Best Practices for Naming Your Files

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I've received some questions lately that are more of a technical tutorial nature, and while I'm not usually in the habit of dealing with that kind of stuff at [deaneogden.com], I'll commit to periodically diving into something if I think it's of particular use to enough people. (If you want more of these kinds of things, check out my work at SCOREcastOnline.com)

"... What would you suggest is the best way to keep files and stems organized when you are delivering a project? Timestamped audio? Dated versions of cues?... Any thoughts on best practices would be awesome. Thanks so much for everything you do." —Mike Spence, Detroit, MI

There are so many things to be thought through when you are delivering a project. Impeccable organization at the dub goes without saying. Thankfully, there are many automated procedures one can put into place to ensure that very little goes wrong—OMFs, ProTools sessions, hard drive backups, laptops with mirrored contents of the entire score, massive amounts of Xanex, etc.

On the other hand, many of you are working on independent projects, and there isn't always a "dub stage"... at least, not in the traditional sense. On small to medium-sized projects, the "dub stage" is somebody's home, maybe their garage or converted den. Perhaps you are mixing at a post-house, but the "mix engineer" is also the film editor or the sound effects guy. Or maybe... it's even YOU!

No matter who it is, one of the most important things in delivery is keeping things straight... and more specifically, keeping your files organized. Proper file-naming conventions play a huge part in how successful your delivery will be, no matter if you are delivering a ProTools session directly to the mix engineer or if you are delivering .WAV stems to be dropped in at SMPTE sync points. If you do not keep your naming scheme clean and tidy, the worst things are possible. I've seen people lose huge chunks of time on the dub stage because they couldn't find the name of a particular file that was supposed to go in a particular place in the mix. When time is of the essence—as it is EVERY time you are on a stage, be it the scoring stage or the dub stage—there is no room for these types of errors.

What I'm about to offer is all personal preference. Of course, you can do whatever you want, but there are a few industry standards to make note of. I'll give you a brief rundown of how I keep my file names organized at all times from the start of a project to the end, and hopefully you'll glean at least one thing out of my trials and errors over the years to improve your own delivery process.

Reel & Cue Numbers

Here is one of the standards I was referring to a second ago. Traditionally, composers indicate the reel number and cue number in the first part of the cue’s filename, and I’m no different. The very first thing that should read in the filename of any cue is the Reel number and Cue number. For example:

1m8 Forget The Past 100406

In this example, the Reel Number is “1” and the cue number is “8”. Therefore, this file is the full mix of the 8th cue in the first reel of the film.

Capitalization

I make it a point to capitalize every word in a file name—even if it is grammatically incorrect to do so. I’ve just found that uniformity at this level is key to search engines working properly, iTunes finding things correctly, and music editors not getting their proverbial undies in a bunch.

All words in every file should be capitalized. For example:

1m8 Forget The Past 100406

Dates

A huge pet peeve of mine (as well as most mixers, editors, and even directors) is a file with no version indicator. I date every file that goes out of my studio using the same convention every time: yymmdd. This naming scheme guarantees that when your files are alphabetized, any files with identical names automatically sorted in chronological order. For example:

6m2 All Seems Clear 100302
6m2 All Seems Clear 100309
6m2 All Seems Clear 100319

The first of these files was created March 2nd, 2010, and each subsequent version will follow in the list as read on any computer. Of course, you can alter this even further by appending the file's date with a corresponding version number. For example:

6m2 All Seems Clear 100302
6m2 All Seems Clear 100302.2
6m2 All Seems Clear 100302.3
6m2 All Seems Clear 100309
6m2 All Seems Clear 100319

Stems

If I need to break out cues into stem mixes for a film or television project (which is almost always the case on my projects), I will use the same stem heading configurations from project to project. This insures that my dub mixes are clean and tight and it also helps my mixer keep everything organized when dealing with a massive amount of musical data.

I typically use six (6) stem headings when prepping mix stems, but they may vary from project to project. My usual headings are:

• BRS = Brass & Woodwinds (depending on the project/mix/cue, I might split these)
• INST = Instruments (piano, guitar, celeste, etc.)
• PERC = Percussion
• STR = Strings
• SUBS = Subwoofer (anything below a predetermined kHz level or going into the .1 channel)
• SYN = Synths or other textural instruments (pads, ambience, atmospheres)

Again, using “It’s Complicated” as the cue example, the final stem file names should look like this:

3m2 It’s Complicated BRS 100319
3m2 It’s Complicated INST 100319
3m2 It’s Complicated PERC 100319
3m2 It’s Complicated STR 100319
3m2 It’s Complicated SUBS 100319
3m2 It’s Complicated SYN 100319

Notice that each of my rules are in play here: Each filename has a Reel and Cue number to indicate where it belongs; each word in the filename is capitalized; each filename has its own mix tag; each filename is dated.

Conclusion

This is the system that I typically use. It's not going to work for you every time, as parameters from project to project are different, therefore the needs of your projects are not going to be 100% congruent with the needs of my particular projects. However, this will give a jumping off point and hopefully help you get started if you currently have no real organized way to deliver your files.

This is a conversation we are having… a two-way street. I'd love to hear what you have cooking in the way of file naming conventions. If you have other ideas that I'm overlooking... I wouldn't doubt it! There are always better ways to do things, so school me by leaving a comment below. Names are optional, but I’m interested in real and meaningful discussions, so consider leaving your name if that’s also interesting to you. Thanks for stopping by!

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