How to organize and share video assets on Melius

A video library should tell you which clip to use

The useful test of a video library isn't whether it can hold the footage. It's whether someone who didn't make the footage can find the right clip, tell what it is, and send the right version to somebody else. Storage solves the first afternoon. Organization solves the next six months.

On Melius, video sits alongside images and audio in the asset library. You can organize media in folders, apply tags, search and filter the collection, inspect file details, and share assets. The library is part of the creative workspace, so the footage you keep is also footage you can bring back into the canvas.

That matters once a campaign stops being one video. There are source clips, generated takes, alternate openings, channel variants and finished cuts. If all of them are named after the order they were downloaded, the team hasn't built a library. It's built a sorting task for the next person.

What to know before you organize it

1. Folders and tags answer different questions. A folder gives a file a home. Tags let you find it by the other things it belongs to.
2. A thumbnail isn't enough information. Duration, dimensions and source matter when two clips look almost identical.
3. Share beyond your team. Public links let anyone on the internet view an asset without a Melius account.
4. You don't have to remember the filename. Semantic search on Professional and Enterprise finds assets from a description of their content.

Give the footage a home, then make it findable

Folders work well for the structure everyone already knows: a campaign, a product line, a client. Tags work well for the properties that cut across that structure: product close-up, interview, summer launch, vertical.

For example, a close-up of a bottle might live in a launch folder while carrying tags for the product and the shot type. When the next campaign needs that bottle, the team shouldn't have to remember which launch it first appeared in. The tags are how the asset escapes the limits of its folder without being duplicated into five more folders.

Melius supports file-type and tag filtering for media assets. Selecting several tags narrows the results to assets carrying all of them, which makes the combination useful for finding a specific set. Choose video, then the product tag and the shot tag, and you're looking at the intersection rather than everything loosely related to either word. The asset library guide covers the filtering and sorting controls.

Keep the vocabulary small enough that people use it consistently. Product-closeup and product-detail may mean the same thing to the person uploading and different things to the person searching. A tagging system only helps if the team agrees what the tags mean.

Find the shot by describing it

Semantic search is available on Professional and Enterprise. Describe what you're looking for in the asset search bar instead of trying to remember what somebody named the file.

The difference is what the search understands. A filename search needs words from the name. Semantic search uses the content of the asset, so you can try "a close-up of a bottle on a dark background" when all you remember is the shot. You don't need to have put that description in the filename or added it as a tag first.

That becomes useful when the library belongs to a team. The person looking for footage often isn't the person who uploaded it, and nobody remembers the names of every take. Describing the scene gives them a way into the collection without asking whoever made it to find the file.

Tags still do a different job. Use them for the labels your team has agreed on, such as a campaign or a product line. Use semantic search when you know what the asset contains but not what it's called. Open the matches and check the footage before you choose one.

Metadata is how you check the candidate

Tags describe the job a file does. Metadata describes the file itself. You want both, because finding a clip called homepage hero doesn't tell you whether it's the right dimensions or the right length.

The asset details view can show dimensions, duration, file size and creation time when those details are available. For generated assets, recorded generation information can also identify the model or tool and the prompt behind the result. Uploaded footage has a different history, and shouldn't be presented as though it came from a generation.

This is the step that saves the wrong clip from making it into the edit. Open the candidate, inspect the details and play it. Two takes can share an opening frame while differing in the one second that matters.

Metadata here means information you can inspect about an asset. It doesn't mean that every field is an editable custom field, or that the library automatically understands your campaign taxonomy. Tags are where your team's own labels belong.

Share assets with anyone on the internet

You can share assets with anyone on the internet. Open the asset, click Share and send the public link. The recipient doesn't need a Melius account to view it.

That makes a clip easy to send to a client, a collaborator or someone who just needs to see the work. The asset stays in your library; the link is what you pass along.

Setting up a campaign library

1. Bring the footage into Assets. Keep useful source material alongside the generated clips the campaign produces, rather than treating the library as a folder for finished exports only.
2. Name and file the assets. Use names someone else could search for, and folders that reflect the way the team already groups its work.
3. Apply a small set of tags. Start with the product, campaign or shot type. Add labels because they answer a retrieval question, not because every file needs more labels.
4. Check the details before reuse. Filter to video, narrow by the relevant tags, and inspect the candidate's length and dimensions before placing it on the canvas.
5. Share with anyone. Send a public asset link to anyone on the internet. They don't need a Melius account to view it.

Why the library belongs beside the work

A stored clip becomes more valuable when it can be used again without rebuilding the context around it. Melius connects asset management to a node-based creative canvas, so a reference or a finished shot can become an input to the next piece of work.

That's the same argument behind the modern creative workflow: the time goes into moving and reconciling material as much as making it. For video specifically, the filmmaker's comparison looks at what happens between generating a shot and finishing a sequence.

Frequently asked questions

Open Melius with one campaign's footage. Give it names and tags that someone else could find without asking you.