I make a lot of YouTube videos and that means I have a lot of video clips to store. Here are my best tips on how to organize photos and videos for YouTube.
When I started my YouTube channel I realized I had to find a way to organize my photos and video. I was taking so many videos and photos my computer was becoming overwhelmed.
Dumping everything into a folder was so easy until I was trying to look for a certain video clip a month later. This is when it dawned on me that I had to get organized.
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Where to Store Photos
Make sure you store everything on a backup drive. I choose to work off my backup drive. I don’t store anything on my computer.
When I did store things on my computer it became so slow I couldn’t even make a movie! My backup drive doesn’t back things up on its own. Instead, I decide when and how to store my items on my drive. I download all of my content straight to my backup drive.
This is the exact backup drive I use and love!
I set up a folder for the year called 2019. In my 2019 folder, I have a “Months of the year 2019” folder. That folder contains a folder for each month, named the month and year, so “January 2019” for example.
Within that folder, each project has a folder with the name of the project. As a side note, I suggest using the name of the project or some descriptive words for the name, at one point I used dates, and that got really confusing.
Organizing Example:
- Main Folder = 2019
- Months of the Year 2019
- 01.January2019
- Ski Trip
- Edited Photos January 2019
- 02.February2019
- How to do hair
- Edited Photos February 2019
- 01.January2019
- Months of the Year 2019
Edited Photos Folder
In each month I make an edited photos folder. This folder is where I put every photo that I have edited.
Months later when you are looking for a photo from the past you will be happy you stored them all together in one place. If you have a lot of edited photos you might want to break them into individual folders.
I don’t have that many edited photos each month so I put them all together.
Completed Movies Folder
I like to make a special folder to store all of my completed movies. Within that folder, I have a folder for each month of movies.
I upload 2 videos a week, so that is 8 or more videos a month. It is so much easier to find these videos if they are categorized by month in the completed movies folder.
Always save your completed projects, even if you have uploaded them.
You never know if something could happen to your YouTube account or any social media outlet. Another good reason to save your completed projects is you might want to use them in different places or make a compilation project down the road.
This is how I have been able to stay organized. I hope this was helpful!
WATCH HOW TO DO IT HERE: