This is not the messed-up menu for the video drive. This is my back-up drive…where I learned a number of things about organizing and decluttering that I could bring into my physical decluttering and vice versa. This week I wanted to organize my video projects drive. For my other site I do articles, comics, and videos. I’ve even done some videos for this site, like the Parblo A610 graphics tablet review and the Godzilla Stomp card game. Time and life events prevented me from doing a lot of videos lately, and then my old video project drive when crazy when I tried to organize it like I did the back-up drive. A friend of mine managed to save the footage and transfer it to a NEW video project drive and this week I finally was able to go through it and being organizing.

Yes, begin. I did the heavy stuff this week but like before further organizing and deleting is in my future. This week was about getting the essential organizing going, creating a place for everything like I’ve started doing for the physical clutter and deleting multiples and unneeded files to take up less space. Virtual clutter is almost as bad as the realspace stuff for the same reasons. It takes up room you could be using and makes finding what you want a mess. So here’s what I was able to do in this round.

The first task is again to create a space to create the reorganized folder setup and stuff all the old folders and files into a different folder for easier transfer. I opened the “new folders” section in its own window and the old folders in this one. From there I began redistributing the files.

Initially I started with three folders, one for both of my sites and one for personal videos like event recordings of a personal nature. Family gatherings and local events, not whatever you were thinking! This list grew a bit as I came up with more categories but whatever was important to a particular project would go into their respective folders, and of course subfolders would further break it down.

Each project has its own needs. The main goal is to be able to find episodes I need and delete files I no longer need for those projects. I don’t feel the need to have everything I’ve ever made for the videos because once it’s done I’m not going to redo it, though with at least one review I had a fight with YouTube’s crazed copywrite system. Supposedly that’s all dealt with but if they change the rules in the future I now have an alternative host to not put up with their nonsense and continue to post reviews. At some point I have to go get those closed caption files and further folders were made for more breakdowns.

There were whole sections I could just delete. There were artifacts of the old drive that I didn’t use and aren’t needed for the new drive. Some videos had multiple versions on due to bad organizing.

There is still further attempts to find all the multiples to do. I also realized that what you name the folder is important. Without looking at the bar at the top of the image it’s easier to remember what folder you’re in if the name matches up. For example, instead of organizing my convention footage by date I organized them by event and THEN by date. Within the “ConnectiCon” folder I didn’t just label each folder by year, I would write “ConnectiCon 2013” so I knew which folder I was in while organizing. It’s easier to follow and something to remember when organizing events you’ve been to more than once. This can work for image files as well. I put all the events at one family member’s home in a folder and then organized that by event since I didn’t record as much footage over the years as I did for conventions. I usually like to just enjoy the party with my family and pictures are easier than videos in that regard.

Once the footage was all in their new organizing locations I pulled the new folders from the “New Folders” section and brought it to the main list, deleting the no longer required “old” and “new” folder designations. I also added a folder for current projects, the goal being to put projects I’m working on there, and then organize and delete files as necessary once the project is all done. It’s a far better system and should save me trouble in the future once I’ve gone through and made sure I don’t have unnecessary multiples currently. From there I can start my next project and have a better system in the future. As I take on new series ideas I have a better guide for creating their sections when they’re done. All in all this was successful…if I can finish the reorganizing and renaming and then keep them easier to find.

I’d rather not go through this again but as with the physical world file organizing and what should go where can change as your system evolves or needs change. This should be a better set-up for now.

Advertisement