How To Edit Faster By Organizing Your Assets

Norman Zizoff

3d ago in Editing Discussion 💻

This post is for my boy

@Mateusz Kwiatkowski

He asked me to make a post about organizing your assets since he just got a new SSD so here it is.

If you guys also have questions or anything you want specific help on, feel free to comment them below or DM me!

Here’s how I organize my editing assets to stay fast and efficient when working on projects.

First, I organize all my folders in my SSD by client.

For me, I have one folder on my SSD for the Ireland Boys, since I edit for them full-time.

Inside their folder, I keep two things: A folder of the current projects I’m working on and an assets folder.

I move all their past project folders to a hard drive to free up storage on my SSD (but more on that later...)

The assets folder is where all the important stuff lives.

Inside the assets folder, I recommend you break things down into four main categories: Videos, Music, Pictures/PNGs, and Sound Effects, and that's how mine are set up.

99% of the time you will need these 4 folders for every client, but some of the time too you will also need a few more that are specific to the client's videos.

For example, I also have a "Faces" folder where it's just PNG cutouts of the Ireland Boys' faces since they commonly have their faces in the corner of the screen when doing challenges, but not every client needs a "Faces" folder lmao.

But let’s start with the Videos folder.

I organize the Ireland Boy's "Videos" folder with two subfolders for their two brands, "1Life" and "IBPMerch."

Inside those two folders are different video assets they use to promote their brands.

Everything else, like memes, green-screen effects, overlays, and other YouTube videos I use often, just lives all bunched up in the videos folder.

Next is the Music folder, and I spend a lot of time organizing this one.

When I download music from Artlist.io or Epidemic Sound, I make sure to sort it by either genre or emotion.

I have folders for genres & emotions like:

"Action, Adventure, Ambient, Classical, Drama, Electro, Horror, Curious or

Sneaky, Trap, Drones, Orchestral, Happy, Sad, Rock, Sentimental, Inspiring," and more.

Inside each folder, I break it down even further.

For example, in the Action folder, I have different types of action music:

"Angry, Build, Chase, Dark, Epic, Fear, Mystery, and Suspense."

In the Adventure folder, I have:

"Build, Chasing, Epic, Hopeful, Jungle, Mystery, and Suspense."

And whenever I download a new song, if I don’t already have a folder for the genre or emotion it gives off, I create a new one.

🔑 (You can see my exact folder structure in the images below, check the folder path to see what folder it is in the screenshot too)

Pictures and PNGs are simpler.

I just keep common assets like emoji PNGs, red arrows, and social media logos here.

This folder is full of random stuff for me, but if you have a ton of one specific kind of PNG like a bunch of business icon PNG's for example, it's probably best to have a subfolder for that.

For Sound Effects, I organize them by the source.

I have folders for Artlist, Epidemic Sound, and YouTube Downloaded SFX.

Inside each source folder, I create subfolders for different kinds of sound effects like Risers, Hits, Switches, Cartoon, Drama, Explosions, Animals, and more.

This keeps everything easy to find, especially music and sound effects, which are the most important to organize well.

For random things like memes or pictures, I usually just search for them in Premiere when I need them.

But once your assets are organized, you’ll want to make it easy to use them in Premiere Pro.

For this, I recommend a plugin called Watchtower.

It syncs your computer folders to Premiere Pro’s bins in a single click, keeping everything organized automatically.

Watchtower costs $40, but it’s absolutely worth it for the time it saves.

There’s also a free plugin called Premiere Composer, which I heard does the same thing too, but I haven’t used it myself so maybe check that out.

But finally, when you’re done with a project, my last tip is to save money on storage by using a 2-5TB hard drive instead of storing your projects on an SSD.

When you're finished with a project, move your old projects to the hard drive and free up space on your SSD to continue editng on.

SSDs are faster for editing, but much more expensive than a hard drive so buy a hard drive with lots of storage for cheaper and store old projects there.

That’s it.

Take inspiration from how I organize my assets for my client and organize your client's assets in a way that suits you.

If you organize your assets well, editing becomes way easier and much faster.

Hope this helps y'all!

Let me know how you organize your assets if you don't follow this structure, and comment if you have any specific questions!

2 comments