by David Forshee
Sound effects category standardization will improve organization and save time for creators everywhere.
Pro Sound Effects has always been committed to the quality of our metadata and the searchability of our libraries. If you can't find it, it doesn't exist!
Though we have been using our own system for categorizing our sounds for years, a recent effort led by Tim Nielsen and others in the community piqued our interest. This culminated in a community discussion around what categories are the most helpful, and how we can reduce the redundant work of each sound editor that must individually categorize and tag libraries from dozens of vendors.
The solution to this problem is the Universal Category System (UCS). In their words:
"Our aim is to provide and encourage the use of a set category list for the classification of sound effects. We hope that in doing so, we can offer a framework for consistent categorization of sound effects, offer uniformity in a filename structure, and ease the pain of maintaining a sound effects library. We also hope to provide tools to make naming and categorizing sound effects easier for everyone who maintains their own personal or a professional library."
The goals of the UCS are very much in line with our values at Pro Sound Effects. We are happy to announce that we will be working to ensure all of our libraries adhere to the UCS in the future.
This is no small task, but we believe this effort by the sound community to standardize the approach for categorization will save our customers hours upon hours of work, and we feel it's our responsibility to adopt this system.
Stay tuned for updates on how we will implement the UCS. And a big thank you to Tim Nielsen, Justin Drury, Kai Paquin, and everyone who has played a part in making UCS a reality!
For more info on UCS, please visit universalcategorysystem.com - and check out the intro video below.
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