Searching for wisdom of the video microstock contributors group here. I have a stockpile of video Im preparing to process and upload to all the usual suspects. Each micorstock company provides a list of acceptable video formats. Some provide the order they prefer. The video I shot is both on a Red and a Canon DSLR 4K. Obviously, the beauty lies in range editors making the video purchase have to color correct and composite this colorspace in ProRes and ProResHQ.
I noticed Brightontl mentioned he conducted a search for top-selling 4K videos. This showed few actually selling in the ProRes format family. I spent the morning checking myself - totally spot on - very few on the top pile. My question is: Does it help video sales to submit footage in a more widely acceptable, compressed format such a JPEG or H.264? Or in the group's opinion is the demand for less compressed 4K noticeably on the rise?
Hi Meg,
I am on Windows, so I have never uploaded in ProRes and I don't have any direct experience with sales in this codec, On Windows these days I am practically limited to H264.
If you are on a Mac and specially if you are shooting in RED, you might try to encode in both formats and have a direct feedback about it.
In my experience there are two distinct groups of buyers:
- The vast majority want a file ready to use and already color graded and don't do any post processing, in this case H264 is an acceptable codec
- A few buyers integrated the clips in a bigger project and prefer to color grade them. In this case ProRes is by far the better choice. Probably these are also the buyers willing to pay more for a clip, so I believe it would make sense to use them for files at Pond 5 with higher selling prices