Tuesday VO Studio Tech Tip: The Power of Find

Our computers can slowly become the proverbial “Junk Drawer” where everything gets thrown in and nudged around just enough so the drawer can be closed. Needing to find something, we dig in just far enough discover it, then quickly push things closed and head on to other projects.

Throwing each project, audition, or session into a single place adds more files to the pile until our storage area becomes overwhelmingly dense. Saying we’ll organize files “later” may have best intentions behind it, but taking that actual step to do so often remains the task we never complete.

I’ve written before about creating a set of simple folders to contain most of what we deal with in our home voiceover studios. If you use recording software that makes it easy to specify where files get stored, a solid folder structure keeps auditions and projects within a solid framework. Using quick shortcuts in our “Save As…” dialog windows removes a lot of needless navigating to get to those folders.

Here’s a simple test. How much time would it take you to find a specific project from last year? Because, that’s really the important challenge. We don’t want to spend an hour tracking down audio we need for a five minute fix.

How organized do we need to be?

Back in the days of Command Line computer interfaces you had to actually type “commands” like “DIR” in order to even see files in the current directory. In a system like that, organization structures really mattered. Without a consistent framework for where you put stuff, you might never find it again. However, that rigor created a lot of busy work just to categorize and keep things in order.

These days we actually have pretty powerful tools for locating our stuff. While things can certainly be misplaced, current search tools work nicely to surface specific files, with the best ones able to find phrases or names within the document itself. That is an extremely helpful improvement and lets us rely more upon the ability to find files rather than creating excessive rigidity in how we organize our archives.

Using “Find” effectively

Leaning more on the “find” side of the equation does mean that naming consistency matters more. Using specific names for particular types of files pays huge benefits when you go looking for things later on. As we continue spreading our stuff out over the various Google Drives, iCloud locations, OneDrive, Dropbox and more, cryptically named files will cause more time to be spent figuring out exactly what they contain.

Throwing stuff out when no longer needed, keeping things in a reasonably organized structure, and being consistent with the way we name files may just keep that “Junk Drawer” from becoming overwhelming.

Ultimately, it’s a balance: We don’t need to over organize.
But we do need to find things easily.

Have you tested your studio’s audio quality to make sure it meets professional standards? For a free review of your vocal recordings, please use the upload tool on my Audio Review page.

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