File Names as Buckets of Metadata

Until someone comes up with a digital asset management application for audio that works like Lightroom, I may be stuck with doing things the old-fashioned way. Dustin Cow over at CreativeCow.net offered up the following:

Filenames will be in this format.

Game-S[season number]E[episode number]-[Game name]-[Type of footage]-[Shot Number]-[description]
Filenames should always use leading zeros. eg (EP01 NOT EP1)

For example:

Game-S02E04-Rock Band-Gameplay-05-Drum Tutorial (Say it ain’t so)
Game-S02E09-MGS4-Interview-08-Matt Jones talks about engine
Game-S02E14-Halo4-B roll-13-Master Chief mascot at E3

TYPES OF FOOTAGE

Essentially the types of footage depend on the nature of the segment.

For Reviews the types of footage are

  1. Gameplay
  2. Music
  3. SFX
  4. Commentary (only for sports games)
  5. VO

For Interviews, they are

  1. B roll
  2. Interview
  3. VO

SHOT NUMBER

The numbers before the description eg(05-Drum Tutorial in the above example) are not as important for interviews captured from tape as I can refer to timecode on the tape to see the sequence of events.

The reason I need it for gameplay or any footage we capture wild without timecode/device control is so I know the sequence of gameplay rather than trying to guess if COD5-snow stage is before or after COD5-Helicopter stage.

If the files are

Game-S02E15-COD5-06-Snow Stage
Game-S02E15-COD5-12-Helicopter Stage

I don’t need to guess.

MULTIPLE SEGMENTS WITH SAME GAME

If we are doing multiple segments on the same game over an episode, we will give the individual segments names and label it into the Game name.

Game-S02E21-Halo4 History-Gameplay-04-Halo3 FMV
Game-S02E21-Halo4 Technology-Interview-Jonty Barnes on new co-op features