Hey guys! Today I'm going to outline how I personally organize all of my editing resources.
1. Clips/Scenes
Clips arguably take up the most storage space (next to disk and media cache) in terms of editing resources. This is why I store mine on an external hard drive. Ideally, you'll want this hard drive to be at least 1 TB in size. Personally, the external drive I use has 2 TB of space. I've used roughly 2/3 of the storage capacity in my four years of owning this hard drive, maybe a little less actually.
It's always better to get a drive with a little more space than you may need. This is because external drives update in the background when plugged into your computer, and if you choose to have different software write to your external drive, you want to make sure you have a comfortable amount of leftover storage. Having extra storage is generally better for your drive's health as it ensures the drive won't be damaged by storage overflow, which can corrupt your files.
I store clips, full length movies, and TV episodes on my external drive. Because of this, I have separate folders dedicated to scenes, movies, and shows. In the scenes folder, I have a "movie scenes" and "tv show scenes" folder to split the two up. From there, I create more sub-folders dedicated to specific shows and movies.
For shows, I create even more sub-folders dedicated to specific characters, ships, happy scenes, sad scenes, etc. Personally, I don't have any sub-folders in my movies folder. But if you have a franchise downloaded like Harry Potter or Lord of The Rings, you may want to create sub-folders for that franchise. Sub-folders for DC and Marvel movies are also a good idea if you have a lot.
2. Project Files
I organize my project files in a similar manner to my clips and audios. My main projects folder is called "my projects", and within there I have subfolders, I edit the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer a lot, so I have a a subfolder dedicated to the show. I also have broader folders titled "TV show edits" and "movie edits" where I keep PFs for shows or movies I don't edit often. I also have a folder titled "people" where my PFs for edits of celebrities, actresses, etc. are stored.
Within each of my subfolders I have another folder titled "[folder title] AME". The reason I have this folder in every subfolder is because I render my edits using Adobe Media Encoder. AME produces a folder every time you attempt to render a video (whether the render fails or not). I store all of the folders in the "[folder title] AME" folder so I can keep a record of each of my renders (because why not).
I used to title my PFs using the theme and character/ship I was editing; for example: "badass faith edit", "happy buffy edit", but I found that I was making multiple badass faith edits and happy buffy edits, so I started titling them "badass faith edit 2", and so on. The problem is, if I wanted to go back into a specific project file, I would have a pretty hard time finding the PF I was looking for because they were all titled pretty similarly.
My new method has worked a lot better. If the song name isn't specifically memorable, I'll add the artist's name as well. So "boyfriend bechloe edit" becomes "boyfriend by BTR bechloe edit", or "boyfriend BTR bechloe edit", or "boyfriend - BTR bechloe edit"...you get the point.
3. Presets
I'm not sure about others, but I have a lot of my own animation presets (user presets). To keep them organized I - you guessed it - create subfolders. I have a subfolder for colorings, shakes, and effects. Most people use Magic Bullet Looks for their colorings, but I don't (at least not often). I save my colorings as an animation preset because I use things other than MBL to make colorings, which is why I have a coloring folder. If you pretty much exclusively use MBL for colorings, just create a shortcut of your "LooksBuilder" folder or MBL coloring folder and move it to your desktop for easy access.
This post was formatted pretty poorly in my opinion, but I hope it gave some of you an idea of where to start with organizing your resources if you don't have an organization system yet.
Feel free to contact me with any questions you have!
- eliza