The Simple Strategy for Keeping Your Video Files Organized

It’s super important to set up folders and organize all your video assets when you plan to create a multi video course. I’ve worked with many people who have trouble finding the files they create and differentiating between the types of files and their various extensions. Let me walk you through my super quick organization process so you’ll never have to hunt for your files again.

Semi accurate transcript

Joan asks “I seem to spend an awful lot of time looking for all the files I’ve added to my video as they are all over the computer. Is there an easy way to organize them?”

Yes, there is , Joan and I promise if you adapt my system you will remove a huge time sucker from your life.

The challenge with Camtasia is that by the time you’re done creating a screencast, there are a ton of files, …5-10 separate  .Trec files, several images, several audio files, the .camproj  or (tscproj) file, and ultimately, the production files.

Unless you manually create a folder structure, they’re all over the place, completely unorganized, and slightly difficult to backup individually (without exporting).

Most videos are part of a “project” or “group” within a project. Instead of having files scattered all over the “Camtasia” folder, it’s better to have everything in one place according to the project being worked on and produced.

For example, before creating a Trec file, choose the project, and subfolder before or after recording. When finished, the files will be placed neatly into the appropriate folder and you’ll no longer have to “browse” and hunt each time you create a recording. Simply, select the project, the subfolder name, and that’s it.

Here’s an example. Before I start any project I set up the main folder for it on my desktop- now you may prefer to keep all your files in your Documents folder. It doesn’t really matter where it is as long as you can get to it. I’ll call it the name of the project. Such as UPS Worldship which is the course I’m working on now.

Then, right away I create the subfolders.  This particular course has 8 lessons.

Inside that I will create all my subfolders to contain all the various assets I need for my course.

• Project – to hold the project file.
• Next is the Recordings folder-This holds all your Trecs
• Produced for the mp4s and all the files that make up the player
• Then I’ll have the Narration folder- if I’m creating my narration separately
• And, lastly, the Media folder for all the PowerPoint stuff and images
• Sometimes I’ll also create a folder for my outline, storyboard and any project management files and call it Documents.

Now, I’ll copy it, paste it and rename it for all the Lessons in the course.

This is how I stay perfectly organized, find my files quickly and never get the dreaded popup message when I open a project saying “Camtasia can’t find your files”.

So to recap…

1. Create a Project Folder on your Desktop
2. Create the first Lesson in your course
3. Create 5-6 sub folders for each group of file types
4. Copy the first lesson and paste X amount of times
5. Rename the Lessons

Let me know if you have any of your own ways to super organize your files!