Monkeysee Filmmaker Videos - Naming Files & Thumbnails

David Rotan: Hi! I am David Rotan, video production manager with www.

monkeysee.

com. I am discussing the post production process and the deliverables required for videos produced through our MonkeySee Filmmaker program. Right now, we are going to talk about the naming convention. How you name your files and thumbnails?

Well, first of all, when you are editing your video for MonkeySee in whatever editing software program you have, its important that you make each clip of your video a separate sequence, so that we can divide those up in to separate files. Each clip will be a separate MOV, QuickTime movie exported to your disk. Its very important that all clips be named identically and that you follow our system of naming exactly for every clip, except for the last digits which identify the individual clips.

Now this is so we can link up your video, once we receive it on a disk. With the information we input into our computer, it will find those files and play them on our website. So let's start by looking at the naming convention here. Its eight different sections and we will start with the first one which is just one letter.

The one letter is, most of the time, going to be an 'f' for Filmmaker. If you are completing a project commissioned directly by MonkeySee as a Filmmaker program, it would be an 'f'. Now if you are happened to be hired by an expert to make a MonkeySee video and you are hired through them not us, then that block would need to be an 'e' for Expert. But in most cases again, it should be an 'f'. Then it is followed by an underscore(_) and that bring us to the second block of data. This is the Filmmakers first initial and last name. So in this example, its jdoe, John Doe or Jane Doe. All of these should be lowercase letters.

Then you will put another underscore(_) which brings us to the third block. The primary expert's first initial and last name. I say, primary because in rare instances, a video clip clip have more than one expert. Its not important which expert's name appears in the filename, as long as you use the same name in every clip. It has to be consistent. Now you would put another underscore(_) after that and then the fourth field would be one to three words separated by dashes that describe the video topic. This example says, basic-soccer or basic-soccer, something very simple. Be sure to separate the words in this block with dashes.

Then you would have another underscore(_) which would bring us to field five, which is the date of shooting, the date that you shot your video. Be sure to use dashes between the month, day and year, not back slashes or underscores. It has to be dashes right here. Then you would have another underscore(_) bringing you to block six. In this block, it is the clip number. Each clip of your video will have a different number here. So this is the only thing that is inconsistent. Everything else should be exactly the same.

But every separate clip in your video needs to have a specific number here in this field assigned to it. If you had eight clips, then it would be 001 through 008. You just want to go through and check before you export your project, that you don't have two files numbered the exact same number. Make sure that each have a separate number here in this very important field. Then you would separate it again by an underscore(_) which takes us to block seven. That's the total number of clips in the video series. This example has 12. So looking at block six and seven, it shows us that its a clip 1 of 12. Then after block seven, after the total number of clips in the series, there is a dot(.

) followed by mov, which is a QuickTime file extension. That means its a MOV file which is a QuickTime movie. Now after you have named all of your files by our proper naming convention, then you again want to go and make thumbnails for each and every clip in your video. So I am working on a Lacrosse video here and I want to go through each clip and find just a still image from the video that best represents that particular clip. Whatever editing program you are using, you will need to read-up on how to do frame grabs and create a still image of that picture. Make sure your thumbnails are the 16X9 aspect ratio, 16X9 anamorphic, just like your video should be, but they must be 16X9 thumbnails. No smaller than 512X288 in dimensions.

You will want to name your thumbnails, the exact same thing as you named your clips. So each clip, the thumbnail will be the exact same thing. The only difference will be the file name extension, it will not be an MOV QuickTime file. Since its a still image, it will probably be a JPG. That's how you properly finish naming your files, naming your thumbnails. Next, I am going to be talking about exporting your project.