Linking your movies

Linking is important to get the latest data on each movie entry in your online Connect database. Linking is good, you should link!

How to link your movies to the Collectorz.com Movie Database

Linking can be started by clicking
"Connect > Link Movies".
Or by clicking "Yes" after you selected to synchronize your movies with Connect.

A screen will open. This is the Link screen.

With the Link screen open, you will see all your unlinked movies. This screen looks a lot like the Add Automatically screen, and almost works the same. Here's a step by step:

1. Your first movie is already being searched.
2. Check the results and if you're happy, click UPDATE (it's the button beneath the results)
3. The next unlinked movie will be searched.
4. Repeat from step 2.

Alternatively you can click on Search All. Especially if you have barcodes for all your movies, this can be very helpfull. Just wait until all unlinked movies have been searched and hit Update All.

The "Search All" option will not find your edition if you don't have a barcode filled in your movie details. If you don't have the barcode, it will find the title for your movie, but not the exact edition you own.

I keep getting the same movies back as unlinked

If that's the case, those movies may not yet be in our database. If you'd like you can submit those movies to us by selecting them in your database, and then click:

"Edit > Submit Movies to Collectorz.com Movie Database"

Now within a few days our Movie content managers will process your submission, and you can finally link that movie with our database! And the fun thing is that now all other users can also link that version. Because of your input.

Why should I link my movies with your database?

Basically you should link your movies to get the latest data on your movie entries in your Connect account. The big story:

1. Connect is built completely around the Collectorz.com online media databases.
   Which means that if you add a DVD to your collection, it links your database entry to the DVD's entry in our online database, always getting the "shared" information (like Title, Year, Cast, Crew, Plot, DVD details, cover image, etc...) from our database.

   The same happens when you upload an existing collection from Movie Collector: your entries will be linked to our online database (most entries will already be linked or can be auto-linked by barcode, or CDID for CDs).

2. Connect lets you add personal information to your entries,
   like Purchase info, Personal rating, notes, In Collection Status, etc..

   For Movie Collector Connect, all personal fields are supported. It also lets you enter your own Title, to optionally "override" the title in the central database (e.g. for localized titles). The other 3 "override" fields for movies are Barcode, Year and Image (using a web-linked image).

3. If you own a movie that is not in our central database, you can still add it to your list (or upload it from Movie Collector), using the Title, Barcode, Year, User Image and all Personal Fields.

   So you will still have a basic entry in your collection lists. The tip here is to include the barcode, so that our Content Team can spot popular "un-linked" barcodes and add them to the central database.

   As soon as they do, your entry will automagically be transformed into a full entry with cast, crew, etc... We are planning to add a way to "suggest" or "submit" a movie right from the Connect interface, so that missing movies or DVD edition can be added quickly.

This setup has many advantages, both for you and for us:

1. Auto-Updates: When our Content guys update the movie information (e.g. add a plot, fix a typo in a character's name, etc...), you will immediately see those changes in your collection. No "Update Automatically" necessary, everyone always sees the latest and greatest version of the data.

2. It's FAST: The central shared movie data is the same for everyone, so its retrieval can be optimized.

3. It's efficient: Shared data is only stored once. Thousands of Movie Collector users own Batman Begins, it's no use storing that movie's Cast and Crew thousands of times. This helps keeping performance up, disk usage down and enables us to guarantee the daily backups of your collection.

4. It helps to make our Collectorz.com online databases more complete. The "missing barcodes" system will help us improve and complete our online databases faster than ever.

As you can now probably see Linking is Very important to make Connect work for you!