Core concepts

Aspect organizes everything in a simple hierarchy.

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Workspaces

A workspace is your organization’s home in Aspect. Everyone on your team belongs to a workspace, and everything you store lives inside it. Who can see and do what is controlled at the workspace and project level - see people and permissions.

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Projects

Projects are the main way to divide up your work. A documentary, an ad campaign, a client engagement - each gets its own project. Projects hold your folders and files, and access can be granted project by project, so people only see what’s relevant to them.

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Storage tiers

Choose a storage tier when you create a project: Only Active Storage projects can be mounted through Instant Access.

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Archiving a project

Archiving moves a project to the Archived section on the workspace homepage. It keeps the project out of the team’s main project list until someone opens the archived project list. You can archive projects in either Active Storage or Cold Storage. Archiving is only a change to how the workspace homepage is organized: the project’s storage tier, files, and access permissions stay the same. For example, an archived Active Storage project still supports mounting. An archived Cold Storage project still uses Cold Storage and cannot be mounted. Turn archiving off to return either project to the main project list.

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Directories

Directories are folders. They work the way folders do on your computer: they live inside a project, they can contain files and other folders, and you can nest them as deep as you need. Use them to keep raw footage, selects, and deliverables apart.

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Assets

An asset is a single file - a video, image, audio recording, or document. When you upload a file, it becomes an asset, and Aspect’s AI automatically gets to work on it in the background: transcribing speech, understanding what’s on screen, and preparing it for instant playback. There’s nothing to configure or start - once it’s done, the file is searchable and ready to review. See AI Search for how to find files and matching moments, uploading for how files get in, and metadata for the details Aspect tracks about each one. An asset is a single file - a video, image, audio recording, or document. When you upload a file, it becomes an asset, and Aspect’s AI automatically gets to work on it in the background: transcribing speech, understanding what’s on screen, and preparing it for instant playback. There’s nothing to configure or start - once it’s done, the file is searchable and ready to review. See How AI indexing works for the full picture, uploading for how files get in, and metadata for the details Aspect tracks about each one.

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Version stacks

When you have multiple versions of the same file (a rough cut, a revision, a final), Aspect can stack them together as one asset. You see the top version by default, but every earlier version stays a click away. No more final_v3_FINAL.mp4 scattered across folders.

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Collections

A collection is a curated grouping of files and folders. Adding something to a collection doesn’t move it - the original stays exactly where it is, and the collection just points to it. The same file can be in many collections at once. Collections are great for pulling together the best takes from across a project, building a reel of selects, or gathering everything a client needs to review in one place. See the collections guide.

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Where to go next