Six months after delivery, the client asks for the raw interview so they can cut a version for LinkedIn.
The edit was done on a freelancer’s laptop, the footage sat on a drive that has since been wiped for another shoot, the music came from a folder on the server and the logo was dragged in from someone’s Downloads. Someone loses a day relinking media and still can’t find the font.
Folder structure is the dull part of post, so it gets skipped, and the bill tends to arrive on a job somebody else edited. With the same template on every job, anyone on the team can open a project they’ve never seen and find things.
In short
- Use one folder per client, one per job inside it and the same numbered folders in every job.
- Copy every card to two drives and check both copies before you format it.
- Don’t rename or move media after import, and keep everything the edit uses inside the job folder.
- Keep review exports and final masters in separate folders.
- When the job is over, delete what can be rebuilt and keep two archive copies, one outside the office.
A folder template you can copy
One folder per client, one folder per job inside it, and the same numbered folders in every job:
Acme/
2026_brand-campaign/
00_admin/
01_footage/
2026-03-12/
A001/
A002/
B001/
2026-03-13/
from-client/
stock/
02_audio/
location/
voiceover/
sfx/
03_graphics/
logos/
fonts/
titles/
04_music/
licenses/
05_project/
06_exports/
review/
final/
07_delivery/
With the numbers, alphabetical order becomes the order the job happens in, on every computer and in every file dialog. Names stay short, lowercase and free of spaces and accents, for the reasons in our file naming post.
If the job is a single video, you can name its folder after the video’s code, as that post suggests. For a campaign with several videos, name the folder after the job and let the code at the start of each file tell the videos apart.
Keep an empty copy of the template and duplicate it when a job starts. Apps like Post Haste, from Digital Rebellion, build the folders from a template and fill in the job name for you.
What goes in each folder
00_admin holds the paperwork: brief, script, proposal, shooting schedule, release forms and the deliverables list. It gets the zero because it exists before the first frame does.
01_footage is sorted by shoot day, then by card. A001 is camera A’s first card and B001 is the first card from camera B. If the camera names its own reels, use the same names, so the folder and the clip metadata agree.
Material the client sends (phone videos, old campaigns, screen recordings) goes in from-client, and anything you licensed goes in stock. That separation matters two years later, when someone asks whether a clip was yours or theirs.
02_audio follows the same logic, with the sound recorder’s files by day, then voiceover takes and sound effects. 03_graphics has logos, fonts, titles and the After Effects or Motion projects behind them.
04_music keeps each track next to its license, which is where people will look when the client asks whether the song can run in paid ads.
05_project is for the edit itself. Premiere, with its default settings, puts auto-save and preview folders next to the project file, so a folder of its own keeps them away from the media. DaVinci Resolve stores projects in its own database, so export a .drp file into this folder at the end of each day.
Copy every card twice before formatting it
Copy each card to two separate drives, check both copies and only then format the card. Footage is most at risk between the card and the first copy.
An offload app that compares checksums does the checking for you: OffShoot (formerly Hedge), ShotPut Pro and the Clone tool on DaVinci Resolve’s Media page all work. Dragging a card in Finder copies the files without comparing them to the originals.
Copy the whole card with its folder structure, not just the video files. Some cameras split long takes across several files and keep metadata in separate files, and the editing software needs the original structure to put the clip back together.
Rules that keep links from breaking
Don’t rename or move media once it’s in the project. Premiere and Resolve remember where each file was, and a file renamed in Finder comes back as Media Offline.
If a clip needs a better name, rename it in the bin, which changes the clip name and leaves the file alone. Any reorganizing happens before import.
Keep one folder per job, and copy into it everything the edit uses, including the logo you already have from last year’s campaign. A project that pulls a font from one drive and music from another opens fine on the editor’s machine and breaks on every other one.
With everything under one folder, moving the job to another drive means relinking once, at the top. Handing it to a freelancer means sharing that folder instead of the whole server, as we suggest in the post on hiring a freelance editor.
Keep review exports away from the finals
06_exports/review holds every cut that goes out for review, as lightweight H.264 files. 06_exports/final holds only the approved masters.
When both live in one folder, sooner or later a review copy goes out as the final, or a ProRes master gets uploaded for review (the Media Encoder watch folder post shows what that costs in upload time). The folder already says which file is final, so the word stays out of the file name.
07_delivery is a copy of exactly what the client received, in the state it was sent. What belongs in that package is covered in our post on the final delivery.
Archive the job when it’s over
When the window for last fixes after delivery closes, take the job off the working drive. Delete what can be rebuilt, such as render files, caches and proxies.
Keep the camera originals, audio, graphics, fonts, music with its licenses, the project, the final masters and the delivery folder. If a font’s license doesn’t let you copy the file, keep a list of the fonts instead.
Premiere’s Project Manager and Resolve’s Export Project Archive can gather the media a project uses into one place, if the job’s files ended up scattered after all.
Put a text file at the top of the job folder with the software versions, the plugins and where the archive copies are. Then make two copies on two different drives and keep one of them outside the office. How long you keep each part is something to agree with the client and repeat in the delivery email.
How this works in RecReview
RecReview doesn’t build this structure for you. It doesn’t create the job’s folders on your drive or in Google Drive.
In the app, a job is a project inside a client, and each video is a task with a code made of the client’s code and a sequential number, like ACM_014. Start every export’s name with that code and the drive and the app point at the same video.
The two meet at the review folder. The RecReview app for Mac has watch folders, so you can add the job’s review folder and pick its client and project.
The app only picks up files sitting directly in the folder you add, not in subfolders, so add review itself rather than 06_exports. It waits for each render to finish and uploads it.
A file whose name starts with a task code becomes the next version of that task, as long as the prefix is one of your clients’ codes. A file without a code is matched by its name and becomes a new task in that client and project if nothing matches.
If the job lives on an external drive, connect it before opening the app, since a folder that isn’t there when the app starts isn’t watched until you open the app again.
Each version stays in its task, numbered in the order it arrived, and you can play any two side by side. The review link can also show the client the earlier versions, so nobody needs a shared folder with v1 to v7.
When the client comes back a year later, the search finds the video by its code, title, client or project, or by a phrase from its transcript, and the code tells you which folder to open on the archive drive. The camera originals, the project and the archive copies stay on your drives.
