Best filename structure for pictures and videos

[JanK]

Hi,

I try to find the best filename for my pictures and videos taken on holiday. I also take pictures and stich them to panoramas. Maybe you could share your opinion with me.

My way
NameOfEvent_Date_ContinuousNumber_TypeAndPhotographersName.jpg

HolidayNewYork_2010-04-30_0001_PictureJohannes.jpg

HolidayNewYork_2010-04-30_0002_MovieKate.jpg

HolidayNewYork_2010-04-30_0003_PanoramaSven.jpg


At first I had the Continuous Number at the beginning. But when I search my Harddrive I get all "0001" together and then all "0002" and so on. So the events are not listed together.

I decide not to use the time because I have pictures from different people that have exactly the same time so this requires continuous number as well.

There could be more then one "HolidayNewYork" but with the "Date" next to the "NameOfEvent" it would be one definite Event. Also by Searchings.

The first sorting number will be the "Date". When there are more then one pictures of the same date the sorting number is passed to the "ContinuousNumber" I mentioned that it make no sence to use the time for that.

Because I have movies, pictures and panoramas I combined this with the Photographers Name. All types (pictures,video,panorama) are sorted chronological.

With this I could put all my pictures in one folder and nothing would be mixed. But I never would do that

What is your approach?

[evilaro]

Jank:

What I am saying here, is only MY idea, and as such
valid only to my circumstances...
but since I have been
doing many lectures on 'The Phylosophy of Clasification of Digital Images'

I have been able to contrast this ideas against others
and look right in a lot of cases.

If you speak Spanish and can take 135 pages on this subject
http://www.evilfoto.com/EvilFOTO/pdf/la_filosofia_de_la_clasificacion.pdf




The 11th commandment would be DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING

Except: add somethig in order to make the folder name and the file name UNIQUE.


Forder names:



Most of the people put a Date and then a explanation.


Should be YYMMDD   to keep the order


AND the months and Days
Should have the 0 (Zeros)
So:


2012-1-9  Trip to Colombia    //  is not correct
should be

2012-01-09 Trip to Colombia  // correct.



Still this sistem has a problem


If in a folder you have 3 subfolders:


2012-01-09 Trip to Colombia

2012-02-10 Back Home

2012-03-09 Party at the office



If you look at it you never know IF a folders has desapeared...

because you do not take pictures everyday or every month to have a time reference


So the solution is:

1001_2012-01-09 Trip to Colombia


Adding a continuos 4 digit number in front of the Folders you have
:

a) the security that no folder is missing

b) It is ordered by time (the most precious quality of a picture)

c) a Time reference
d) A basic description



IF you find your images using a clasifying program

then no need even of the date, then:



1001 Trip to Colombia   // should be enought
 


The most important of this structure... which is not the only one,
is that it keeps the most important thing for me of my pictures...

the continuity.. what was first and then what follow.

So ... to download the images and then
spliting them around all the disk(s) following a Subject..

Is not very appropiated:


1) No will never be able to do it
   Because A image can have many subject Birds, Family, trip, etc
   You will have to copy the image to many folders

2) Even If you do ... you are duplicating your images...

3) And most important ... you are loosing the continuity.
   

After you do this... it will be very difficult to Look at your trip to Africa...
the images are in a lot of folders now.


Keep the images secuentially as you took them... time is the
most important and easy way of finding images.

... and if you need to show your best pictures,
your grandsons... your hobbies, use albums or
clasify the images by subjects



File Names

I have taken about 80 000 images with the name like IMG_1478.jpg
Which means that I would have about the same name repeated 8 times.

Which means that if I take 100 images from diferent folders
(my gransons)
and put it in another folder to show, the probability that names are repeated
is great and with risk of overwriting some.

Also they would not follow a time order.

So the important thing is to make sure that image names (and folder names are unique), so you will be sure
even if you copy them to another place, that no overwriting will ocur, and IF it occurs it means IT is a duplicated image.


The way to do it is simple:

either use a unique incremental NUMBER oR/aNd your name and/or a date
the date could be the one you download the images..

Jank_2012_01_21_IMG_1234.jpg will do (unles you take more than 10 000 images in a day)


Al this proces is AUTOMATIC in many clasifying programs,

No need to waist your time renaming them manually by subject...
USE THE PROGRAM TO CLASIFY THE IMAGES BY TH SUBJECT OF YOUR INTEREST.
NOTHING WILL BE MOVED,RENAMED OR DUPLICATED

Also, this has the advantage that IF you do move the images all over the place...
when you decide that Time and Order and Sequence is the most important, you can put back
your images where they belong.

Hope it helps....

Emilio

[Phil Harvey]

I use a technique similar to Emilio.  My hierarchy looks like this:

YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Event Name/*.jpg
YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Event Name/raw/*.raw

And if I have pictures from other people for the same event, I do this:

YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Event Name/Photographer Name/*.jpg
YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Event Name/Photographer Name/raw/*.raw

Within each folder, I have in the past renamed individual pictures according to the subject (which works because I organize by filesystem date/time anyway), but I have too many pictures now so I usually don't bother to rename the files.

- Phil

[BogdanH]

Hi,

I use exactly the same file organisation as you do, Phil. But because I don't take that many photos, I can afford to rename files too. I.e. inside folder
YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Event Name/
..there are i.e.
001 Arriving.jpg
002 On the beach.jpg
003 On the beach.jpg
...etc.
-everything else is inside metadata.

Bogdan

[JanK]

Thank's for sharing your technics. Very interesting how other organize there pictures.

The main thing your technics differ from mine is that you all use foldernames for organisation and a short name for image file. It gives you the possibility to name your pictures by the content. I use folder names to but I'm interesting in keep on the context of the file when I share it without the folderstructure. It must be a lot of work to name the images by the content and for me I don't know a description for all my pictures.

I see that all of you use the date (whatever in filename or directoryname) at the beginning. Maybe I decide to use the Event Name because I better know the name of the event than the date of it. Meaning I know I was in "Italy" but not in which year. So I thought it would be better to have the Event at first. Another thing I thought about was to have the pictures of one event together also they stay not in folders. But the fact that Events could only be one after another means that when I use the date at first too I would not lost to have the pictures of one event together. The different would be that with my sorting I will have

Italy_2009
Italy_2011
Italy_2012
Sweden_2010
Virginia_2008

And with the other

2008_Virginiai
2009_Italy
2010_Sweden
2011_Italy
2012_Italy

I consider to change my structure to have the date at first because I would not lost anything and have another sortation (From Events to years) Maybe this could be better but I have to think about it.

So my filenames would be
2011-09-30_0001_HolidayNewYork_FotoJohn.jpg
instead of
HolidayNewYork_2011-09-30_0001_FotoJohn.jpg

I'm a bit unsure and have to think a vew days.