trying out CDVista right now and the program responds quite well.. btw, tomos & Crush, how's the list coming up?

here are some criteria that i can think of:
• still in development
• modern UI (elegant interface, no Win 3.1 icons..

)
• able to merge catalogs
• can move discs to other catalogs
• DVD-support (naturally)
• look up info at CDDB for Audio CDs
• this is a plus: able to export to XML or other common format

i'll post here if i can think of anymore useful criteria..

Darwin · « **Reply #37 on:** April 25, 2007, 02:10 PM »

Quote

i'm in a catch-22 situation, since all these CD catalog programs involve putting in the CD/DVD and ejecting..

I'm not sure I follow this? If you mean that you have to insert the CD/DVD, have whatever app you're using index it and then eject the CD/DVD, then we're on the same page (and I'm not sure what the alternative would be!). If you're suggesting that you need to insert the CD/DVD to access the index that you've already created, then you're either suffering under a misunderstanding and/or the software you've tried (CDVista?) is odd! I'm using WhereIsIt? and once it's created an index, that's it. I can open and search ALL of my indeces and locate whatever it is that I am looking for without ever going near a CD/DVD. If only WhereIsIt? would keep track of where I've actually put the physical media...

Crush · « **Reply #38 on:** April 25, 2007, 04:50 PM »

As I see till now - the most of these progs don´t support merging of catalogs. You can usually create different catalogs and sometimes it´s possible to search them all together - in most cases only the pre-loaded ones. WhereIsIt! seems to have a maximum size of 1GB/catalog as I read somewhere - and it´s not supporting unicode. A funny cataloger is giving some sidekicks to whereisit calling itself "HereIsIt!"

The list is still growing - 4 new entries added today = 203 catalogers at the moment

The UI is a double-sided sword: Using standard Win-UI and Libs give in big result-lists an extreme heavy slowdown. Some have seen this and coded own output-windows to speed all up - and these windows often have a different look and behaviour as normal ones.

CDs and DVDs have been a main criteria for me to call something a Disc-Cataloger. All should be able to do this.

CDDB-Lookups are not included everywhere and should not be a main criteria. I personally want to search files by their tags and names. Catalogers specialized at Music-Collections are existing that all do CDDB-support but haven´t reached this list.

Good export functions are only rudimentary supported. You get only a small part of the stored informations as exports. So this also was no main point for me.

Darwin · « **Reply #39 on:** April 25, 2007, 06:03 PM »

Hmmm.... merge catalogues. I'm not sure I see the point of this as with WhereIsIt? I can have as many catalogues as I like open at the same time and search across them. However, having said that, I'm far from a power user wrt disc cataloguing...

lanux128 · « **Reply #40 on:** April 27, 2007, 02:36 AM »

Darwin, due to this reason here, i am testing new programs to check out their features.. therefore i need to insert/eject the optical media.. that is what i meant in the earlier post..

btw Crush, i put in some of my criteria so that we can brainstorm and identify a few major criteria.. also on the merge catalog feature, i was thinking of cdTree (see pic) but since it was last updated on Dec 26, 2004, i want to be on the safe side..

[attach=#]

lanux128 · « **Reply #41 on:** May 03, 2007, 04:22 AM »

saw this item at lifehacker.com - Find files on CDs with Robocopy snapshots..

[attach=#]

a cool trick but one problem is that it uses Robocopy, which is a part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools (a 11.8MB download)..

tomos · « **Reply #42 on:** May 03, 2007, 08:27 AM »

there was a post somewhere here (I'm sure it was dc) lately about a GUI for Robocopy -
I got the impression that the download included Robocopy but I could well have been wrong.

Yeah, theres a link there for GUI version at the bottom of that lifehacker page.
It's just over 1MB.

PS I havent forgotten about putting up Crush's list somewhere.
Just very busy at the mo & still dont know how the feck to do it.
It would be nice if I could automatically make a table here from a .CSV file, maybe I should post that as a request/snack ...

Crush · « **Reply #43 on:** May 03, 2007, 06:27 PM »

Tomos, you can create such a table with saving to .html in OpenOffice. You only have to copy the result into the modify-Message Window.
Otherwise there are tools like http://www.winload.de/download/56289/Internet/HTML-Editoren/CSV2HTML-0.9.7.html?empfehlung2 or http://www.hidekik.com/en/csv2html/csv2html.cgi to convert .csv-files.

Did I tell you that there are now 213 Entries in my list?

superboyac · « **Reply #44 on:** May 03, 2007, 10:08 PM »

What about WhereIsIt?

I thought it is commonly known as the best of the bunch, but maybe things have changed. I like it, and it is one of the first pieces of software I have ever bought. Very powerful.

Crush · « **Reply #45 on:** May 03, 2007, 10:48 PM »

WhereIsIt? Is still very good and a top-notch-cataloger because of it´s features and speed. It was the reference at the start of my disc-cataloger benchmark/comparison with Heavy-Data-Tests. I haven´t tested all of them, but WhereIsIt showed some very hard issues and terminating exceptions turning my good and shiny view to a dark and bad one now. The tests showed that about 50% of the programs on the market seem to be very very buggy - and a lot of them are not worth their money (my personal opinion). I posted this somewhere on the board with the test-results. At the first sight with normal usage the most appear to work ok. Only deep tests show their flaccidities.

lanux128 · « **Reply #46 on:** May 04, 2007, 02:23 AM »

Quote from: tomos on May 03, 2007, 08:27 AM

there was a post somewhere here (I'm sure it was dc) lately about a GUI for Robocopy -
I got the impression that the download included Robocopy but I could well have been wrong.

hehe.. i think that would be me..

didn't notice that gui comes with robocopy as well..

[attach=#]

tomos · « **Reply #47 on:** May 04, 2007, 12:12 PM »

Quote from: Crush on May 03, 2007, 06:27 PM

Tomos, you can create such a table with saving to .html in OpenOffice. You only have to copy the result into the modify-Message Window.
Otherwise there are tools like http://www.winload.de/download/56289/Internet/HTML-Editoren/CSV2HTML-0.9.7.html?empfehlung2 or http://www.hidekik.com/en/csv2html/csv2html.cgi to convert .csv-files.

Did I tell you that there are now 213 Entries in my list?

Thanks Crush

the OOo HTML file looks great in browser

[attachthumb=#]

but
when I copy & paste it in here
it looses its table formating, & well, looks very scrappy -

************************************************************************
Sheet 1: Disk Catalogers
Cataloger Homepage Free-/Shareware Price Last Version / Change Remark
1-Pro-File 2.1.0.245.exe http://www.1-pro.com/ Commercial 30 $

10s SearchMyDiscs V3.2 http://www.10-strike.com/searchmydiscs/ Commercial 29,9 $ 2007-02-15

4cat140.zip.exe http://files.chatnfiles.com/The%20Pier%20Shareware%203/026/files.htm Freeware

DOS Cataloger
4Media http://www.xrheingauerx.de/4Media1.html Free + Commercial 12.95

AACD http://jlved.free.fr/jlved_bd/index.php?lng=en Commercial 10.00 €
Extremely cheap
ACDC (Advanced CD Catalog) http://www.ababasoft.com/cdorganizer/ Commercial 22,91 $ 2007-01-01

AceCat V1.52 http://www.acecatweb.com/ Commercial 25$ 2003-09-02 Seams to be dead
adc151.zip http://www.elcomsoft.com/adc.html Commercial 20.00 €
Very fast and cheap
advanced cataloger pro V2.6 http://www.evgenysoft.com/acat-pro/ Commercial 49,95 (personal) 64,95 (€ & $!)
Paying the same price in $ is cheaper
****************************************************************************

Any ideas anyone?
Will try the links you gave above as well

tomos · « **Reply #48 on:** May 04, 2007, 12:19 PM »

Or if I post from editor:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

******************************************
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">

<HTML>
<HEAD>

<META HTTP-EQUIV="CONTENT-TYPE" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<TITLE></TITLE>
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="OpenOffice.org 2.0 (Win32)">
<META NAME="CREATED" CONTENT="20070406;17110000">
<META NAME="CHANGEDBY" CONTENT="Ralf Reupsch">
<META NAME="CHANGED" CONTENT="20070429;16122700">

<STYLE>

</STYLE>

</HEAD>

<BODY TEXT="#000000">
<HR>
<P><CENTER>
<H1>Overview</H1>
<A HREF="#table0">Disk Catalogers</A><BR>
<A HREF="#table1">Others</A><BR>

</CENTER></P>
<HR>
<A NAME="table0"><H1>Sheet 1: <EM>Disk Catalogers</EM></H1></A>
<TABLE FRAME=VOID CELLSPACING=0 COLS=7 RULES=GROUPS BORDER=1>
<COLGROUP><COL WIDTH=271><COL WIDTH=449><COL WIDTH=86><COL WIDTH=86><COL WIDTH=241><COL WIDTH=86><COL WIDTH=86></COLGROUP>

tomos · « **Reply #49 on:** May 10, 2007, 07:05 PM »

Quote from: Crush on May 03, 2007, 06:27 PM

Tomos, you can create such a table with saving to .html in OpenOffice. You only have to copy the result into the modify-Message Window.
Otherwise there are tools like http://www.winload.de/download/56289/Internet/HTML-Editoren/CSV2HTML-0.9.7.html?empfehlung2 or http://www.hidekik.com/en/csv2html/csv2html.cgi to convert .csv-files.

no joy with those other links either ...