Beginners Guide to Organizing Footage in Davinci Resolve

one of the most effective ways you can speed up your video editing workflow is by organizing your media files and as it turns out organization just so happens to be one of the first obstacles people new to video editing get hung up on so in this video I'm going to give you a few examples of file structures that you can use in your editing project so you can quickly and easily find your media add them to your timeline and complete your projects let's get started [Music] foreign before we jump in let me just say this the way you organize your editing projects just like almost every other part of your editing workflow is a deeply personal thing what works for me might not work for you and vice versa so if you don't like the file structures I suggest in this video I highly encourage you to keep experimenting until you find something that you can work with also while we will talk about DaVinci Resolve in this video most of the work we'll be doing is in the file explorer on our computer okay so how do you build a file structure for an editing project the truth is it really depends on the type of project you're working on is it a simple talking head YouTube video a commercial for a doctor a movie or TV episode this question alone will help you determine how to set up your files let's take a look at a simple file structure for a talking head YouTube video first we'll need to think about all the different elements we'll have in our video and make a folder for each of those elements for example in our video we'll have footage audio and Graphics you might also have photos depending on the type of video you're making if you do create a folder for that too now we'll break it down even further let's open up the footage folder now it's unlikely that you'll only have one type of footage in most cases you'll have both a-roll which is all of the footage containing dialogue and b-roll which is supplemental footage that's used to enhance the story and visualize the dialogue so we'll create a folder for a-roll and a folder for b-roll now let's say we have multiple cameras that we're using for our a-roll for example I might have my pocket 6K as a main angle and my Sony zv1 as my secondary if that's the case I'll open up my a-roll folder and create a folder for each video Source same with the b-roll folder we'll create a folder for the pocket 6K the zv1 the iPhone 13 Pro row and for good measure one for stock footage I'm also going to place a folder for screen recordings in my b-roll folder because my screen recordings typically don't have dialogue if I was doing more real-time tutorials I would place them in the a-roll folder now let's open up our audio folder again we're likely working with multiple types of audio if you recorded your main audio separately from your video you'll likely have dialogue you'll also most likely have music and sound effects so again we'll create a folder for each type of audio now let's take a look at the graphics for this we'll likely only have a couple types of Graphics Motion Graphics and stationery so again we'll create a folder for each and then we're done now what do we do with a larger project with multiple scenes it's pretty simple really first what we'll do is create a folder for each scene for example in my visual effects tutorials I usually have a folder for the sketch in the beginning and a folder for the main video then in each of those folders I'll create the same type of file structure as I did for the simple video in each of the scene folders from there we can organize all of our files into the appropriate folders and we're done quick Pro tip to save a lot of time and energy it might be a good idea to create sort of a dummy folder structure in the file explorer on your computer then instead of having to create a new one from scratch each time you start a project you can simply copy paste and rename the folders as needed so now that we have our folders created and our media files organized how do we keep it all organized when we import them into DaVinci Resolve there's actually a couple ways to do this and they're both pretty simple let's start off in the edit page we're going to do the tried and true drag and drop method all we have to do is open up our file explorer navigate to our top level folders highlight them and drag them and drop them in into our bins the other method is to go into the media page which has the file explorer on your computer built right into it again simply navigate to your top level folders and drag them into your bins now if we click on those bins we'll see that our entire file structure along with our media has been imported into our project now Pro tip number two once you've brought your media into DaVinci Resolve create a new top level bin and label it timelines this will be the bin where you keep all of your timelines that way if you have more than one they'll be easy to find now between you and me I prefer using the media page to import my folders and media because it gives me access to a whole bunch of tools that will allow me to further organize my media and improve my workflow I'll be talking about all of that in an upcoming video so make sure to subscribe and ring the bell so you don't miss that then check out these DaVinci Resolve workflow hacks right here and until next time don't forget to go out and make stuff thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Jay Lippman

Views: 8,511

Keywords: organizing footage davinci resolve, organize footage davinci resolve, organizing clips in davinci resolve, davinci resolve media management, bin structure davinci resolve, organize video editing projects, davinci resolve tutorial, jay lippman davinci resolve tutorial, davinci resolve organize files, davinci resolve folder structure, file management davinci resolve, davinci resolve organize media, how to organize video editing files, bins in davinci resolve

Id: iWY97wTfxfM

Length: 5min 51sec (351 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2023