The Best Video Editing File & Folder Organization
Ever find your video project folders getting disorganized? Tired of re-naming files as FINALFINAL.mp4 or THISISREALLYTHEFINALVIDEO.mp4? I know, we've all been there. Video editing takes a ton of time (and patience), but organizing your files can make it so much faster! In the past year, my colleague and fellow awesome editor, Adam Lee, introduced me to a folder template structure that made me so much more productive!
I keep a copy of this template folder on my desktop and just copy it over to a new folder each time I start a new project. Below you can download the project folder template for free to use on your own projects. But to give you a preview of how it works, here is an overview and how you can build on it.
- 01 Project Files
- 01 Premiere (save your Premiere Pro Project Files here)
- 02 After Effects (save your After Effects Project Files here)
- You can also make a "03 Photoshop" or "04 Illustrator" if you happen to work with additional software as well.
- 02 Media
- 01 Video
- Within this folder I'll make additional folders like "01 Day 1" or "01 Card 1" etc.
- 02 Audio
- 01 Recorded Audio
- 02 Music
- You can also add a folder for SFX.
- 03 Photos
- 04 Graphics
- 01 Video
- 03 Exports
- 01 AE Exports (For exported After Effects comps)
- 02 Rough Cuts
- I name my rough cuts like this, "01projectname_roughcut" , "02projectname_roughcut" and so on.
- 03 Final Cuts
- I name my final cuts like this. "01projectname_finalcut", "02projectname_finalcut" and so on.
- 04 Documents
- 01 Model Releases
- 02 Scripts
- 03 Shot List
- You can also add additional folders if needed.
- 05 Final Assets
- I use this folder to place all final video assets, such as the final video export, thumbnails, closed captions etc.
Let me know how it works for you!