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Media ComposerOrganize with Templates
Create folder structure templates with custom variables and permissions that can be applied by your team by filling out a form.
Your team probably uses some sort of folder-based organization system to keep track of assets. Perhaps you have a folder naming convention. Maybe you have templates for the projects you do most often. And most likely, you have at least one team member who just doesn't get with the program. No longer.
Folder Structure Templates let you take the organization system that your team members know, love, and (mostly) follow and apply it inside spaces. Templates automate the tedious and error-prone task of copying a folder template into a shared location, updating file and folder names to match a convention, and setting up template files for your project.
The following pages provide step by step guides for creating and applying these templates:
- Create a Template - Mount a temporary space to your desktop, create a folder structure using custom [Variables], specify their types, and then configure custom permissions.
- Update a Template - Change the permissions that will be applied when the template is used in the future.
- Apply a Template (Desktop App)
- Apply a Template (Web App)
Understanding Templates
Variables
When you create a new project folder structure, there are inevitably some folders and files that need unique names and other that will always be consistent across projects.
Variables allow you to define the information that needs to be customized each time the template is applied.
How does this work? Anything you put in square brackets, i.e. [], becomes a variable.
There are three types of Variables:
- Text and/or Number: A user-defied text field that can be filled out with whatever alphanumeric characters you want.
- Auto-Increment: Provide a starting number, which can include trailing 0s, such as 001 or 010, and each time the template is applied it will increment.
- Date: A calendar will appear in the form to select Year, Month, and Day, which will be populated as YYYYMMDD so that it sorts alphabetically in chronological order.
Access Control
Folder structure templates make managing access easy by allowing permissions to be configured once and then applied automatically when a new project is created. Think of them as your organizational blueprint. How you apply permissions to control access is the key to keeping your projects orderly and manageable.
Eliminate clutter by carefully controlling write permissions for each directory in your Template to stop files and folders from being created where they shouldn’t be.
For example, making the space and root level folders read-only, but granting write access to where assets, projects, and documents should be stored.
Here are a few important things to understand:
- Recursive Permissions: Whenever you apply permissions, they will only effect the currently selected level, unless you turn on the ‘Recursive’ toggle. This will overwrite the permissions of all children with the current user and group rights.
- Groups vs. Users: Granting read and write access at the group level allows you to quickly grant or revoke a user’s access with a single action, instead of having to update each item individually.
- Who Owns Created Folders/Files: The person who creates the template will always be the owner of the folders and files that are a part of it regardless of who applies it.
Including Files in Templates
While we don’t support variables within documents, you can copy files into your templates with variables in their names. So, you can include things like word documents, slide decks, spreadsheets, etc. and have them named after your project when it is applied. You can also create additional folder structure templates specifically for subfolders, such as preparing shots for VFX with standardized work orders and specifications.
Project Files
Do you have a specific bin structure you like to use? Are there titles or other generated assets that you end up using on all of your projects? By adding a project file and/or folder for your application of choice, you can start with this ready to go.
All you have to do is set up the in-app structure you want, save your project, and then add at least one variable to the project file name. When the template is applied, the project will be duplicated and renamed for you to start working from.
If you include any clips in your template project, they will reference the original file path. So, only do this for media that can always be accessed from the same path. If this is stored in a shared space, make sure to turn on auto-mount so that you don’t need to worry about mounting it each time.
For folder-based project formats, like Adobe Productions and Media Composer Projects, there is an additional step. Files inside the folder that share the same name need to have matching variables. For example, inside an Adobe Production folder will be a ‘.prodset’ file. Make sure this file name matches the parent folder so that the application is able to open the production properly once the variables are replaced.
Be sure that all the permissions are identical for the folder and the files within by toggling on the ‘Recursive’ option.