Is there a program like Calibre, but for video?

[ficbot]

I need some advice on the best way to organize and play video on a Mac. I want something like Calibre, but for video. For now I have been putting everything into iTunes but it is getting unwieldy because I have both personal items and numerous videos I use at work (and this will grow). iTunes just is not flexible enough. The only way to keep everything tidy is with playlists and this seems to involve a lot of fiddling.

And I really think I need a tag-based sorting system because some videos are more than one thing. For example I have a series of exercise videos where they came in sets but I want to mix and match. So sometimes, I might want to mix and match (for example) by 'everything that came on Disk X' and other times I might want to mix and match by 'everything that is in category Y regardless of the disk it came on. My whole purpose in converting them for the computer was to be able to mix like that across the disks

So, here is my feature wish list. Can anyone tell me if there is a better option than endless fiddling with iTunes for this?

1) Either it does not manage my files and I can therefore keep them in a folder within my Dropbox area, or it does manage my files but I can specify the directory and store them in Dropbox. I appreciated that after my hard drive crash, I could just download my Calibre folder off Dropbox, tell the newly installed Calibre that it was there, and everything was just like before. Since many of these videos are for work, being able to back them up into Calibre is vital.

2) Browsing and sorting by tag. So as in the example above, I could either view all files off a certain disk, or I could view all files of a certain category and mix and match a playlist off of those. The ability to view and search from only a subset, as Calibre has with saved searches, would be a bonus. That way I could look at ONLY work videos, or ONLY exercise videos.

3) A player within the program. I want to be able to use a better-than-iTunes system to browse and them be able to immediately click on the video I want and have it play.

4) Support for the iTunes format (m4v I think) is vital as all my files are in this format. Ability to transfer to iPad/iPod Touch from within the program would be nice but is not vital as long as I could export and then send it to iTunes off the desktop.

Ideas? Suggestions? Help and assistance? Thanks in advance.

[ficbot]

Anyone? It's been more than a few days, no replies...

[ardeegee]

I've been playing around with video for years, and have never heard of anything remotely like that. When I'm converting video, I have a toolkit of various programs that I have to choose amongst.

This is your best resource for info:

http://www.videohelp.com/