Media management is underrated in most productions, and is often overlooked. There have been so many times where I’ve been handed a project that needed saving, and every time I find that they all suffer from the same issue… poor media management!

That’s why I thought it would be great to share my workflow when it comes to media management. It starts from creating a simple and easy to read file structure that later translates into your video editing software. Let me explain.

File Structure:
First, set up a file structure within a specified volume on your hard drive, that you can copy and use for every project. In my file structure I create the following;

Volume/Clients/ClientName/ProductionName/

In the production name folder I then create the following folders:

1. Projects (This is where I put all of my Adobe Premiere Pro Project Files)
2. Media (All video files from the camera live here)
3. Audio Files (Any audio recorded out in the field lives here)
4. Assets (Any images or graphics live here)
5. OMF Files (OMF files that are sent to audio post live here)
6. Audio Mixes (All of the final mixes live here)
7. Exports (All rough cuts and Masters live here)

Within Adobe Premiere Pro, my project bin looks like this:

1. Sequences (Sequences live here)
2. Media (All media lives here)
3. Audio (Audio files, VO live here)
4. Assets (Images, adjustment layers, captions, end stings, opening titles and graphics live here)
5. Audio Mixes (Final audio mixes live here)
6. Imported Sequences (If I need to import the sequences or projects into my current project, they all live in here)

Once this is set up, and before I ingest anything, I make sure I have set my scratch disk to a SSD volume with a lot of space. I have 3TB of SSD space dedicated for a scratch disk. This SSD is also synced to my Dropbox, so whatever goes to the scratch disk is also being backed up online.

Now it is time to ingest my media. When I do this, I always proxy my content as well. This is definitely time consuming, however it will make your editing experience seamless once it is done. Having too many different media formats in your sequence can cause Adobe Premiere Pro to crash and slow down, so to solve this issue I proxy on ingest. To do this go to File / Project Settings (on a Windows computer) and then go to Ingest and select your desired press and location. Once this is done, your media will automatically start transcoding on importing content into your project.

Once everything is transcoded, you are ready to go. This is my workflow, and it works for me. I have a 20 Core Intel i9 computer, so transcoding my media is fast and I do not feel that it is eating away at my time. However, if you have a lower spec computer, you will need to be patient. You will be thankful once it is done.