Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

I would only use higher if it benefited for slow motion.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

I would say if you shoot in 60p, that you should conform the clip you will be uploading, and not leave it to the end user to do the conform to a base framerate (i.e. go ahead and turn it into a slow motion clip with a base framerate of 24, 25, or 30p).

As for that base, I think you should hedge the difference between clips that are UK specific and generic, i.e. if the clip could be potentially used by video producers in your area, perhaps using 25p is ideal. However, if it's not Scottland/UK/Europe specific necessarily, then you can use whatever framerate you like.

The times I have had to purchase stock footage for use in a client project, I always end up with a mix of 23.98, 25.00, and 29.97. It has never caused an issue in the final piece.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Absolutely right. I shoot 60, 120, and 240 all the time. But I never upload anything that isn't 29.97 or 23.98. Slow motion is actually very popular. I'd say about half of the shots I sell are slow-mo, but then again, about half the shots I upload are slow-mo, so it is hard to draw any firm conclusions.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Doug, thank you for that advise. Slow motion is definitely on my list of must haves on my next camcorder. I am still enjoying your course and definitely learning a LOT!!! Thanks for putting this together. Bob

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

It's interesting to me that you are taking it slowly. I always wonder if people binge watch my videos or try to take it in a little at time.

BTW, I'm uploading 27 new editorial clips right now that I shot and graded this morning that I think are going to do very well. Not all of them will sell because they are very similar, but I like to give editors some variations to choose from. In all my searches at Shutterstock I haven't found any footage on this subject. Not even in photos, yet it is going to be a hot topic over the next few years. I was even tempted do try some photos too, but no matter how I slice it I can't see how it would be worth the effort. To me this is becoming like a game.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Well, with that kind of attitude, no wonder you won't succeed with photos.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Doug, I was taking it slow because my nephew from Colorado came to visit for several days to help me celebrate my 70th (yes folks, SEVENTY) birthday, otherwise I would have be watching them all weekend. They are so easy to follow. Tomorrow I start on the megadata. I am really looking forward to that.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

It's using keywords in Final Cut Pro X, since most of the stock footage sites can read the keywords imbedded in the metadata in the resulting QuickTime export.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Well, that is such bad advice for so many reasons I wouldn't even know where to start. Please Gary, start your own thread about your theories on stock footage because your input here is not helpful at all for those people who may not know any better. Do you actually have any real-world experience trimming, grading, creating all the metadata that will be accepted by multiple agenices, uploading, getting the clips accepted and then managing your portfolio? Do you? Please tell us where you have an account and how many clips have you uploaded so we can judge your advice in action. And how much time did it take you to process and upload your portofilio clips? I'll bet FCPX was reall efficient for you, wasn't it? If your ideas are sound, you must be able to point us to where you have put it into practice with great results. Let see it.

I guess you really do just want to stir things up and piss people off like everyone says by lobbing grenades into the conversation. And dumb me takes the bait every time.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

If you want to contribute, Doug, then by all means, please do so. Otherwise, all you’re doing is trying to imply that I’m stupid without offering anything of actual substance as a rebuttal. It makes you look petty and foolish.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Yes, I'm foolish for taking your bait. You hit the nail on the head with that one.
Recommending that FCPX be used as the tool for creating the necessary metadata is like recommending that someone write a term paper with Photoshop. Could it be done? Maybe, but a smarter person would use more appropriate software and workflows. You're just throwing out random crap without any actual experience of actually doing what you say you are doing. Am I wrong? Prove it.

Say whatever you want because I won't be responding any further to whatever nonsense you want to spew. Spew away, my friend the floor is yours. Another thread ruined by a troll.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Still not much of a contribution, Doug. If FCPX can import clips that you can trim, apply keywords to, and then export a QuickTime with those keywords as metadata that Pond5, and others can access, then perhaps your way is archaic.

EDIT: Well, Adobe Bridge isn't archaic, but still, that's a $52.99/month cost...which I guess doesn't count to you?

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Once again folks, unregistered readers and those registered readers that may not be familiar with the history of this forum....DVINFO.net has a long history of being a professionals forum devoid of the stupid conversations that ignorant trolls like Gary make to waste your time with. Please don't let his comments detract from the value of this forum. At this point I have laughed at his stupid comments in this thread. Do not take his comments seriously. He is an intellectual little man. He makes me LOL with his stupidity.

And for the record..... I have never once resorted to name calling or personal opinions of any other member of this forum. That does not happen here, ever! Gary is a troll that is not good for this forum. Sometimes you just have to call an idiot an idiot and speak the truth!

Gary, I'm sure your wimpy little keyboard hero attitude is happy with the crap you stirred in this thread. Your a little man with no intelectual leg to stand on. Your stupid, you can keep displaying your ignorance and make us laugh......There are trained professional therapists people like you can seek for help! They can't make you smarter but they might be able to help with your need to attempt to display intellectual dominance in a place where you are clearly seen as an idiot :-)

This is a gentleman's forum. Forgive my attack on poor pathetic Gary. Those of you that understand this forum and me will know I am laughing as I write it. I feel sorry for poor poor Gary.... the intellectually small man who attacks everyone on this forum. Hey Gary, did you think you were going to do that in 1000 posts and not get get called out!

Kind Regards,

Steve

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Thanks Steve,

Just to get the thread back on track I'll change the subject a little. One benefit of being a stock footage contributor at Adobe is that I get a free subscription to the entire Adobe suite. Including Premiere, Photoshop, Bridge, After Effects, etc. Everything they make I get for free on two computers. The requirements to qualify are $500/year in sales or 300 approved clips, which are pretty low thresholds to meet. Any professional video shooter should have no problem submitting 300 good clips.

I don't talk about this offer very much because I'm not sure how long they will continue to make it, or even if it is still available. So I don't want to get someone's hopes up but as far as I know it is still an on-going offer. And that right there is like making an extra $600 per year from stock footage -- without even making any sales.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Except there is the cost of capturing those 300 clips. You’re not going to go out in your backyard and get 300 clips that will get approved. This will incur travel costs and room and board most likely. Of course, that’s free if you don’t count the cost. But I run a business, so I have to include that in any cost/benefit analysis, and right now, the numbers come out that paying my $39.99/month is cheaper.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Bob, I think its funny when you keep referring to "metadata" as "megadata". It sure feels like that sometimes and is definitely my least favorite part of doing stock footage. Hopefully by sharing my workflow I can help you shave a lot of time off your processing. It's never gonna be fun, but it can be made more efficient and less painful.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Great course thanks Doug,
Just started it, but there is lots of great info in there!

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

I just heard back from my friend at Adobe Stock that the deal expired at the end of last year for a free Creative Cloud account with 300 accepted stock clips.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Thanks, Bryce. I appreciate the feedback. There must be tons of great opportunities in BC.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Doug, what can I say? I am now 70 years old and, I grew up in Brooklyn. I'm lucky I can find the keyboard! Anyway, I am really enjoying your course. I always look forward to your next opening quote. I am working on getting the "metadata" part down. I also enjoy the descriptions you used for your editorial clips. I would have never thought of using those descriptive terms. No wonder you sell so many clips. Thanks again, Bob

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Doug,

Just one chapter of the course has saved me what would have been countless hour of lost time and work. Your information on "stock & logos" is perfect for me. It is contrary to everything I was once trained to do.

The roots of my image making career lie in professional sports photography. If I was shooting for a specific news organization logos and sponsors info that is plastered everywhere did not matter one way or the other if it was in the shot. It is unavoidable. But, here is the part most people don't know. In many of the images they see in magazines, papers, and the web sponsor info is intentionally included in the composition even if it is a "news story". I am a guy who had to make that happen. My job depended on it.

For example; The United States Ski Team and NASCAR were two of my former clients. I worked out of the media centers like every other journalist but I was often hired by the title organization. My photos would be distributed by the communications director in the media center and of course electronically. What made those jobs so difficult is I HAD to include sponsor logos and info in my action shots or they would not even use the photo. For example, I could get the perfect finish line shot but if you could not read the sponsors name on the thigh of the ski racer my boss would be upset. I had to support sponsors in my journalistic action shots. Tough gigs but it taught me a lot about how advertising and sponsorship works. It was pounded into me and I loved the challenge.

Your course just taught me I must leave that old thinking behind for all stock! I appreciate all of the details you go into on how to handle this. My time is valuable. That one chapter accelerated my learning curve bigtime!

Kind Regards,

Steve

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Well, I finished Doug's course. There were several chapters that I watched more than once and there were times, like creating the spread sheet where I kept toggling back and forth. Anyway, this evening, following Doug's instructions I was able to upload several clips to Shutterstock! I used the FTP site that Doug recommended as well as converting my spread sheet containing all the metadata to a csv file. I must say that everything worked just like he said it would and now I am just sitting back while they get reviewed. I highly recommend this course. Thank you Doug. Bob

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

And it's not just company logos, it's any piece of artwork. For instance, here in Austin we have a load of murals. Those murals, regardless of whether the artist filed with the U.S. Copyright Office, are their property. If I get a shot that happens to include a mural in the background somewhere (because it's unavoidable), I'll probably be okay, but if I straight up film the mural for my stock, that's not going to fly.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Sorry, you are wrong. You're going to get rejected for commercial use if there is even a hint of a mural, graffiti, signage, etc.

I don't really want to engage in debate with you, but something so blatantly wrong can't go uncorrected. You may very well have cost someone reading your well-meaning but ill-informed advice a lot of wasted time shooting and uploading footage that will absolutely be rejected. If you don't know from personal experience, it is best not to speculate.

Feel free to tell me how I'm wrong, but I won't be replying to you.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Nice to hear, Steve. Very nice!

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Bob, that is a relief. As much as I tried to test and re-test everything to make sure my steps would work for everyone else, there is always a chance I missed something. I'm glad it went well. I tried not to leave anything out or make the mistake of assuming someone would already know how to do a particular step.

I'm rendering 289 shots overnight that I shot of a wildlfire controlled burn yesterday. The firefighters pretty much let me go and do whatever I wanted. A perfect shoot. Spent most of the day grading it all and I really enjoyed every minute of it. The digital darkroom. It is cool seeing the footage really come alive in post. It still amazes me what a difference a little grading will make. Some of these shots are golden and when I look back in a couple of years I'll bet yesterday and today will have paid off in the thousands of dollars. Not tomorrow. Not next month. But over time. These are valuable assets that I own.

Plus I think I'll be able to sell a lot of clips to the manufacturer of two of the very unique tracked vehicles they used to set/control/fight the fires. I looked at the company's website and they've got nothing like what I'm going to show them. They'll buy it if the price is right, which it will be!

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

So what you're telling me is that I cannot go on Shutterstock and find 4K footage at $179 per clip that will be labeled as "Editorial use only" that has "mural, graffiti, signage, etc." in the background? Or perhaps their clips will be rejected similar to how these were rejected?

https://www.shutterstock.com/video/c...tracks-b-train
https://stock.adobe.com/video/city-a...rev_url=detail
https://www.shutterstock.com/video/c...graffiti-walls
https://www.shutterstock.com/video/c...ackground-slow
https://stock.adobe.com/video/young-...rev_url=detail

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

1) When you said this . . . . "I'll probably be okay, but if I straight up film the mural for my stock, that's not going to fly." . . .. it was clear to me you were talking about commercial. Because if you were talking about editorial you wouldn't have said those things.

2) Many clips that got approved for commercial in the past will not pass today and it would be a huge waste of time to try submitting them as editorial. Different standards for different times. If you were actually a stock footage contributor you'd know where the lines are being drawn today.

I have quite few clips in my portfolio that would not be approved if I uploaded them now.

Please prove me wrong. Submit a few clips that have graffiti or a mural in them as commercial to Shutterstock and see what happens. And if you decide to submit them as editorial instead, good luck making any sales with that. When can you upload some test clips, tomorrow? I'll expect to see the clips online by mid-week. Please post a link when they are ready.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Just because you can get something approved on any of the stock footage sites does not mean you're in the clear. That's what I meant.

When were these clips that I linked to submitted?

Then why are you still wasting your time uploading "Editorial use only" clips from as recently as this month?

I get that you have nothing but free time, but I am pretty slammed with client projects that I have to get down before my straight week of filming and then Vegas after that. I'll get to it when I have downtime.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Gary, just to be clear I never said it was a waste of time to submit clips as editorial. There is good money to be made with editorial clips, but it is much more preferable to be accepted as commercial because then the clip has a much higher potential of getting purchased. You agree with that, right?

What I meant is that it is waste of someone's time to jump through all the hoops to submit a clip as commercial just to have it smacked down by a reviewer and then have to jump through all the hoops again to submit it again as editorial and hope it gets through that way instead. If someone has the experience under their belt to know what will likely get approved and what won't, that can save a lot of time and aggravation redoing the metadata and uploading the files all over again. Time is money.

More than 95% of my clips are accepted for however I submit them. And about 1/2 of the ones that get reject are unfair so I resubmit and they go through on another try. But that still leaves 2-3% of clips that I disagree about with the reviews but it is their sandbox so they make the rules.

Also, as far as I know, there is no way at Shutterstock or Adobe to determine when someone else's clip was first uploaded, or how many times it has sold, or anything else of value. But trust me when I say that the reviewers have gotten much more strict on what will trigger a rejection. I have a lot of shots that would never be approved today for commercial, but nevertheless, they are there online now. I'm sure there are many contributors with the same kinds of clips.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Oh really?

I agree with that as much as you apparently do, with your last whole batch of uploaded clips to Shutterstock from this month being editorial.

No, Doug, you didn't mean that. They should know what's acceptable for each different one, and should submit as appropriate, just like you did with your latest batch of clips.

That's rich coming from someone who doesn't count their time or travel expenses in their b.s. $279/hour claim.

Which means that you have had, at the very least, 213 clips ejected. If you spend your claimed 5 minutes per clip, that's 18 hours of work that got rejected. And, of course, doesn't include your travel expenses and the time you spent capturing said content to begin with.

Why wouldn't I trust someone's word who claims you can make $279/hour at stock footage and then admit they value their production time at $0 and don't count travel, room, and eating expenses?

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Doug, don't even try to reason with Gary, it is wasting your time, just as he wastes everyone else's time. Anyway, following your instruction on uploading was so simple and smooth. My goal is submit 3-5 more clips today. I will let you know as soon as I hear back from Shutterstock as to whether they were accepted. Have a great day and I wish you well on the clips of controlled burning in Florida. Bob

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Bob, you are right. I tried to have a civil discussion but he just wants to pick a fight just for the fun of it I suppose. Time to go back to ignoring, time is money.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Well I just submitted 4 more clips for approval to Shutterstock, including one that was classified "editorial" just to try it. Again I followed all of Doug's suggestions on importing clips, editing, grading, creating metadata, uploading via an FTP site and submitting for final approval. To be honest, if I had not taken this course and just went at it myself I would have received so many rejections that I would have gotten frustrated and dropped the whole idea. However, by following Doug's methodology I know I have a good chance of having some of my clips accepted. I will let ya'll know what happens next. Bob

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Doug, there's actually an inbuilt forum function to help you permanently achieve this. Here's a quote by Chris from another thread:

I've only got one member on my ignore list (I just didn't like the way he communicated to the other members), so I've got no idea what he's been saying on this thread. I can only guess from the responses by yourself and others. The Ignore List, I've found, restores DV Info to the friendly, helpful, constructive place that it's meant to be.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Decided on another discussion thread not to bother replying to Gary. Stuck to it ever since.

Andrew

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

David, thank you. I never knew this. Bob

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Thanks, David. Please everyone, if your only response to anything I post is to call me "stupid", imply I don't know what I'm talking about without ever offering anything specific or of substance, or directly lie about things you literally said one post prior, please add me to this list. You really should not be seeing what I have to add to any discussion if you are going to do any of that.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

David, thanks for the suggestion. I was not aware of that function.

Re: Selling Stock Video Footage.
 

Seems to me the best way to deal with someone disruptive on a forum is to ignore them. If everyone would ignore them they would soon get bored without the attention and move on. Lot of good information on this site and the back and forth with these people is disruptive
.