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Organize Your Life

Well, OK, maybe not your whole life, but certainly that part of your life that involves editing. Planning your project is critical, so I want to spend the rest of this chapter making sure you start off on the right foot.

There are three stages to getting organized:

System-wide naming conventions

Organizing your computer

Organizing Final Cut Pro

Naming Conventions

I realize that nothing empties a room faster than some intensely earnest person saying, "We need to have a meeting to discuss naming conventions." Most people would rather watch paint dry. But naming conventions are importantespecially when it's 11 o'clock at night and you can't find that one graphics file that has the closing animation to the project you've been working on for the last six weeks, because you forgot how it was named or where you stored it.

Perhaps spending a little time thinking about file names isn't such a bad idea after all.

Here's why developing a system to consistently name files is important. A typical Final Cut project contains hundreds of files:

Video files

Audio files

Music files

Sound effects files

Graphics files

Project files

And narration, backups, alternate versions, and, well, you get the picture

If you already have a naming system in place, great! You can skip to the next section. If not, I can save you the meetinghere's the naming system I use. You can use my system until you think up a better one. Believe me, using something is much better than using nothing!

Let's create a fictitious client named "Just-a-Moment Productions." In my system with every new client, I create a two-letter code that represents that client, in this case, "JM."

Next, when Shannon at Just-a-Moment calls me with a new job, I assign a job number and create a new, four-digit job code: "JM04," which means the fourth job from client JM.

Now, whenever I create a new file for this project (except media files, which I'll talk about next), the file name always starts with "JM04." That way, if a file gets lost, or wanders away, I can easily figure out where it belongs.

Chapter 3, "Gather Your Media." (I also keep a database of all my videotapes so that I can find a shot or location when I need it later, long after the project is over.)

The nice thing about this file-naming system is that files automatically sort by project, file type (animation, image, sound effect, music), act (or location in the project), location within the act, and version. This automatic sorting makes finding a file and understanding where it goes fast and easy. Clean. Simple. Easy. Neat.

Organize Your Computer

As you read in the Introduction, editing video is at least a two hard-drive propositioninitially because using two hard drives improves performance, but more importantly, because it simplifies organization.

In the next two exercises, you are going to set up your system so that, when you are finished running the tutorials in this book, your system will be ready to edit in the real world.