UCS Web Interface

Name items and regions for sound libraries with the Universal Category System nomenclature.

Naming sounds is complicated. Take two different sound designers and you are very likely to have two different file name nomenclature, from really verbose fulled of uppercased keywords (HIT-IMPACT-WOOD SHOCK-THROW-BIM-BAM-BOOM.wav), to minimalist unhelpful name (01.wav). With thousands of sound effects on the hard drive, the lack of consistency across libraries can be really annoying to find the right sound.

In order to make things more consistent across different libraries, Sound Designer Tim Nielsen proposed a methodology for naming files in a meaningful way, with standardized file name scheme and category identifiers: the Universal Category System (UCS).

The project rapidly gained traction and it is starting to be widely accepted by people on the field as the best way to name files for sound libraries. Having UCS naming on a sound effects pack is for sure a good selling argument, and it has been promoted by some major sound effects companies, like A Sound Effects or Pro Sound Effects. Having a common documented naming format is also beneficial for collaborative libraries (this is what we use on our crowdsources sound effects libraries on the Field Recording Slack to standardize the naming between all the contributors).

Initial presentation of the UCS.

To make UCS naming more easy right from REAPER, Acendan created a web interface, which allows to name regions or items with this format, handling categories with a nice auto-complete system. The benefit of using a web page for this is that we can have a big dedicated page, lots of useful accessibility and UI features provided by web browsers. Web interface is a pretty unique REAPER feature, and this is a very nice way use of it, especially considering it was initially just thought as a playback remote control helper.

First fields of the UCS REAPER web interface form, with subcategory dropdown opened (entries are based on what was entered in Category field). Following fields ask where you want the naming to be applied (items, regions, etc…).
Showcase of the web interface by Acendan, on ReaperBlog.

Acendan also shares other UCS and non-UCS related scripts on his ReaScript repository, all this for free. As these are more specific, I let you explore this by yourself. 😉

You will find more infos and installation tutorials right on the Acendan website, linked below.

Happy naming! 👍

Showcased on [url=https://www.realinks.net]ReaLinks.net[/url]:

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