Microstock Footage Forum > General - Stock Video

Optimum length for video clips.

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wollwerth:
I create and upload quite a bit of video content. I'm just curious what people's experience is with clip length. Is there an optimum clip length that buyer are looking for, or does it even matter? What's your experience?

SpaceStockFootage:
Not sure if there's any data out there as to what sells best and what's the best course of action, but I guess it's finding a balance between providing the most value to the buyer (i.e. longer clips) and getting the most value out of your content (i.e. being able to split footage up into multiple clips). I'm sure most buyers only use a few seconds per clip, but there will be instances when longer clips might be required (say as a background for a text/graphics segment in a documentary or news piece)... and if somebody is on a budget then a bunch of 20 second clips could cost half as much as twice as many 10 second clips. Possible downsides for longer clips could be people with super-slow internet... they may have trouble downloading multiple one minute long ProRes or PNG clips.

Not sure if my approach is the way to go, but I very, very rarely upload anything less than 10 seconds... aim for around 15 to 20 seconds, and very, very rarely upload anything longer than 30 seconds.   

mindstorm:
I rarely submit anything shorter than 10 sec, nor longer than 30 sec.  10-20 sec is my "sweet spot."

Note that most agencies will not accept anything less than 5 sec (yes, I know one that accepts 3 sec, but... really??), nor longer than 60 sec.

My clips are almost entirely 4K unless slo-mo, which are HD (limit of my recording hardware).

wollwerth:

--- Quote from: mindstorm on August 01, 2019, 14:53 ---I rarely submit anything shorter than 10 sec, nor longer than 30 sec.  10-20 sec is my "sweet spot."

Note that most agencies will not accept anything less than 5 sec (yes, I know one that accepts 3 sec, but... really??), nor longer than 60 sec.

My clips are almost entirely 4K unless slo-mo, which are HD (limit of my recording hardware).

--- End quote ---

More specifically I was wondering if there was any advantage to submitting longer clips. I realize that short clips (under 5 seconds) have very limited use. I seem to sell mostly between 10 and 25 second clips, but I wasn't sure what other people's experience was.

mindstorm:

--- Quote from: wollwerth on August 01, 2019, 17:05 ---More specifically I was wondering if there was any advantage to submitting longer clips. I realize that short clips (under 5 seconds) have very limited use. I seem to sell mostly between 10 and 25 second clips, but I wasn't sure what other people's experience was.

--- End quote ---

The owner of BlackBox, and a few of his most experienced people, have been doing stock video for more than a decade. Their experience is that the prime length is 10 to 15 seconds.  I tend to push that to 20 sec, so the buyer has a bit of flexibility.

They state that if your clip is longer, you are best to break it into 2 (or more) clips and post each separately.

When I look at videos in which I know (or suspect) that stock footage is used, I keep a mental stopwatch on the likely stock clips.  Yep, it is very rare for one to last 10 seconds.  3 to 5 seems far more common for those kinds of clips.  BB did point out one specific video that was made entirely with stock clips last year.  When I watched it, I never saw a scene go longer than 5 seconds.

BTW, I am not advocating BlackBox. Merely noting that the owner does appear to be an experienced and successful stock video producer, and passing along things he has said, and which seem to make sense to me (after watching published videos more closely).

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