I understand it's likely viewed by many here as a competing website in some respects, but I feel it's very much worth discussing as they did offer a similar member contributed database, but with open contribution for all existing formats, not just a limited format selection. Was quite shocked and greatly disappointed today when I found the e-mail from Discogs in my Inbox announcing that they have made the decision to shut down Filmogs on August 31st of this year. I joined Filmogs not even one year ago upon realizing theirs was the only only active video release database where one can contribute and catalog VHS releases. How crazy is this? The most popular home video format of the previous century, and that was the only active website with a actively updated, user contributable, database for the format. I think many people, myself included, had high hopes for VHSCollector.com, but sadly that website's creator/owner is only interested in making a buck and not in the video cassette catalog project the site promotes as only paid members may contribute to that database.

So here's a copy of the official announcement message concerning Filmogs.

While I'm sort of shocked I'm also on the other side of the coin not surprised at all.

The way normal discogs is is just a waste, they never send emails even when I had the app I never got notifications of sales.
So again not really shocked and ebay is really the king for this old tech stuff sitting around and nobody has ever taken much
of a chunk from them.

From my point of view it will spare me a fight with them because most of the LD information was lifted straight from LDDb.com (including mint marks and user notes, without the proper crediting) and often without a link back to LDDb.

I had regrets for years not venturing into a lot more formats (including LPs when Discogs didn't exist) through KolleXion.com but even HDDVD or CED here got no traction and Filmogs seems to show that Discogs departing from music formats is also not an easy step out.

I'll continue focusing mainly on LDs and will eventually finish the hardware section one day!

Julien

I have the same issue with Discogs not sending emails.

Tried to troubleshoot with them but they just told me "I reject their emails".
Not true: I own the mail server and they never even tried to connect to deliver them.

I just gave up telling them their notification system was broken after a while.

Julien

"Liberate" their VHS (and anything else lddb doesn't have) database info and use it here.
If you have too much work then delegate.

This site would explode if it offered VHS and DVD. The average IQ would also drop 10 points though so while I’d like a few more users I hope we just stick to “failed” discs of some kind. I don’t want to talk to Black Diamond Disney idiots and mall otaku.

Something will come along some day. Interest in physical media doubles every year.

For DVD & Blu-Ray the only other option I'm aware of is FilmAf, which I've been a member there for many years, but it's not a heavy on the details kind of site. Their primary concern is with the front cover image, UPC, publisher catalog number, and the original MSRP. All data anyone submits takes days to get approved for addition to the database. I don't mind a delay for someone to review and validate the submitted data, but Filmogs proved you could have instant addition and the community self-policed and filled in the missing data quite well. FilmAF is terrible for variants though, we all know you can have multiple pressings of a disc, sometimes even with totally different label art on the DVD/BD, but FilmAf won't consider such if the UPC code is still the same.

UMD are "failed" discs of some kind but apparently aren't worth adding here.
Is Betamax offered on any sites atm?

Personally I'd love to see 8mm, Super 8mm and/or 16mm added. It would be a potential minefield though, where could you start? Do the negatives have marks on them, especially if they are not retail boxed reels.

It would be great to have a catalogue of things like the Disney, Warner Bros and Pathe news and cartoon reels. I have a Disney Mickey Mouse 50th birthday special edition Super 8mm box set. Disney did some great 8mm stuff way back in the day.

A mighty challenge if Julien or someone else were to accept it, but the reward would be great I think.

I would have liked to see UMD personally, but enough people weren't for it I suppose.

I agree with others that this should remain more of a obscure/smaller format site. Betamax, would nice, as would 16mm and 32mm as the person above me suggested.

I also agree with Zeta that VHS should just not be on here.

At that point though, it's gone well above and beyond the "Laserdisc Database".

I dunno, I think Betamax would just open another can of worms; all the international releases and such. I think V2000 would be a better candidate solely because of how short-lived it was, and it was only sold in Europe, and there weren't many commercial titles so it'd be a bit more manageable than betamax or even laserdisc.

Something like U-Matic would only require a hardware database since it had no commercial titles at all that I know of!

first I hear about filmlogs but usually use ant movie catalogue and put in my own titles for the 3 formats that i never saw a data base for VHS, beta and Video8 but I only have a small collection. might have to something different when or if it ever gets larger.

The website I used to use before blu-ray was dvd aficionado (which has gone through a few renames over the years) but their biggest problem was that they never had every release; a lot of time I had to subsitute for a domestic DVD release with a matching UK or a nordic one. blu-ray.com is way more comprehensive at least so I haven't ran into that problem there.

Considering dvdaf has been around for almost 20 years and it's still missing a lot of releases, I'd hate to imagine trying to put together a comprehensive list of all the titles released for yet another format. Then again, you gotta start somewhere I guess!

I used DVD Aficionado in the past as well as DVD SPOT (RIP) and now use Invelos DVD Profiler which is easy and seems to the best for me. I wish Blu-ray.com had more DVDs but as long as there is a good database for BDs I don't care for the dvds as much since I'm using DVD Profiler.

Very sad...



Probably much more than 10 points, have you been to the bluray.com forums?

Reading stuff like this just makes me appreciate the LDDB even more and all the effort that Julien puts in.

Have a interesting personal story concerning BetaMax. Back in late 2018 I began the quest in earnest to catalog Japanese Anime titles released in North America on the format, and the sheer lack of information on the internet concerning Beta releases is truly appalling considering how devoted the fans of the format come across as being. I joined two different, then still existing, Betamax User Groups on Yahoo, and made direct inquiries with a couple of prominent people in the Beta fandom, and quite literally no database of Beta titles exists anywhere to anyone's knowledge.

This was part of my massive upset with the owner of VHSCollector.com as his database was intended for both VHS and Beta releases, but he's attempting to operate the site as a for-profit business in what I feel is a rather shady manner. That being you must be a financial donor member to even make a submission to the database, and then he tends to do campaigns for additional donations beyond that to "keep the site going" as though the annual cost of operation is some phenomenal amount. And additions to the database of that site are few and far between since it truly does seem to be just a one man behind the scenes operation. The initial burst of the majority of releases in that database were added year one, after the site was launched via a crowdfunding campaign. Now the additions to the database seem to be a couple hundred additions at best every month or two, implying that even the financially pledged members are fed up or losing interest in the project.

And this takes me back to Filmogs, where it is/was a anything and everything released sort of database.

To be clear though, I'm not suggesting Julien should compromise the integrity of LDDB by adding new formats to this site's database. I'm perfectly happy with a specialized site that provides a thorough focus on the formats it concentrates attention upon. This is just me ranting that I feel the impending loss of Filmogs is a blow and a setback to the home video preservation & collecting communities as a whole.

Also this is my aforementioned commercial Beta anime release project findings thus far, just in case anyone is interested.:
http://www.tweeg.psoarchive.com/collect/anime_betamax_checklist.pdf

That’s actually a much bigger list than I thought it would be. I remember basically all of that stuff but they were VHS versions.

Would DIVX be worth tracking here, perhaps? Is there a list of released discs out there?

Aren't they, by definition, all dead and unplayable by now?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX

Julien