Manage Video Files for YouTube (Video Editing Storage Workflow)

Today, I’m going to be taking you guys behind the scenes and onto my computer to show you how I organize all of the video files for this YouTube channel. I’m Amanda Horvath and I’m all about helping business owners and entrepreneurs leverage the power of video without breaking the bank or taking up tons of their time. So, if you’re looking to use video in your strategy this year, then be sure to subscribe and click the bell to be notified every time I release new video. If you are just starting out with that video editing then you likely don’t I understand the importance of organizing your video files from the get go. What often happens with beginner editors is that they might save their project file to a random location and then their footage is in a downloads folder or on their desktop and when they go back to that footage a week later, or maybe two weeks later to pick up the project to re-edit it, they open up the project file to find that everything is offline and all the work that they’ve previously done is useless, it’s a nightmare.

The file structure that I’m going to be sharing with you today, I have developed over the last year and a half to two years, however long I’ve been running this YouTube channel so I have worked out all of the kinks by the stage and it works for me perfectly so I hope that you can take it and adopt it for your brands. I always store my footage on an external hard drive and that’s because the video files are huge and they can take up a lot of your storage within your computer so it’s best to get them off on a hard drive and then whenever you are going to edit your videos, all you got to do is grab that hard drive and plug it in. Now, if you need a recommendation for the best hard drives for video editing, then you can go check out my other video related to that, somewhere in the cards. So, on here you can see that I just named my hard drive whatever the year is, right there and then I have a folder for AH content.

Now, you might only be editing YouTube videos, I have client projects every once in a while and some other type of projects files that I organize as well, so you can kind of ignore this part over here, but I have a folder for AH content and then I have a YouTube 2020 folder.

So, I organize it by months and what I do is I put a one in front of the month and that’s because it will organize it according to the number versus the letter of that month. So that makes it really nice and clean. And then whatever I shoot for that month, it is organized into individual project files.

So here you can see, I shot three Reasons To Buy The Course, Bloopers in my Mission, the December Batch recording, so this is whenever I do a whole batch recording where I record four to five videos in a month, I put it in there, this was probably overflow and I switched hard drives in 2020 so I just put December in January just to have it all in one place in an interview that I did.

So, in February I did a talk, I have another batch, and I did a meditation video that was a one-off shoot as well as another batch.

So that is how I organize it, at the overall level in terms of the projects whenever I’m shooting them. So now let’s go into the individual project folders and show you how I organize those, because this is where it’s really key. You wanna have everything related to that project within this project folder. So, say this is the batch that I shot for March. So, once again I shoot four to five videos in one sitting and I explain that in another video, if you wanna go check that out.

So the way that I organize this is I have an zero one Premiere folder.

Now this is where I save any sort of project files. So, in this case, I was testing out several different outsourcers this month so I have several different projects but, otherwise I might just have one project and I typically named the project March the month, the batch, and then I have a date after it. And then, when I do that, Adobe Premiere Pro will automatically save any associated files say, the auto saves, any previews that it does within this one place as well including any motion graphics, template media, that are mogots, one of my favorite things if you’re looking for some DIY video graphics you can go check out that video as well. So that will all be saved in here so, I don’t really care if it starts to look kind of messy because it’s all in the zero one Premiere project file.

So, then I have zero two footages, and this is where I save all of my footage, and I have A-roll and B-roll.

So, A-role is the footage that you’re currently looking at and B-roll is the on-camera screen recording that you are looking at. So sometimes it might be photos, sometimes it might be a screen recording, other times it might actually be B-roll that I’m shooting with my camera. So, all of that footage is housed within the B-roll folder. Now, within the A-roll folder, I have a folder for audio and video.

Now I personally record my audio and video separately which is why I have two different folders for it. You might record them together, so say you’re using an iPhone with one of the affordable Lavalier microphones that I recommend then you would have just one folder for video. And you might even just put all of the files within the A-roll folder. And if I do create proxies, which I have talked about in another video related to outsourcing, if it’s over your head, don’t worry about it but I put those proxies here. In this case, I had another video that I shot which was a vlog showing the behind scenes of how it’s set up my YouTube channel, so I had that folder just an extra random folder that I separated it out and put it here.

So, then I have have a music folder and this is where I will keep any music that I might use for any of these videos so, I had music for the vlog and what I do is I typically like to separate them into the amount that I download them. So, I use artlist.io, I love it for music I’ll link to it in the description below. But what I do is I might go through and do an initial download where I find my first six favorite songs or however many that I’m feeling and I download those.

Now, I might use those videos within the edit and then find out, you know what?

I don’t really like any of these, I kinda need to go get more, so I might have a second round of downloads. So this is just a personal preference, it just makes it easier for me to see which files I downloaded separately, like on the second time that aren’t yet in my project file and then I can just drag and drop this folder into Premiere so, that’s how I do it. Then I have the zero four graphics folder. So this is where I would put any sort of graphics that I am importing, so say logos or the transitions that I have in my videos or anything like that in this case, it looks like I have some, there’s some footage that an outsourcer put in here, this could technically be B-roll, but he chose to put it in graphics, which is totally fine. So then I have an zero five exports folder, and this is where I keep all of the exports from the project file.

Now, this folder is key, ’cause let’s say you want to go back to a video that you shot six months ago, then all you have to do is navigate to whatever month you shot it in, go to wherever that, you know, it was a batch or whatever to the exports folder and bam, there it is.

And if I have had like rough cuts which I don’t typically with my YouTube channel but if I did say for client work, typically clients have a couple of rounds of edits then I might have like a rough cuts folder as well as like a final folder. So, however you want to organize it from there, but in this case I didn’t have it. So now let’s hop into Premiere and I’ll show you how I actually organize my Premiere project files. So within here, this is my batch for January and you can see it’s actually very similar to how I organize it within my Finder.

So, same file structure, if I wanted to just take these and drag and drop the folders, they would match perfectly. Now, for the zero one folder, what I do is I turn the zero one into sequences instead of Premiere. So, these are the actual edits or any sort of assistant editing files, sequences that I might have so, this is like all of the footage labeled and these are the individual edits. So that’s how I organize those and if I have any teasers, I would put them in there and maybe some other random files. And then for footage, once again, it’s the exact same structure as within my Finder, I have the A-roll and I got the B-roll broken down and then the music, same situation, although this one didn’t have music so technically I don’t even need this folder, but, hey, it’s here.

And then graphics as well, I have all of the graphics that I use in all of my YouTube videos in one folder and this is also where I put any adjustment layers or anything else that might be going into the sequence, like a color matte or anything like that.

And if you’re like, I don’t even know what she’s talking about, then, just don’t worry about it but at least you have the basic file structure. Now, one other thing to note, I do have graphics that are the exact same in every single project file so I actually don’t take those and put them into every single zero four graphics folder because that would be taking up unnecessary space on my hard drive. So, instead I have a folder called other, where I keep all of my graphics in one place. I used to edit my videos in 1080p sequences now I edit them in 4K so I just have two different folders for that and then I also have a folder for social graphics that I might create like teasers for you see these on my Instagram, if you’re not following me you should because we should be friends and I love chatting with you guys.

And then I also have a folder for my thumbnails. So, the thumbnails, I organize the exact same way as I do my other ones, and I do it by month.

So, under the zero two footages, I have any sort of potential thumbnail choices for that where I’m just awkwardly posing and pointing to the camera and then I import these into Premiere to actually add the graphics. So, if you wanna see the breakdown of how I create my thumbnails, then you can go check out the other video related to that. And then within the zero five exports folder for the thumbnails, that’s where I have all of the options with the text.

So, I like to save the image without the text on there, just in case I want to go back and change my style of thumbnails or split test, it’s just a cleaner way of doing that and then yeah, all of the thumbnails are in one place, nice and lovely organized.

Yes. I’m very typey. Now, in case a videographer is watching this and wants to know how I organize my client projects then, I will show you that as well. I do it the exact same way that I would do my own projects files as well.

So, this is a project and you can tell here I didn’t have graphics or music, so I don’t have a graphics or music folder, I still keep the same number structure so I just jump from zero two footage to zero five exports, have the Premiere file in one place.

I use PluralEyes to sync my audio and video together, if you don’t understand what that means, don’t worry about it, but it spits out an XML file I also save that into the zero one Premiere project file and then I have footage broken up. If I have multiple days shoots, I break it up into the multiple days, have B-roll, I have my interviews however, I feel like breaking it down and then I have the exports so, that’s about it. So here’s another example of a client project. You can see, once again, it’s the exact same structure.

So, there you go, that is how I organize all of the video files for this channel, I hope this was helpful, if it was, please go ahead and click like, drop a comment below and I’ll see you in the next video.

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