The streaming platforms have a combined catalogue of tens of thousands of titles and a recommendation algorithm that will confidently suggest you rewatch something you've already seen three times because it doesn't know you've seen it. A personal film catalog solves a different problem: it's a record of what you actually own or have watched, rated by your own criteria, queryable in ways that no platform's filter system allows.
The Rating That Isn't Star Count
TMP Rating is the differentiated field in this template — a personal rating system that exists alongside IMDb Link rather than instead of it. The IMDb score for a film represents the aggregate opinion of tens of thousands of reviews. Your TMP rating represents whether you, specifically, with your particular tolerance for pacing and your reaction to that cinematographer's approach to handheld, thought it was worth the two hours. They're different data points. Having both in the record means you can filter for films you rated highly that IMDb rated modestly and vice versa — that divergence pattern tells you something about your taste relative to consensus opinion.
Quality is the format field — 4K HDR, 1080p BluRay, 720p encode, DVD rip. For a physical or digital library, Quality determines which version gets played and which version is a backup or a placeholder pending an upgrade. Filtering for a genre by Quality to build a 4K night watchlist is a basic operation that requires this field.
Cast and Discovery Fields
Director, Actors, and Producer are the navigational fields. A personal rating of 8/10 for a Villeneuve film carries different weight than a 8/10 for a director whose work you're only starting to explore — the Director field makes those patterns searchable. Filtering your collection by director produces a filmography view; comparing your ratings across a single director's work over time reveals preference patterns that browsing history doesn't capture.
Production companies, Homepage, and Trailer round out the discovery layer. For a collector focused on specific studio output — a24, Blumhouse, Studio Ghibli — the production company field enables filtering that genre tags alone can't provide.
Barcode handles the physical media side. A scan of the physical disc barcode at acquisition ties the digital record to the physical object — useful for verifying a disc is in the library and for identifying it when it ends up without a case. Available Now is the loan tracking field: a disc that's been lent out is technically in the catalog but not currently accessible, and that distinction matters at 11 PM when you want to watch something you own.
The Catalog at Scale
Backdrops alongside Poster is the visual layer that makes browsing the library something better than a text list. At 300 entries, a catalog with cover art and production stills is a substantially different browsing experience than one with titles alone — the visual recognition memory is faster and more reliable than title recall for the majority of the library.
Runtime is the field that drives scheduling decisions. A 95-minute film and a 172-minute film are different commitments. Filtering by runtime to find something under two hours on a Tuesday evening is a query that a streaming platform's "short films" category only approximates. In a personal catalog, it's a direct field filter that returns exactly what you're looking for.