Best way to organize videos using Explorer?

Whats the best way to organize vids in Explorer? Like where do I put TV shows, movies, music videos, and short youtube clips I downloaded. Should I put the TV shows in one folder then many folders of which TV show it is?

This is my current structure:

- Videos
|-- Music Videos (folder)
|-- TV show 1 (folder)
|---|-- TV Show ep 1.avi
|---|-- TV Show ep 1.avi
|-- TV Show 2 (folder)
|-- TV show 3 (folder)
|-- movie.avi
|-- youtube clip.avi

The TV shows are like around ten of them, and i have about 10 - 15 movie and youtube stuffs.

 

i have on my \\Server\Videos
those

Movies
TV Series
Music Videos and Concerts
Training Videos & Instruction Videos (mainly for ableton live, a music program)
from Dad (manual backup of his stuff from his home server)


so it's similar, but I don't have anything random directly in the Videos folder, and i suggest you the same. because if you one day mess around with those movies you might accidentally move around your folders, too (happened to me so far 3-4 times in my lifetime)..

so i'd suggest you a movies folder, and a Random Fun Stuff folder, or so (i have such one in the pictures folder )

 

I have to organize A LOT of different kinds of files, both professionally and in the personal portion of my system. I think the answer really depends on what makes the most sense for you. In other words, if you were looking for a particular TV episode in your own computer, where would you intuitively look? You don't want to have to try to remember where you put something, instead; you want to just naturally assume where it should be, and have it be there! I like to use the system of having Folders covering fairly broad categories, and then a number of sub-folders in each category, and often even another layer of sub-folders in each of those folders, and then, finally, single files. So I might have, for example, the main category be VIDEOS, and then sub-folders like: MUSIC VIDEOS, MOVIES, TV, INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS, (and any other specialized areas of interest). In each of those folders I would have lists of related items, (like, under MOVIES, I might have sub-folders like AMERICAN, FOREIGN, MOVIE DOWNLOAD SITES, MOVIE REVIEW SITES, etc.) Very often, even some of those list items might be fairly broad in themselves, so I might add some sub-sub-folders, (like under the AMERICAN folder, I would break them up into manageable categories, because there are so many of them), and then have a number of individual items listed under each of them. Does that make sense?

 

then again, thanks to indexing, most of the time you should not browse the folders per se to find something.

i just suggest you to have, in a folder, only subfolders, or only files. it helps that way quite a bit.

 

Get everything (voidtools.com) bind it to a hotkey, and u can open whatever you want in the matter of splitseconds.. : D

 

In any event, the best system is what works best for you OP.

 

Nice! That's almost exactly how I have it, and the same shows almost too!

I run a service in the background that hosts the shows so I can transfer them to my TiVo and watch on the regular TV. Works like a charm.

 

Too bad you don't have Vista/Win7. I would of suggested just organizing all the videos by catagory, then properly naming them.

Then you use saved "Search Result" folders to sort views by seasons, etc.

For example, I have all my TV shows sorted by shows. Then I have saved results folders that show only the videos by seasons # or it shows All the videos regardless of season.

Basically organizing by data.

 

My structure:

Code:

Videos/
  Series/
    Series Name/
      Series Name S##-E## Episode Name
  Movies/
    Movie [Year]
  IPTV/
    Series Name E## Episode Name
  Random/
    Name.flv
    Name.x
 

Is it a concern if that needed to be clarified?

 

All of you guys are living in the past.

 

press the windows key, type what ever you want, press enter, and it's open just as well. there's no need for such an app.

 

If I had Seven, the methods you guys suggested would already look like an iPod-style navigation, thanks to content view.


I would use it in all but my Movies and YouTube Clips, where they'll be using thumbnails instead. For my TV shows, I just leave it with the famous, torrent style, like The.Big.Bang.Theory.S01E01.XVID-SOMETHING.REPACK. Saves me time, and it wont hassle me.

I also separated all my Family and Personal videos in a folder with my username on it, I like it better than "Home Videos" or "Personal".

Now, for documents, should I put my Picutres / Videos / etc in the Documents folder or serparate the documents?

 

I have a separate folder for documents because they are on a more frequent backup interval in comparison to my pictures and videos.