Appearance
Organize your StoryFolder library
Four tools, and they answer different questions. Folders hold videos. Collections hold shots you picked by hand. Quick filters save a question whose answer is allowed to change. Video metadata records a fact once, so search and filters can find it later.
All four organise StoryFolder's own filing. None of them moves, renames or deletes anything on your disk.
Choose the right tool
| You want to | Use | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Give a video one stable home | Folder | Hierarchical filing, one home per video |
| Keep a hand-picked set of shots | Collection | Membership stays until you change it |
| Re-run the same search | Quick filter | Results are worked out fresh every time |
| Record a fact about a whole project | Video metadata | Type it once, then search and filter on it |
Tour the library rail
Down the left of the library:
- All items — the library root. Every video, filed or not.
- Folders, nested as deep as you like, each with the number of videos underneath it.
- Collections, each with its shot count. Hidden when you have none.
- Quick filters, your saved searches. Hidden when you have none.
- Shares — the storyboards you have published. Not an organising tool; a list of what is out in the world.
- Trash — projects and folders you removed. Also not an organising tool.
Every folder, collection and quick filter has its own address inside the app, so a link you keep takes you back to it.
Where you are standing changes what search covers. That is the single most useful thing to know about the rail — see search scope.
A workflow that scales
- Make a shallow folder structure around something stable — a client, a series, a year. Filing is worth doing when the boundary will still make sense in a year.
- Add video-level fields for the facts that describe whole projects: client, job number, status, rights.
- Search and filter to find material. Try this before building more structure — most "I need a folder for this" turns out to be a search.
- Save the questions you keep asking as quick filters.
- Save the answers that must stop moving — selects, approvals, delivery sets — as collections.
Resist building a deep folder tree on day one. You cannot know your own access patterns yet, and a tree built on guesses is harder to undo than to skip.
Folders vs collections
| Folders | Collections | |
|---|---|---|
| Hold | Videos | Shots |
| Membership | One folder per video | Any shots, from any number of videos |
| Nesting | Yes | No |
| Changes on its own | No | No |
A folder is where a project lives. A collection is the pile on the desk — the selects, the reference set, the shots you keep coming back to, gathered from across different videos.
Moving a video between folders does not move its file. Trashing a folder sends its contents to the Trash with it and deletes nothing from your disk. Deleting a collection deletes the collection, never the shots it pointed at.
Collections vs quick filters
A collection stores shots. A quick filter stores a question.
Say you filter to Rating is at least 4 and save it. Tomorrow you rate two more shots four stars: they appear in the quick filter, because it re-asks the question. Drop a shot to three stars and it leaves.
Now put those same shots in a collection called Approved selects. Re-rating a shot changes nothing about what is in the collection — the set is the set, which is exactly what you want when it is going to a client.
Rule of thumb: an audit is a quick filter; a delivery is a collection.
Search scope
One search box, four different reaches, decided by where you are standing:
| Standing in | Search covers |
|---|---|
| All items | The whole library, filed videos included |
| A folder | That folder and everything nested under it |
| A collection | Only the shots in that collection |
| A quick filter | Its saved query, filters and layout |
Finding something anywhere and finding it in this one client's work differ by where you clicked, and nothing else. See Search your library.
Naming things
Advisory, not rules — but these hold up:
- Folders: stable nouns. A client, a series, a year.
- Collections: the deliverable. Approved selects, Sizzle candidates.
- Quick filters: the question, not the contents. Needs transcript review beats Interviews 3, because a quick filter's contents change and its question does not.
Related pages
Next step
→ Folders