This is not a spark question but more of a video Organisation question I’ve been thinking about for a while now. I’ve never really been much of a photographer before the spark, just some iPhone pix on a cloud or stuff,  it I never too it serious. This is changing now, due to the spark!

I’m on vacation and making a lot of great videos with the spark. I’m really getting some great shots and it’s fun, but I can already see the nightmare when I get home and see all the clips I’ve made and lose focus  
So I’m wondering how do you guys go about sorting or organizing your clips and pictures and all?

Do you sort your clips at all, or just leave them in one folder?
Do you sort by day, by scene, by quality etc.?
What do you do with the clips after you have cut a movie?
And also very important, how do you choose which clips to keep? For sure it’s easy to delete “bad” clips, either having nothing nice in them or being the hin ally Bad in some way, but what about the tons of clips you have left? Do you keep them or do you try to only have few of each scene, to minimize all the data?


I’m wondering how I can sort or organize all my clips so that it will be easy to find good clips to put together for a movie. I’m pretty sure I’ll have enough clips to make at least 4 nice movies, but not sure how to get it started.
I’d be happy to learn your Tipps and get some ideas

hey Nikp!

i would say it's a personal preference anyway
in my case, if there are pictures/movies taken when on a trip/vacation then i'd make a folder with the name of the trip or location. as i tend to remember most of the things i've done during that trip/place.
if there are random photos/videos, taken now and then, i'd try to organize them based on some highlights like: sunset, sunrise, panorama, people, activities, etc. it's easier to search through folders if i am looking for something specific.
i also have main folders with the name of the equipment used - ie. spark, phone, dslr, etc. that helps me knowing what approximate resolution pictures/videos in each may have.

regarding deleting old/bad footage - i am deleting bad footage. not keeping it at all. but footage that i used to take scenes from and create clips, i am keeping it. you never know what inspiration you have and you want different cuts from the original you need couple of external hard drives

again, it's my personal preference so let's see what other things will be shared and you can create a "best practices" for storing videos

I tend to copy footage and photos from the Spark to my iPad. I usually do some editing on the iPad and export my finished clips and/or any raw footage I want to keep to Photos on the Mac.  On the Mac, I can create albums in Photos to put the media into. I can also add keywords to the media, which makes searching for it easy.

I will also copy media directly from the micro SD card to the Mac and again organize it in Photos if I wish.

While the micro SD card is connected to my Mac, I copy the contents of the card to a backup folder on my Mac. Then I back up that folder to an external hard drive which also contains my Time Machine back ups.  I reformat the micro SD card when done/before shooting new footage.

I try to get rid of footage that isn't usable, though some I will hang on to if there's something interesting in the middle of a clip.  Just in case I might need it for another project.

That's all I can think of at the moment!

Hallo Nikp, this is a very good question!
This is my system, not to get drowned in unused footage.

Using iMovie/Foto's mac os.
Like dj_dread here above said!
From Spark SD, I only download the"good" clips to a specific SPARK map, which contains the several targets folders like family , friends, tests, voyages...etc!
From there i import them to make video's (imovie in my case), and after completing a video, i save it as a FILE.
But after a backup i delete all footage from the imovie program, just keeping the saved file.

My guys for your answers. It seems like these are all similar ways of working, though everyone has their own little differences! great stuff.

I forgot to mention that I work as a sound engineer and have to organize audio files a lot where I encounter similar issues, but just on a much smaller scale. That’s why I am already thinking about this, before I even get to the problem lying ahead

Sorting the clips/pictures in folders by occurrence (holiday, city etc.) makes sense and would be my go to as well. I’m wondering if there is a way to sort in several ways at the same time. I guess thi would mean some metadata keyword style of program where you could add keywords to the clips to make search easier...

I’d be glad to hear more takes on how to organize files!

Here is what works for me:
Depending on the desired output I have 2 methods of handling my files. Both work with changing names of the files.
1. If I have s specific story in mind, I tend to name my files so they are close to where they 'should' be. So like 0010-Intro-Campsite, 0011-Intro-Travel, 0020-Arrival, 0021 Overview .
These may not have been shot in the same order, but now get sorted the 'right way'.
If there happen to be a lot of clips, I work with folders per 'section'.
This is a rather time consuming method, since I have to watch all my footage (at least parts of it) and rename them one by one.
2. When I am 'just' creating a chronological movie, I have written a batch file that moves and renames my files to a folder with this name yyyy-mm-dd and rename the files like yyyy-mm-dd_hh-ss.
That is also very handy when you combine multiple camera's.
That way all clips are combined per datum and sorted chronologically.
If you are on a windows machine, I can share my batch file if you want.

Awesome. Thanks for tuning in.. appreciate your input.

I have many gigabytes of aerial video from many drones and Gopros.  I have a root folder for each device then a year folder where the actual clips are stored.  On the clips I use a program called Better File Rename.  I then rename the clips based on where it was shot with a sequence number.  If I'm going on a special trip I will add a folder to the year folder and then store clips in it, still with subject renaming.  Makes it easy to pull the relevant clips into Premiere Pro for editing.  On my last trip around the world I recorded 250 gigs of photo and video data which was organized in the preceding way.
When I run out of space I just add another hard drive.  I regularly clone the data on my disks to a second drives and store them off site in case someone steals my computer or my house burns down.
PS I gots some nice shots traveling through South Africa on my last trip.  Give a look at my YouTube channel trailer below and see if you can spot them.
Of course subcribing to my channel will have longer versions of some of the highlight clips
https://www.youtube.com/user/hummingbirdRPV?feature=mhee