64 | MAXIMUMPC | JUL 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
R&D^
EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USEHOW TO
Take control of your ever-expanding video and movie collection,
so you can play whatever you want without spending hours
searching for it! —MARK EDWARD SOPER
Organize and Tag Videos
HOW TO
Organize and Tag Videos
HOW TO
WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY
Free, http://www.get.live.com
MOVIEMANAGER 2.02
Free, http://www.moviemanager.ca
MOVIESSUBMIT YOUR IDEA Have a
great idea for a How To project?
Tell us about it by writing to
[email protected].WHAT YOU NEED
TIME = 128 MIN
I
f your PC is the hub for
your home entertainment
system, keeping track of
your video collection isn’t easy.
Whether it’s footage you’ve cap-
tured with your own DV cam-
corder, gaming trailers you’ve
collected from the Internet, or
archives of all your DVDs, it’s
easy to wind up with loads of
media files and yet have no
easy way to find that one piece
of video you’re dying to see. No
matter what types of videos you
crave, keeping them organized
is an essential task. It’s also easy.
We’d love to tell you that
there’s a single free program
that’s ideal for keeping track
of every kind of video content
you own—but we can’t. We have , however, discovered a pair of free programs
that can make almost any video collection easy to manage. For organizing any-
thing other than commercial DVDs, we recommend Microsoft’s free Windows
Live Photo Gallery, an update to Vista’s Windows Photo Gallery that works with
both Windows Vista and Windows XP. For organizing your DVD collection,
whether you prefer to play your movies from their original DVD sources or from
hard-disk backup copies, you’ll want to use Rock Solid Software’s MovieManager.
Both apps offer flawless organizational options for your treasure trove of titles,
and we’re going to show you exactly how to use them.