Mathew Brown

MediaCatalog: A5 binder pages for my movie library

29 December 2025 • 1 min read
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Table of Contents

Last updated December 29, 2025.

I love physical media. I like owning the thing, having a curated library, and watching movies without jumping between streaming services. But I don’t love the shelf space it takes up, or having stacks of cases out just so I can browse.

So I built MediaCatalog: a small Python CLI that turns a list of IMDb links/IDs into printable A5 pages that I can put in a binder. I can then browse my catalog - each page has all the essential info about a movie or television show I own. It’s an intentionally analog way to flip through my collection, pick something to watch, and then grab the disc from storage.

What it does

You give it a CSV with an imdb column (links or IDs). MediaCatalog:

The pages are designed to be browsable:

Quick start

Install:

pip install mediacatalog

Set an OMDb key:

export OMDB_API_KEY="your_key_here"

Create a CSV:

imdb,genre_override,series
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/,Drama,
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/,Crime,

Generate your binder pages:

mediacatalog --input movies.csv

Printing notes

A5 was a deliberate constraint: it prints cleanly, it’s easy to store, and it feels like a “real” catalog and its not as big as 8 1/2 x 11 paper.

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