Speaker 1: Hey guys, this is Caleb with DSLR Video Shooter, where it's all about making better videos. And part of making better videos is making sure you have a place for all the footage, files, and documents for your clients, for your YouTube channel, or whatever you actually shoot. And today's video is all about that topic, and this is actually a small section of the corporate video guide, actually in the pre-production section, where we go over and look at Corbin's kind of setup for asset management. And we're going to talk about some software that he uses, how he goes about dealing with that, Dropbox integration, and a bunch of good stuff. So without further ado, let's go ahead and take a look. So now I want to talk about documents and project kind of asset management, because we need to come up with a system at the beginning of a project. So that through the entire course of your project, you have a consistent system for keeping track of the ungodly amount of documents that are going to be flying around.

Speaker 2: Right. So I came across PostPaste, I don't know, a year or two ago, I don't remember. But I kind of had a system already set up, and everything's dated and labeled, and I had a folder structure, which makes swapping drives with editors and all that great. But we can go here and check out PostPaste. Sure.

Speaker 1: And if you want to check them out, you can go to digitalrebellion.com. That's where you can pick it up. It's free, which is amazing. So I figured this out from Corbin. I didn't know it existed.

Speaker 2: It's amazing. Yeah. They should charge. You guys should charge. Yeah. Because it's great. So what's really great is you can set up these templates. Sure. And I just have one for Frank and Harvey, and you can set it up however you want. So how I set up projects is probably different from everybody, but I number everything here with the project files.

Speaker 1: And the reason you're numbering it is no matter how you pull it up in Finder, it's going to keep it perfectly organized. So the first folder is always projects folder.

Speaker 2: So the project file, and footage, and audio, and exports always kind of need to be at the top. So that's why I started numbering them. And so this is the template that it creates every time I start a new job. So when I go over to new project, they have preset one, motion graphics, photographer, video editing. And the video editing one is the one I started with. And then I just kind of built it around my needs. Because what I do is I label everything with F at the beginning for Frank and Harvey. Sure. Because sometimes you're doing stuff for other people. So for Frank and Harvey jobs, it always starts with an F. And then the date, starting with the year, I organize it by year, then month, then day. It makes, when you're going through your raid, it just works that way. And then I'll do the project name, which in this case is Growth Dimensions, which is a client of mine. And then you simply just hit create project. And as you see, if I change, I have it set up in the template to automatically change the date. But if I want to change the date, you'll see what it does is it changes at the bottom. Preview. Cool. And so that's what you're going to get. So if I hit create project, it's going to ask me where do I want to put it. And I'm going to put it, I'll just put it on the desktop for now, put that.

Speaker 1: You can always save the location at the bottom, which is slick.

Speaker 2: Yep. And then I usually just put that right on a drive. And then one thing that I do is I take, you know, you've got your footage here, your project files, and it automatically will create a premiere. Which is so cool to me. You don't have to go in and fill it. Yeah, and I think it does file cut as well, I'm not sure. And then you've got all your stuff in here. You can put your client files in there, your production documents. So you can put your scripts, everything in one place. I like to go an extra step when I do the production documents. I actually like to keep them in a client dropbox because then when I'm out and about I have access to rough cuts, scripts, all that sort of stuff. So scripts will be, we use Google Docs, it's just, it's free, it's easy, why not? And then we'll export them as PDFs to give to the client or a Word document. But then I also put them in Dropbox because as a producer I want to be able to have everything with me at all times. So rough cuts always go in Dropbox and then the production documents and all that stuff also go in Dropbox or Google Drive so that I can pull out my phone and send something to a client. Makes sense. And then later on when we get into post-production, I have some presets for exporting rough cuts for clients to keep the file size down so that they can watch it on their phone. And it just keeps everything real efficient and quick. So then, yeah, we back everything up to Dropbox. I'll just go ahead and show you, this is a project here. Yeah, so here's like a finished project, okay? Sure. So in this one it was a little tricky because we had done stuff for this event a couple years in a row. So these are the old file projects that I needed. But you've got your project files in here and it does all your auto-save. That's fantastic. Get your After Effects files in there. This was a stop motion thing. You've got your footage, audio, so you put your music, sound effects, voiceover. And then in Premiere, all my stuff is labeled exactly like that. And then you've got your exports. We've got the different rough cuts, the master comps, things like that. Graphics all go in there. Finals aren't there because I haven't put them there yet. And then stills all go here.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good stuff. Everyone does this differently. We all pick up different things. One thing that I picked up from a few people was to always create a folder called Originals because you get a logo in, like a Photoshop logo, and sometimes you'll grab it and start working on it. But I've tried to discipline myself so whenever I'm sent anything, Word document, anything it goes into the original folders and it's never touched. It's only copied. So then I can copy the logo out of the originals into the graphics and play with it. So if I need to go back, I always have it. Otherwise you end up emailing people to get things again sometimes. So that can be really helpful. And then the other one is for me personally, separating exports, like raw exports, from compressions. Because for my site, I do so many compressions for different formats, I try to separate those. So if I need just like the ProRes 444, I go into exports. If I need a compressed version, MP4, I can jump into compressions.

Speaker 2: No, that's smart. And these are all going to be different for Final Cut Pro users or Avid or whatever. This works for me and where it works really great is when you're handing off drives to editors. Right, which we'll talk about in that.

Speaker 1: So then they have everything.

Speaker 2: So a lot of people may be wondering, why are you doing this in pre-production? Well, if I do this right off the get-go, I take this drive with me to the shoot, and then everything's already ready and labeled. And so if there's a DIT on set, they know exactly where to put the cards. They know exactly where things are. Obviously, I don't put budget and all that sort of thing in the client documents. That's saved for Dropbox or Google Drive. But this just makes it like a really efficient workflow from start to finish. And I encourage everybody to figure out what works for you on that. Because as you grow as a company, I'll get calls that are like, hey, you remember that shoot we did in 2012? And I'm like, I don't remember, but we have it. And so I have to go to the RAID. And because of the file naming structure that we have, it's really easy to find because it's all by date.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that's gold. So hopefully that gives you guys some ideas. And you probably already have some methods that you can adapt that to. But this is critical. You got to have this figured out.

Speaker 2: And I'm extremely disorganized and messy at times. But in this arena, I'm really disciplined and really organized. Because it has bitten me in the ass before when a client asked for something and I couldn't find it. And you can find everything but the thing that you're looking for. And so with this sort of structure, it sets my mind at ease. And with PostHaste, it makes it automated, which is fantastic.

Speaker 1: So hopefully that's given you some asset management ideas. I would love to hear your workflow, how you organize assets, footage, files, and documents. If you'd like to learn more about the corporate video guide, check the link in the description. You'll be able to watch the trailer and learn more about it there. Thank you so much for watching. And as always, you can watch new videos right here at DSLR Video Shooter every single Tuesday and Thursday. I will see you guys next time.