How To Name Your Files To Streamline Your Video Project
Are you looking for a suitable method of tracking projects for grading and archiving? Here is a standard of practice I developed for our students about ten years ago that drastically improved our workflow process. With hundreds of projects, shows, and events being produced each year, we needed a better system in place, and it had to start with project naming.
The first step was to determine the categories. Students are producing short films, documentaries, music videos, etc. As they move into the upper-level classes, they create projects for clients and often get hired to be long term producers for sports highlight films. Our daily news broadcast generates over 150 shows a year, plus there are news packages inserted in them, so that number grows to over 300 items to archive just from the news program alone.
Aside from teaching, we also run NCTV, our district television station. In recent years, I refer to it as “NCTV Media” since most of our audience is watching online and through social media, not on their television. Original programming includes the recording of speaking events, sports, and several public affairs shows produced by our Broadcast Journalism students.
Students are taught to follow a few simple ruled as soon as they begin a project. The raw footage folder on our network, the project name in the editing software, and the sequence (timeline) need to be named the same. Every rubric starts with grading the project and sequence naming, so students quickly catch on to this concept.
They need to keep the names short but easily identifiable. If they refer to a sport with both girls and boys teams, they should add that in the description—for example, Soccer-Boys rather than just Soccer in the title. The year in the title always refers to the second semester, as in the class of 2021.
Here is the naming rule: (Project Type)-(Short Title)-(School Year) along with some examples.
Editing Projects & Sequence Names
“Your project name & sequence name must be the same!”
Having the right naming conventions comes in handy when you are searching the archives later on. I can typically find the video files I need with just a few keywords such as Film, or PKG followed by a year or description.
Hopefully, this series provides you with some workflow strategies that make life easier. Maybe this will spark a new idea that you implement in your teaching environment. I would love to hear what workflows you have created, so shoot me an email at tom.wilson@northcantonschools.org, or post it on Stream Semester’s Facebook Group Broadcast Education Professionals. We're all in this together, folks.
Meet the Author, Tom Wilson
Tom Wilson is the coordinator of district media and video-journalism at Hoover High School in North Canton Ohio. You can follow the work of his students on social media @nctvmedia and his unique production vehicle, the Mobile Storyteller Project.