Among all of the craziness happening in film and digital video, organization is still king. Being organized (and knowing how to) is a must for any one working in post-production. Yet so many times I see friends with terribly allocated scratch disks, disastrous file names, and scattered media. I used to be bad too, but I have seen the light and I come here today to share it with you. The Folders
The key to any decent folder organization is to keep things separated. Each file type needs its own folder. FCP project files go into the "FCP files" folder, footage into the "Footage" folder. There are a few reasons to do this:
You can always find what you're looking for.
It looks like you know what you're doing.
The folder organization will be different for everyone. Here's a little snapshot of my template:
Each project that I work on gets its own folder that looks exactly like the one I have right now.
How to Use This System
Create a project folder with each of the folders listed above.
Rename the folder "_template". The underscore out front insure that the folder will always appear towards the top
Bonus: While creating this template, you can also create template project files for After Effects, FCP, or whatever other programs you may use. That way you have you can also stay organized inside each program.
Lazy? Client gave you a messed up folders? Use our script
To show our appreciation for our readers, we've written a simple media organizer script. It will take all of the files inside a folder and attempt to organize them according to the folder system above.
A warning: It's not perfect; there may be a few bugs. Also, this will completely reorganize everything, so any existing project files will need to be relinked (AE and FCP make this pretty easy thankfully). And don't try to use this with an anything related to Avid; they've got their own way of doing things and it's best to leave it alone.
