How To Organize Your Sound Effects Library Like A Pro

This video covers how I've organized my massive 13TB SFX Library and designed a system around speed.

Sound Designers work with hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of audio files daily. So having an easy system that keeps all of these sounds organized is paramount to having an efficient workflow.

We go over Types of drives like SSD, HDD, & RAID Systems and the benefits/drawbacks of each. Next, we discuss how to organize your finder, including purchased and personal SFX libraries. We also cover Sound Effect library Databases like Sound Miner, Soundly, Explorer, & Sound Q and how I've optimized Sound Miner for my workflow. Finally, we end the video with Metadata, why it is essential, and how to embed metadata.

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⏱Time Stamps⏱

0:00 - Intro
0:31 - Storage Options
2:05 - Organizing Your Finder
3:53 - Database Managers
9:18 - Metadata
10:50 - Crazy Puppy

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All the clips in this video are protected from copyright law under fair use for educational purposes.

[StephenAlvarezSound]

Can't tell you enough how valuable this information is to the sound design community. This along with all your videos. Great work as always man, keep 'em coming!

[maxmedema]

Not a sound designer but a video editor and this is sooo helpful! Now I just need to research drives to move my collection to! 😁

[TheHeavy]

as usual I've learnt more in this 10 minute video than in my entire semester in a sound design uni subject

[kuro]

Before creating a playlist, do you think it would be a good idea for me to add a prefix to all of my libraries's main folder with a very rough indication as to what type library it is?
For example for General libraries:

"GEN | Boom - Boom One"
"GEN | PSE - Odyssey Collection"

or Science Fiction ones:

"SCI | Soundmorph - Future Weapons Bundle"
"SCI | SmartsoundFX - Futuristic"

That way I can have all libraries sort-of-sorted by families by default. Technically I could just make folders but like you I want to avoid subfolders and having to click around too much

[cactuzzsound]

I use Soundly for cloud sfx and Explorer for my RAID libraries (bought and recorded). I mostly use pre-organised cloud libraries, but you’ve inspired me to start digging through my not-so-big local one and clean my shit up. I also think I need to steal your playlist’s names :)

[AskonDBZ]

THANK YOU, dealing with four million files here

[jamesmeustache]

Those headphones are seriously epic :D

[TUSHR]

Hey man, very nice video! I watched it a while back and came back to it to start organizing my sound library. But I see that the Google Docs link is broken. Any chance of giving us a new link?

[Louis_Beri]

This channel is precious, thanks mate.

[PufftasticJames]

I currently have an External Hard Drive, but I'm planning to get a RAID (NAS), since my EHD is dying. Plus I need to share my sound library since I have a team with music composers, sound designers, and musicians and it keeps growing and growing, and my library's expanding. I'm planning to start with a 2-bay with 2 8TB drives.

[MinuteGaming]

Those are some dope headphones I love them

[linasmak]

Regarding metadata, i have a saying, if you can’t find a sound it’s the same as it doesn’t exist. Metadata is somewhat more important than the sound itself.

[PatrickKoski]

Hey Tyler, what a wonderful system. Definitely going to implement some steps into my own organization. I was wondering though how you define the folder labeled "Recorded sound effects"? Is this a folder for Sound effects that would not be processed in any way (and has a similar sub-folder structure to your personal library) and used "as-is" sfx, or would this be more of a "Source Material" type of folder for containing original recorded audio files? Or do you mainly work with synthesized sound effects and want to keep your recorded sfx separate from them? Or is it something totally different that i am not thinking about.

Much love from Finland, amazing content, have been watching and using your content as a source for both research and inspiration through out my time as a sound design student and will continue to do this once i graduate.

[slimshadys]

Hi mate, thx for the video, very helpful. Though I need a question answered.

The file structure you named ''Files recorded for SFX library''. Do you put stuff YOU have recorded in it? As in it's only personal stuff you have created?

[quinnhawse]

Another great video man! very insightful.

[matiasgibbs]

What hard drives do you use to store your SFX? Thanks, great video

[MichaelCarson]

This is great. Thanks! Curious, what headphones are you using?

[O_____________O]

Do you think you could provide a list of your playlists? A few screenshots work as well. They do seem to follow a different categorisation from UCS and I'm curious about your choices

[seanmartinflix]

Thank you. Great video. to anybody reading this that may know.. Can any of the software show the wave form next to each Sound effect so you don't have to click on each one to show it at the bottom. Davinci resolve does. this in their sound library for example. you can see the wave. along with the label. Thank you.

[XXROGUE]

I know this is an older video - but have you switched over to Soundminer V6 yet? Looking to get some opinions if it's worth switching over from V5 right away or not (I will eventually).