File organization

[PQM]

Great stuff always here. I’m just getting started with a Drone Services business. 107 complete, insured and registered with the sec of state. My background is in tv broadcasting for over a decade and have friends still in the day to day of that world as well as other creative production type work. Using my own experience and picking the brains of others in how they organize the massive variety and amounts of files has left us all wishing someone would teach a class on a logical and time efficient way to keep it all straight and accessible.

By date? By flight? By style? By job address? By client?

My current strategy is mirroring my flight log number to the beginning of the video or photo filename. Each flight log and keepable files from it gets it own folder. As I go through to decide how much or little to keep from each flight, I keep a simple paper log of what each clip/phot is.

Ex) (flight book) log page 31....(clipname) DJI3100023.mov.....(shot description) backwards away from front of house....folder name 31

Over 50 flights at this point and very much working towards many more...so I see that this format of creating my file morgue could become easily unmanageable.

I know some flights will be single use clips. Others will at times be referred back to or reused or repurposed.

Can anyone offer helpful theories on this strategy or any time proven methods?

Thanks in advance what a great time of year to fly.

 

[ryantrax]

My directory structure is: YEAR>>DATE - CLIENT - JOB NAME. So It looks like this:

- 2016
- 2017
---- 10-8-2017 - Greene County Parks - Blue Jacket Theater
---- 10-14-2017 - City of Cincinnati - Blink Festival

And so on.

 

[EasyB]

I've been a photographer for many years and my directory structure is similar to the one Aerial posted above but with the addition of folders represent the phase of the images in their lifecycle:
- 2017> 10-1-2017> Houston>Lambo Festival>Raw>Editing> Prints OR Web (for portfolio images)

However, having drone missions for inspection companies, i've setup a different struture for those jobs:

COMPANY>JOB #> DATE>TYPES OF FILES or IMAGES

Hope it helps.

 

[PQM]

Thanks for insight.