In the past, I often found myself digging into the archives of video and photos I\u2019ve shot only to find a massive folder filled with filenames like VID039328.mp4. In those moments, I deeply regretted not being better about keeping my videos and photos organized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually I got fed up and today my folders are neat and ready to browse. Whether you\u2019ll be giving your videos to someone else to edit, editing them yourself, or just saving them, these tips can make your life a lot easier when it comes time to access your video files.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having a hierarchy of folders is the key to an organized media collection of any kind. You have to decide what makes the most sense for you, but start with big categories and work your way down. I like to do it by month or season so \u201cMarch 2015\u201d or \u201cSpring 2015\u201d, then by event, and then let the event dictate any further organization. Figure out a system that works for you and stay with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A big mistake I used to make was letting content from many events stack up and then trying to organize it all at once. Instead, sort things out one at a time as soon as they happen. It\u2019s much easier to manage smaller batches. Plus, with the event fresh in your mind you\u2019ll be able to make better decisions on how you\u2019ll want the files to be ordered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More often than not you\u2019ll look back at your footage and realize that there\u2019s a lot of crap that you\u2019ll have no use for. If it\u2019s truly unusable, just delete it. There\u2019s no point in filling up your hard drive with garbage. If it\u2019s low quality but you\u2019re not ready to part with it just yet, put it in a separate folder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You don\u2019t want to have to rewatch a hundred videos just to find the one you\u2019re looking for. By creating concise yet descriptive titles, you\u2019ll be able to pick out the exact clip you\u2019re looking for with little effort. Instead of filenames like \u201cSkiing 1\u201d, try something like \u201cSkiing Vail Day 1 \u2013 First Run\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chances are chronological order will be the easiest way to view your videos and photos. To make a neat list, label everything with a number at the start of the file name. This makes it easy to sort alphabetically by filename and view everything in the order that it happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the past, I often found myself digging into the archives of video and photos…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[209],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n