What's new?

We’re on a roll! Here’s yet another BIG update of your Movie Collector for Mac software, with 3 important additions!

1. Add Movies straight from IMDb, using the IMDb Number or URL
2. Now get “official” IMDb Cast and Crew lists for ALL movies in our Core
3. Also, new support for 12 digital movie formats, complete with icons and logos

1. Add Movies by IMDb Number or URL

More goodies made possible by our agreement with IMDb! Introduced today, a new “IMDb” tab in the Add Movies screen for finding and adding movies straight from their IMDb Nr or URL.

Can’t find a movie in our Core? But it is on IMDb?
Then just find the movie on IMDb and copy either the IMDb Nr or the entire UMDb URL. Then go to the new IMDb tab and paste the Nr or URL into the search box, and click Search.

The movie entry will then be retrieved from IMDb automatically AND added to our Core, so that you can then immediately Add it to your database!

(Don’t worry, if it turns out the movie WAS already in our Core, it will automatically just return the existing entry, it will never cause duplicate entries in our Core.)

IMPORTANT: this new Add by IMDb feature always requires an active Service Plan!

Search by IMDb Nr:

Or just paste in the complete IMDB URL of the movie:

2. Official IMDb Cast and Crew list for all movies

Starting with this version, the Movie Collector software now downloads the “official” cast and crew from IMDb, that is the top 25 actors and the full list of Producers, Directors, Writers, Photography and Musicians.

Also, the cast list now comes with IMDb links for ALL cast members!

TIP 1: set the Max Actors / Crew members to 25

1. Go to menu “Movie Collector > Preferences”.
2. Click on “Data and Images” and select “Download settings for data and images”
3. Change both the amount of Actors and Crew members to 25

TIP 2: Set Update from Core settings for Cast and Crew to “REPLACE”

If you wish to update your existing movie entries with the maximum amount of cast/crew entries:

1. First, go to the same screen as above and under “Update from CLZ Core”, next to “Cast” and “Crew” set the dropdown to “REPLACE”.
2. Then select the movies you want to update, right click, then choose Update from Core.

( After updating, make sure to set setting back to “Update empty fields only”. )

3. New options and icons for digital movie formats

With digital movie formats becoming more popular, we have decided to add the most popular ones to the Format list, all with nice new icons and logos.

Now available as new Format choices:

• Amazon Prime Video
• Apple iTunes
• Google Play
• Vudu
• Roku
• Microsoft Movies & TV
• Playstation Video
• Netflix
• Youtube
• Hulu
• Disney+
• Movies Anywhere

With digital movie formats becoming more popular, we have decided to add the most popular ones to the “format picker” drop down in the Add Movies screen, all with nice new icons, separated in “Physical” and “Digital” sections.

Now available as new Format choices:

• Amazon Prime Video
• Apple iTunes
• Google Play
• Vudu
• Roku
• Microsoft Movies & TV
• Playstation Video
• Netflix
• Youtube
• Hulu
• Disney+
• Movies Anywhere

Some fixes today for the Find Duplicates screen:

Fixed

• Keep and Remove buttons weren’t sizing correctly on high DPI screens
• Renamed “Exact Duplicate” option to “All Fields” to make its purpose more clear

Based on user feedback we found out users were looking for and expecting a tool to find duplicate entries in their database. Some way to find out if you’ve accidentally added multiple versions of the same movie, but perhaps with a different format or barcode.

After quite a few requests and discussions with users about this, to find out how they got duplicates and what they would expect from such a Duplicate Finder tool, it’s here today: Find Duplicate entries in your database!

New: Find Duplicate Movies

Click menu Tools > Maintenance > Find Duplicates to begin.

Then select which field to find duplicates on. You can find duplicates based on:

• Title
• Title & Release Year
• Barcode
• Index
• Exact Duplicate

Click “Find Duplicates” and see what it comes up with. Use the blue “Keep” button to keep a group of duplicates, or use the red “Remove” button to remove a duplicate!

If you click “Remove all duplicates automatically” the program will remove all duplicate entries and will only keep 1 single entry (the oldest one) in your database.

Tip: use the columns button, top right, to set up the columns you’d like to see!

More goodies made possible by our agreement with IMDb! Introduced today, a new “IMDb” tab in the Add Movies screen for finding and adding movies straight from their IMDb Nr or URL.

Can’t find a movie in our Core? But it is on IMDb?
Then just find the movie on IMDb and copy either the IMDb Nr or the entire UMDb URL. Then go to the new IMDb tab and paste the Nr or URL into the search box, and click Search.

The movie entry will then be retrieved from IMDb automatically AND added to our Core, so that you can then immediately Add it to your database!

(Don’t worry, if it turns out the movie WAS already in our Core, it will automatically just return the existing entry, it will never cause duplicate entries in our Core.)

Search by IMDb Nr:

Or just paste in the complete IMDB URL of the movie:

Because the version we released yesterday was built with a new Xcode, the program automatically supported Mojave’s “Dark Mode”. Unfortunately, we all run “Light Mode” here, and we didn’t see that the program looked completely wrong in Dark Mode!

We do plan to support Dark Mode on Mojave, but this is a different project and will be addressed later this year.

Fixed:

• Mojave’s Dark Mode made the program look bad so we switched the program to light mode for now.
• Export to XML, Text, and other export functions were broken
• Images Shelves styles were broken.

Trial Mode improvements:

• Bigger “+” button on the default toolbar.
• Improved “My CLZ Account” messaging when logging in with a CLZ Account.
• New hints to Sync with CLZ Cloud after adding some items.
• Removed the ugly blue “hint box” that appeared when starting with an empty database.

Only supports macOS 10.9 or higher

This is the first version to not support macOS 10.8 Mountain Lion anymore.

To stay current with Apple we’ve just updated to Xcode (the software used to create Movie Collector for macOS). In order to do this we had to drop support for macOS 10.8 (Mountain Lion) from 2012 as Apple doesn’t support it anymore in Xcode.

If you still use macOS 10.8, make sure to not upgrade Movie Collector to this version.

Fixed:

• Auto-mark custom images didn’t flag items as “dirty” for the sync.
• Drag and drop image on Details Panel to change the front cover was broken.
• Index number sometimes didn’t increment correctly.
• Changing order of movies in a box set could crash the program.

Depending on how much of an IMDb junkie you are, today’s update for Movie Connect could be considered quite a big deal 🙂

As you probably know, we have signed a more comprehensive (and also much more expensive) content licensing agreement with IMDb, which gives us access to more and fresher IMDb data.

Today we’ve released the first new additions for Movie Connect made possible by this new agreement!

New: IMDb Votes data

This field indicates the number of votes on which the IMDb Rating is based. It is a good indication of 1. how popular the movie is and 2. how trustworthy the rating is.

• The IMDb Votes field is automatically filled in when you Add a Movie from Core.
• It is also shown in the yellow IMDb box in your movie details panel, right below the logo and rating.
• The IMDb Votes field is automatically refreshed every day to give you the most up-to-date data.
• Tip: add the IMDb Votes as a column in your list, so that easily see for all your movies or even sort on it to order your list by the movie’s popularity.

New: IMDb Ratings and Votes are automatically refreshed every day!

The new IMDb content license gives us daily updates of the IMDb Ratings and Votes. This means that every day you automatically get the latest IMDb Rating and Votes data for all your movie entries.

Because the IMDb Rating and Votes now automatically update every day, we’ve removed them from the Cloud and Edit Movie screens as there’s no need to edit them anymore. If you have a movie that you can’t find with the Add Movies from Core screen, you can always report it as missing and we’ll add it for you.

Renamed Blu-ray and 4K UHD formats

To conform with the more commonly used naming, we have renamed two formats:

• “Blu-ray Disc” to just “Blu-ray”
• “Ultra HD Blu-ray” to just “4K UHD”

Also, the 4K UHD format now has a new icon!

New options and icons for digital movie formats

With digital movie formats becoming more popular, we have decided to add the most popular ones as default choices in the Format list, all with nice new list icons and logos for the details panel.

Now available as new Format choices:

• Amazon Prime Video
• Apple iTunes
• Google Play
• Vudu
• Roku
• Microsoft Movies & TV
• Playstation Video
• Netflix
• Youtube
• Hulu
• Disney+

New Format picker drop-down in Add Movies from Core

The new format choices have now also been added to the Format picker in the Add Movies from Core screen. Just click the blue Format button and pick from the format choices, nicely separated in “Physical” and “Digital” sections:

Renamed Blu-ray and 4K UHD formats

To conform with the more commonly used naming, we have renamed two formats:

• “Blu-ray Disc” to just “Blu-ray”
• “Ultra HD Blu-ray” to just “4K UHD”

Also, the 4K UHD format now has a new icon!

More tweaks to the Add button in Add Movies from Core

We already worked on this area in the previous update, but we were still not completely satisfied. So more tweaks to the Add button in the Add Movies from Core screen today:

• All Collection Status values are now available, including “For Sale” and “On Order”!
• The little popup menu now indicates the selected value with a checkmark.
• The Add button itself now says “Add to Collection” or “Add to Wishlist”.

We’ve updated 2 formats with new names, and we’ve changed the icon for 4K Ultra HD:

• Renamed format “Blu-ray Disc” to “Blu-ray”
• Renamed format “Ultra HD Blu-ray” to “4K UHD”
• Updated the format icon for 4K UHD

We’ve updated 2 formats with new names, and we’ve changed the icon for 4K Ultra HD:

• Renamed format “Blu-ray Disc” to “Blu-ray”
• Renamed format “Ultra HD Blu-ray” to “4K UHD”
• Updated the format icon for 4K UHD

The Movie Collector v19 release was just 6 weeks ago, but I have another big update for you now. Depending on how much of an IMDb junkie you are, today’s v19.1 update may even be a bigger deal than v19 itself 🙂

What’s new in Movie Collector v19.1

As you probably know, we have signed a more comprehensive (and also much more expensive) content licensing agreement with IMDb, which gives us access to more and fresher IMDb data.

Today we’ve released the first new features made possible by this new agreement!

New: IMDb Votes field

This new field indicates the number of votes on which the IMDb Rating is based. It is a good indication of 1. how popular the movie is and 2. how trustworthy the rating is.

• The IMDb Votes field is automatically filled in when you Add a Movie from Core. (Note: similar to IMDb Ratings and Links, getting IMDb Votes from Core requires an active Service Plan)
• It is also shown in the yellow IMDb box in your movie details panel, right below the logo and rating (for the Flex, QuickSilver and Carbon templates).
• Tip: add the IMDb Votes as a column in your list, so that easily see for all your movies or even sort on it to order your list by the movie’s popularity.

New: Update your IMDb Ratings and Votes in one go

The new IMDb content license gives us daily updates of the IMDb Ratings and Votes, so let’s make use of that daily fresh data now!

• Select some (or all) movies in your list, then right click and choose Update IMDb Ratings / Votes from the menu.
• This will connect to our Core and retrieve fresh IMDb Ratings and Votes for all selected movies.
• Don’t worry, this won’t take long. We have implemented a super efficient system that can update ratings/votes in chunks of 100 movies in one go.
• When done, it will report the number of movies it has updated the Ratings and Votes for.
• Note: using the “Update IMDb Ratings/Votes” feature requires an active Service Plan.

Other changes

• Renamed format “Blu-ray Disc” to “Blu-ray”
• Renamed format “Ultra HD Blu-ray” to “4K UHD”
• Updated the format icon for 4K UHD

With the big feature updates behind us (multi-collections, image syncing, Flex template, IMDb Votes, etc…), it is time for some smaller tweaks that were requested by our loyal users:

• More compact toolbar layout,to save screen space
• No more annoying Add to Collection / Wish List popup in Add Movies screen
• New “Transparent” styles for the Flex template, to show off your backdrops

Read more

The Movie Collector v19 release was just 2 months ago, but I have another big update for you now. Depending on how much of an IMDb junkie you are, today’s v19.1 update may even be a bigger deal than v19 itself 🙂

What’s new in Movie Collector v19.1

As you probably know, we have signed a more comprehensive (and also much more expensive) content licensing agreement with IMDb, which gives us access to more and fresher IMDb data.

Today we’ve released the first new features made possible by this new agreement!

New: IMDb Votes field

This new field indicates the number of votes on which the IMDb Rating is based. It is a good indication of 1. how popular the movie is and 2. how trustworthy the rating is.

• The IMDb Votes field is automatically filled in when you Add a Movie from Core. (Note: similar to IMDb Ratings and Links, getting IMDb Votes from Core requires an active Service Plan)
• It is also shown in the yellow IMDb box in your movie details panel, right below the logo and rating (for the Flex, QuickSilver and Carbon templates).
• Tip: add the IMDb Votes as a column in your list, so that easily see for all your movies or even sort on it to order your list by the movie’s popularity.

New: Update your IMDb Ratings and Votes in one go

The new IMDb content license gives us daily updates of the IMDb Ratings and Votes, so let’s make use of that daily fresh data now!

• Select some (or all) movies in your list, then right click and choose Update IMDb Ratings/Votes from the menu.
• This will connect to our Core and retrieve fresh IMDb Ratings and Votes for all selected movies.
• Don’t worry, this won’t take long. We have implemented a super efficient system that can update ratings/votes in chunks of 100 movies in one go.
• When done, it will report the number of movies it has updated the Ratings and Votes for.
• Note: using the “Update IMDb Ratings/Votes” feature requires an active Service Plan.

Other changes

• Several tweaks to improve the trial mode experience:
  • Bigger “+ Add Movies” button on the default toolbar
  • Improved “My CLZ Account” messaging when logging in with a CLZ Account.
  • New hints to Sync with CLZ Cloud after adding some movies.
  • Removed the ugly blue “hint box” that appeared when starting with an empty database.
• FIXED: Occasional freeze/hang problems after a period of program inactivity.

New:

• You can now add the field “Custom Image” as a column to your list.

Fixed:

• Multiple Collections:
  • Importing XML would always import into the “first collection” instead of the selected collection.
  • Importing XML could cause a crash.
  • There were some issues with the order of multiple collections.
• A couple of Flex template fixes.
• The details template was always reset to Flex.
• “Custom Image” checkbox wasn’t checked when using Find Cover via Main Screen.

Fixed:

• Automatically syncing cover images could happen too often
• Edit Screens:
  • While using Next/Previous, the cursor position wasn’t always retained
  • After scanning an image, some of the buttons would sometimes not be enabled

Movie Collector version 19 has arrived! Here’s what’s new:

• Manage multiple “collections” within one database file
• Automatic Cloud-syncing of your own “custom” images
• Add Box Sets as a single database entry
• A new super-adaptive “Flex” template for the Details Panel
• IMDb features are back!

Read on for the full details:

Read more

Great news! We now have a new and more comprehensive content licensing agreement with IMDb, which means the IMDb features are back in your CLZ Movies app!

• When adding new movies, it automatically downloads IMDb Ratings and Links again.
• The IMDb Number field has been replaced with an IMDb URL field. Of course, your existing IMDb numbers have automagically been turned into IMDb URLs.
• In your movie list, the IMDb Ratings are shown in “IMDb yellow” again 🙂

Because the new IMDb content license is more comprehensive, more IMDb related data and features are coming soon, including:

• Official cast and crew listings, straight from IMDb.
• A tool for updating all your IMDb Ratings with fresh ratings from IMDb.

Also new in this version:

• Fixed: The ‘region’ field was missing in the folder list

IMDb, IMDb.COM, and the IMDb logo are trademarks of IMDb.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

Fixed:

• Some fields weren’t entirely visible
• The old Vee Eight template was missing the IMDb logo
  
  (tip: try the NEW Flex template via menu View > Details View Template > Flex!!)

• Submitting a movie to Core could give an error

Great news! We now have a new and more comprehensive content licensing agreement with IMDb, which means the IMDb features are back in your Movie Collector software!

IMDb features are back!

• When adding new movies, it automatically downloads IMDb Ratings and Links again.
• The IMDb Number field has been replaced with an IMDb URL field. Of course, your existing IMDb numbers have automagically been turned into IMDb URLs.
• In your movie details panel, the IMDb Ratings are shown in “IMDb yellow” again 🙂

The new IMDb content license is more comprehensive, so more IMDb related data and features are coming soon, including:

• Official cast and crew listings, straight from IMDb.
• A tool for updating all your IMDb Ratings with fresh ratings from IMDb.

HOWEVER: Because the new license is also very expensive, we have decided to only deliver IMDb Ratings and Links to users who are on a valid, non-expired Update Plan.

Fixed for 64-bit version: Image scanning and web-cam scanning

Right after the release of v19, we started receiving reports from users that their image scanners would not be found when using the 64-bit version. Other users reported that the web-cam scanning would not work anymore.

A temporary work-around has been to use the 32-bit version of version 19.

In the meantime, our Windows developer Joe has been working hard to get both of these problems resolved and I am happy to report that both have been fixed in today’s version 19.0.8:

• 64-bit version now uses WIA to connect with image scanners. When acquiring, make sure to select the WIA driver for your scanner, not TWAIN.
• Scanning barcodes with your webcam scanner is working again.

If you have been using the 32-bit version as a workaround, please switch to the 64-bit version again (this is a choice during installation).

Then, please let us know your findings, is everything working again?

IMDb, IMDb.COM, and the IMDb logo are trademarks of IMDb.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

Great news! We now have a new and more comprehensive content licensing agreement with IMDb, which means the IMDb features are back in your CLZ Movies app!

• When adding new movies, it automatically downloads IMDb Ratings and Links again.
• The IMDb Number field has been replaced with an IMDb URL field. Of course, your existing IMDb numbers have automagically been turned into IMDb URLs.
• In your movie list, the IMDb Ratings are shown in “IMDb yellow” again 🙂

Because the new IMDb content license is more comprehensive, more IMDb related data and features are coming soon, including:

• Official cast and crew listings, straight from IMDb.
• A tool for updating all your IMDb Ratings with fresh ratings from IMDb.

Also new in this version:

• On some devices, Youtube trailers would not open full-screen, now they do!
• Fixed: Field Defaults were not properly set for the Country field.

IMDb, IMDb.COM, and the IMDb logo are trademarks of IMDb.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

Great news! We now have a new and more comprehensive content licensing agreement with IMDb, which means the IMDb features are back in your Movie Connect software!

• When adding new movies, it automatically adds IMDb Ratings and Links again.
• The IMDb Number field has been replaced with an IMDb URL field. Of course, your existing IMDb numbers have automagically been turned into IMDb URLs.
• A new “IMDb” option is now available to add as a column to your List View, which shows a nice IMDb logo with rating, linking to the movie page on IMDb.

Because the new IMDb content license is more comprehensive, more IMDb related data and features are coming soon, including:

• Official cast and crew listings, straight from IMDb.
• A tool for updating all your IMDb Ratings with fresh ratings from IMDb.

IMdb Rating showing in movie details panel

List View with “IMDb” column added

New IMDb area in Edit Movie screen

IMDb, IMDb.COM, and the IMDb logo are trademarks of IMDb.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

We fixed an issue with index numbers automatically incrementing when they shouldn’t.

Fixed:

• Custom Image checkbox wasn’t always checked in certain situations (e.g. unrecognized barcode screen and drag/drop image on the details panel)
• Images for items that don’t have a cover in Core didn’t upload automatically
• Images for items that don’t have a cover in your CLZ Cloud didn’t upload automatically
• Got rid of a couple of access violations in the main, filter and find cover screens
• Edit Screen: Covers tab: tabs weren’t high enough
• Import from Other Database:
  • Added 2 progress bars to keep track of the import
  • In rare cases you could get an empty extra collection tab after an import
• Fixed a rare “Range Check Error” happening for big databases
• Box Sets: After editing a movie that is part of a box set, the navigation of finding the different movies in the box set could get lost.
• Field Default setting for “Region” was resetting to “nothing” on each new start up.

You can now manage multiple sub-collections within one account. The collections will appear as little tabs at the bottom (e.g. like in Excel), so that you can easily switch between them.

Create and manage collections

Open the menu top left and click “Manage Collections” to:

• Create new collections
• Rename existing collections
• Remove collections
• Change their order (drag and drop)

Note: the CLZ mobile app currently does not support multiple collections yet (coming soon!). For now, you CAN sync multiple collections to the mobile app, but they will appear mixed together, as ONE database.

New: Notes as a column

The Notes field can now be added as a column in List View: