Work faster with Smart Folders 04/07/11

 

These are “virtual” folders that don’t actually store any files.  They automatically fill themselves with links to files based on the criteria you’ve defined.  This kind of filtering can be a real time saver when you are working on a creative project that involves multiple apps.  Lynda. com has a short tutorial on using Smart Folders (Chap. 4).

 

Go to the File menu and select New Smart Folder

 

You’ll be presented with the following window:

 

 

Click on the round + icon

 

 

You’ll now be presented with a bar for search criteria.

 

 

For this example we’ll create a smart folder that contains files based on the file extension.

 

 

Make the file extension .fcp.  Now we are shown all the computer‘s .fcp files.

 

 

Press the Save button in the upper right of the window.

 

 

 

You will be shown a window that will allow you to save your search.  It will be saved in:

 

/Users/username/Library/Saved Searches

 

You’ll probably want to check the checkbox to automatically add this new search to your Finder sidebar.

 

 

Add more save searches based on file extensions.  Here are a few more examples:

 

 

Tips: Last count there were 157 potential search parameters!  You can have a Smart Folder based on multiple search parameters.  This will give you the ability to create a very custom folder.  Parameters that could be of interest to content creators are:

alpha channel
aperture
audio bit rate
audio encoding application
bits per sample
color space model
content creator
duration
encoding software
layers
projects
sample rate
size
timeline markers
used dates.

And the ability of Smart Folders to parse implicit and explicit metadata is huge!

Implicit metadata is passive data about a file.  An example of this is the kind of information a camera encodes during acquisition like aperture and audio bit rate.  Explicit metadata is active data about a file.  This is information a user would input like tags or comments.  A good example of this is the commenting we enter into a field as we log clips in Final Cut Pro.

Additional information: For all things metadata check out Philip Hodget’s seminar Master Metadata for Post_Production.