File naming conventions

[the Black Monarch]

The videos on my hard drives are named pretty systematically. The standard format is "[franchise] music video - [musician] - [song title]". If multiple people have combined the same video source and song, like with all the goddamn Evangelion/Chop Suey videos, then I'll add the editor's name in parentheses to disambiguate: "[franchise] music video - [musician] - [song title] (editor)". I give no regard whatsoever to whatever name the editor gave their video.

This works well enough for a single TV series or movie series. But this gets super duper complicated when a franchise includes multiple continuities, or when multiple normally separate franchises or characters share a continuity (Avengers) or have a crossover episode or movie (Alien vs. Predator)

For example, if someone made a music video using exclusively footage from the DC cinematic universe, that would be "DCEU music video - [musician] - [song title]". If someone made a Bruce Wayne tribute using footage from the Adam West TV series, the Tim Burton movies, B:TAS, Batman Beyond, Gotham, the DCEU, and everything else Bruce Wayne has ever been in, that would obviously be "Batman music video - [musician] - [song title]". But then if someone makes a Bruce Wayne/Batman tribute using exclusively footage from the DCEU, my brain would fucking explode.

Back in the early 2000s, when I decided on this naming convention, I didn't expect it to be much of a problem. Shared cinematic universes weren't a thing and different continuities within a franchise also tended to start out with the franchise name, so all my "Transformers G1" videos, "Transformers Beast Era" videos, "Transformers Bayverse" videos etc. would be next to each other in the folder. But as reboots and shared universes have become more common, as TV shows like "Gotham" and "The Mandalorian" have dropped the franchise names from their titles, and as amateur music videos have escaped from the world of anime and included more live-action stuff and Western animation, this system has become increasingly difficult to maintain.

Any advice?

[CrackTheSky]

I've always named the AMVs I download with this format: [Editor name] - [Video title]. It's always worked well for me because I tend to have a pretty good memory for AMV titles and editor names, and if I forget either, I can usually find the editor name/title with a quick .org search based on the things I don't categorize by in my filenames (i.e. anime/song). I also separate my video files by genre, so all drama videos go in one folder, comedy in another, etc.

That said, allow me to self-promote a bit here and suggest that it might be worth your time to look into AMV Tracker for all your AMV organizing needs!

[Zarxrax]

I've never been one to bother with renaming things. I just toss my amvs in a folder. If I have multiple AMVs by the same editor, I make a subfolder with that editor's name. The stuff grouped into folders is always easy enough to find.
The one-off videos that are all dumped into the main folder is like a treasure hunt when I need to look at something. Sometimes I just start playing videos just to see what they are. Like Forest Gump said, you never know what you're gunna get.

[SQ]

I have a folder called "vidding"
In that folder are live action fan works, with name [editor] - [title].

Inside the "vidding" folder is another folders specifically for "AMVs" (which is all animation, not just anime).
Those have the same naming convention, but I prefer to keep the live action separate from animated.

Of course, this is when I bother to rename the file. Most of the time I leave it as whatever the original filename is/was. My AMV archive is getting pretty to hard to navigate now though so I've been going through and renaming them periodically to fit editor - title.

[ngsilver]

I usually try for:
[studio] editor name - video title [format]

[Kokoro Hane]

I typically leave the filename of AMV s to whatever they are. Typically they usually have the information I need to know which video it is anyway. When naming ones I made, I typically keep it simple, usually the anime and song title, or if I gave it a special title, it'll be that.

[seasons]

[editor name] - video title

A lot of AMVs that I've downloaded contain very incomplete or sometimes vague or incorrect information in their filenames. So I've always tried to change them to this format so that I can look at them and know that it's all accurate (if it looks just like I have it listed above, then I know that I've personally verified that it's correct) and so everything in my AMV folder is grouped by editor in alphabetical order.

[Kionon]

Folder and file structure is

Local: /Home/Videos/AMVs/Series/Series - Year - Studio - Editor - AMV Title.ext
NAS: /Media/AMVs/Series/Series - Year - Studio - Editor - AMV Title.ext

For multi-series, they are marked "Various," MEPs status doesn't matter. They're either series specific MEPs or they are Various MEPs. I will usually mark them MEP though.

Going all the way back to the beginning, I've always felt like "Well, today I want to watch Utena videos" so I queue up everything in the Utena folder.