Best Folder Setup for typical Project ? How2Org?

will-3 wrote on 5/21/2008, 1:53 PM
Creation & Organization for a projects folders has become an issue.

- With some stock footage & other reuseable clips in various folders scattered around on the system... say in the root directory of your Project Hard Disk.

- And some resuable clips that are project specefic...

- And with a veg Project file plus the raw AVI, WAV, PNG, JPG, etc files used to create & render those resuable clips...

- Then the actual Projects themselves with their own veg File, the various Project raw AVI's, WAV, PNG's, JPG's, etc...

You can see how folder organization can become complicated fast.

Certainly after your hard disk fills up... and you want to move some project folders to backup storage... but then they can't reach the resuable footage anymore because the path in the veg file is no longer any good...

So
1 - How do you guys organize your stuff?
2 - Do you just put all files... including "copies" of resuable footage, files, & materials in the same folder with the actual projects files... so you can then copy the Project Folder to where ever and the Project's veg file can still find every thing? (This uses more disk space because you are making copies of reusable stuff for every project.)
3 - Putting all reusable stock footage and other files on one disk and the projects on another sounds good at first... but if you ever reorganize that stock footage disk later on... or delete any of the old files that you are no longer using... then the client calls for a revision in their Project... your sunk... as all the project files are no longer available.

So how do you guys do this?

Thanks for all comments.



Comments

goshep wrote on 5/21/2008, 6:24 PM
Keep all your stock footage organized where you like it then maintain copies of used footage within each project folder. Storage is cheap...your sanity is not. That's how I do it. Each project has Music, VO, Video and Stills files within it. There may be a dozen copies of the same video clip across a dozen projects but again, storage is cheap. After "X" time passes, the entire project can be backed up to another drive/computer/BD with the click of a mouse. Don't know if that helps but at least it's a bump. Maybe some of the other users here who manage 20x the projects I manage will chime in.
Xander wrote on 5/21/2008, 7:24 PM
I will typically have a main project folder. If I use AE, I will have an AE sub-folder and within that all assets associated with the AE project. I will then have a Vegas folder. It too will include all assets, even if they are copies of what are in the AE folder. If I use any other software, I will again have a sub folder with all assets in it. My RAW files (video, photos and stock) are stored separately but copied into the various project folders if used.

As mentioned, storage is cheap. Additionally, having an extra copy is never a bad thing - backups are important!