How to organize video footage: six fields per clip
By Itai Raveh, Co-founder, Uplifted
To organize video footage, keep it in one library, name files to one pattern, and record six facts about every clip: what is shown, who is in it, what is said, whether there is text on screen, whether it is raw or finished, and where it came from. Folders store files. These six fields are what editors search.
Why do folders stop working for video footage?
A folder answers one question: where was this file put? Editors ask other questions. The ones below are the questions editors most often ask of a footage library in Uplifted, with names and details removed. Only one of them can be answered by a folder.
| The question | What answers it | Can a folder answer it? |
|---|---|---|
| Is this a raw clip or a finished ad? | Stage field | Only if nobody ever misfiles |
| Does it have text on screen? | On-screen text field | No |
| What is shown in the frame? | Shown field | No |
| Who is in it, and which creator shot it? | People and source fields | Partly |
| Does anyone say this line? | Said field (transcript) | No |
| Which shoot is it from? | Source field | Yes |
The library is what wastes the time, not the editor. A file name and a folder path hold two facts. The work an editor does needs six.
What should you record about every clip?
Record six fields for every clip. Each one exists because editors search by it. If a field would never be searched, leave it out.
| Field | What to record | Example | Filled by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shown | Product, setting and action in the frame | serum bottle, bathroom, applying | Automatic tagging |
| People | Creator or talent, and the persona they represent | creator name, new parent | Automatic tagging, plus your names |
| Said | The transcript, or the key line | the spoken hook, word for word | Automatic transcription |
| On-screen text | Whether captions, titles or graphics are burned in | yes or no | Automatic text reading |
| Stage | Raw, selected or finished ad | raw | Your team |
| Source | Shoot, date, creator or agency, original folder | spring shoot, agency name | Kept from the folder on import |
How should you name video files?
Use one pattern for every file, with the parts in the same order: brand, product, source, shoot date, stage, take. Write the date as year, month, day so files sort in time order. Use lower case and no spaces.
Never put the word final in a file name. A stage and a version say the same thing and stay true after the next round of feedback. The file name carries the facts that do not change; the fields carry everything else.
How do you separate raw footage from finished ads?
Raw footage is video as it left the camera or phone: no cuts, no music, no captions. Give every file a stage at upload and keep raw and finished in separate top-level folders. Add captions, titles and music only in the edit, so a raw clip is always a clean clip.
Keep the originals at full quality. A compressed copy loses quality again every time it is re-exported, and raw footage is re-exported for every new format.
How do you organize a footage library that already exists?
Start with new footage and work backwards only where it pays. Five steps, in this order:
- Bring everything into one library. Connect the drives where footage already lives instead of copying files by hand, so there is one place to search and the originals stay untouched.
- Agree one naming pattern. Write it down, apply it to every new file, and do not rename the back catalogue until the pattern has held for a month.
- Fix the six fields and their allowed values. Decide the short list of values for stage, source and product names. A field with free text turns into a second folder mess.
- Fill the fields at upload, not later. Tagging that waits for a quiet week does not happen. Whatever can be filled automatically should be; the rest is quick when it is done on the day of the shoot.
- Review the searches that failed. Once a month, ask editors what they could not find. Each miss becomes a new tag value or a fix to the naming pattern.
Which parts can software do for you?
Four of the six fields can be filled without anyone typing. Uplifted syncs footage from Google Drive and Dropbox, keeps the folder structure and the full-quality originals, and on upload transcribes what is said, tags what is shown and slices long videos into searchable clips. You add custom tags for your own products, personas and campaigns.
Search then runs across spoken words, transcripts, descriptions, file names and tags, and matches on-screen text as well as dialogue. Stage and source remain your team's call: set them with the naming pattern and the folder each shoot arrives in. To search by what is in the picture, see how to search inside your video footage.
Frequently asked questions
Q. How do I find only the raw clips and not the finished ads?
Give every file a stage when it enters the library: raw, selected or finished. Put the stage in the file name and keep raw and finished footage in separate top-level folders, so the split survives any tool you move to. Then a search or filter on stage returns only raw clips, whatever shoot they came from.
Q. How do I find clips with no text overlay?
Make it a rule that captions, titles and graphics are added only in the edit, and mark every file as raw or finished. Raw clips are then clean by definition. For older footage, record a yes or no for on-screen text on each clip, because a file name or a folder will not tell you.
Q. How do I see which folder a clip is in?
Keep the original folder path as part of the clip's source, and do not flatten folders when you move footage into a library. The path tells you the shoot, the date and who delivered it. Uplifted preserves the folder structure when it imports from Google Drive or Dropbox.
Q. How do I find a video by its file name?
Use one naming pattern, so that a search for any part of the name, such as the product, the creator or the date, narrows the list. In Uplifted, search covers file names together with spoken words, transcripts, descriptions and tags, so a half-remembered name and a remembered line both lead to the file.
Q. How do I find a video I uploaded last week?
Write the shoot date into the file name as year, month, day, and files sort in time order in any tool. Keep the upload date as well, because footage often arrives days after it was shot. Searching by date range then finds the clip even when you remember nothing else about it.
Q. What is raw footage?
Raw footage is video exactly as it left the camera or phone, before any editing: no cuts, no music, no captions or graphics. It is the material editors build ads from. Finished ads are the opposite: cut, captioned and exported for one placement. A library should always say which of the two a file is.
Q. What is the best folder structure for video footage?
Keep folders shallow and use them for one thing: where the footage came from. A workable structure is brand, then shoot or creator, then raw and finished. Do not build folders for products, formats or themes. Those are fields on the clip, because one clip belongs to several of them at once.
Let the library fill in the fields
Sync your Drive or Dropbox and search footage by what is said and shown, not by where it was filed.