The larger your movie and media collection, the harder it can be to manage. What happens if your carefully crafted naming convention proves incompatible with the new media server you’ve switched to? Or you’re missing artwork for a selection of movies? And is it too much to ask about obtaining subtitles without too much fuss?

The solution to all of these woes can be found with one incredibly clever, and completely free, tool for Windows, Mac and Linux. That tool is FileBot 4.0.

Version 4.0 has recently been released, and comes with the promise of improved subtitle lookup and auto-selection, subtitle naming preferences, improved series/movie detection, better performance and a refresh of the user interface that sees sections reordered to give more priority to more popular areas of the app like the renaming tool.

A refreshed UI, improved performance and better subtitle handling are just some of the highlights in FileBot 4.0.

The new build also comes with improved fault tolerance for OpenSubtitles, and an improved local index and handling of alias names.

Users can now open Episode/Movie matches with the Format Editor more quickly simply by double-clicking a match, allowing them to quickly make changes to the renaming convention.

Version 4.0 also now supports automatically fetching an episode list directly from the Rename panel, while the Episodes tab gains support for series auto-completion. There’s a new Meta-Attributes tool added to the Analyze tab too.

Advanced users gain a new Groovy Scratch Pad tool, accessible via the [F5] key – this allows them to more easily experiment with scripting, a key component of FileBot.

Certain behavioural changes have also been implemented – files are now copied with all metadata and attributes for example, while FileBot will now force alphabetical order when dropping in folders to the main window.

FileBot 4.0 also comes with the promise of massively improved performance when automatically detecting series, movies and subtitles. Windows users will also be pleased to learn the installer no longer bundles OpenCandy adverts.

If you’re building the ultimate digital media library using a solution such as XMBC or Plex, then FileBot is an essential tool in your armoury. Download FileBot 4.0 now for Windows, Mac or Linux.