Asset organization: Getting set up

- There are a multitude of building blocks that video editors can use to assemble a video. If you take a look at this timeline, you'll see a high level view of how all of these disparate assets come together to make this happen. I know this is a lot to take in, so let's look at things a little more closely. Let's talk about all of these different types of assets. There's video, of course, and some of these video clips are interviews. Some are B-roll, which is just supplemental visuals intercut with the interviews. And some is standalone scene footage. There's also audio clips, including dialogue. - At Project Reload, we've already started to see the change in individuals that have participated. - And sound effects. (helicopter whirring) And music. (dramatic music) There's still images, including photographs and graphics. There are many various types of titles, and within each of these asset types, are many different types of effects, including video effects, color correction, audio, speed, and transition effects. So lots of elements coming together to create a cohesive story. And actually this only contains a very small fraction of the assets that I had available. This is a 25-minute film, and I had 2,100 minutes of footage available. That means I had 85 times as much footage to start with. And through the careful art of editing, I whittled it down to this result. So that is an 85-to-1 shooting ratio, which is simply the relationship between the overall footage and the footage that ends up making it into the video. A narrative film might have a shooting ratio of 10-to-1, whereas a documentary like this one could come in at 85-to-1 or 100-to-1 or even 200-to-1 or more. That's a whole lot of assets to keep track of. Now, ideally this arsenal of assets should be as organized as possible. Take a look at one of my recent projects. As you can see, I've used multiple levels of bin organization to categorize and classify my footage. Defining a well-labeled, multi-tiered bin structure will let you better locate and more easily screen the footage during the assembly process. Let's talk about these assets on a more granular level. Each and every asset in a video project has a lot of detailed information attached to it where you can find out all sorts of quantitative characteristics. This information, called metadata, quite literally means data about data. This includes data about format, video and audio characteristics, shot information and more. Now, within most nonlinear editing environments, you're able to view your assets in list form, or you can switch to thumbnails for a more visual look at your footage. You're also often able to switch to a freeform view where you're able to get much more tactile with the process of interacting with your footage. You can also easily sort, filter and search through your assets to be able to quickly pull up clips that match a certain criteria. You also have the ability to add custom metadata, which lets you add qualitative information about your assets. That is, you can label clips with names, descriptions, ratings, keywords and more. And, again, you're able to use sorting, filtering and searching tools to quickly drill down to find the clips that you need. There are other metadata tools, like markers, which allow you to attach digital Post-it Notes to your video. I often do this for my interview footage, where I add markers at a specific moment in the video. And then I take notes about what the interview subject is saying. And, again, being able to filter and search through this dialogue metadata is invaluable in finding exactly what I need. Yes, it takes effort to establish a strong sense of organization, categorizing, labeling and tagging all of your assets, but it is so worth it. There's nothing more derailing than spending 30 minutes hunting and pecking through your footage, trying to find a particular shot. It's much more efficient if you can dial in to exactly what you need so you can remain in your creative groove.