Recently, I submitted some super 8 footage to Pond 5 and got a rather surprising rejection reason. They claim that they cannot accept this clip because of the visible black bars on the sides and that I should resubmit it with it's native dimensions. Well of course it has black bars on the sides - it's super 8 film footage. As most people know, super 8 has a 4:3 aspect ratio and so there will be black bars on the left and right when the footage is displayed on a 16:9 screen. That can't be helped.

And yes, obviously it has the native dimensions - super 8 cameras expose a 4:3 frame (unless the gate has been modified.)

I have also submitted another super 8 clip in the past and there were no issues accepting that one despite the 4:3 aspect ratio. And a search on P5 will reveal many 4:3 clips.

I wonder if they're developing a bias against 4:3 clips.

Theres a field where you can post explanations for the reviewer at the end of the submit page- have you tried to explain?

Ah I didn't realise that was the case. Then again, it's clearly stated in the description that the footage is super 8 so that should have been a clue. I would have thought a decent number of reviewers would have realised that super 8 is 4:3.

Regardless, I submit my footage with Stocksubmitter. I'll have to check if there's a way to leave reviewers a note with that program.

I submitted the same clip again and it was flagged by their duplicate detector. I sent P5 an e-mail and in their reply, they recommended that I submit the clip as a 4:3 file instead of 4:3 inside of a 16:9 file. So I selected 4:3 with an NLE program and exported it as  3840 x 2880. When I view the thumbnail of the clip, there are no more black bars on the left and right. Though now there are thick black bars on the top and bottom. I wasn't expecting to see those.

It's a uphill battle against the wind and storm sometimes, isn't it? Good luck with that formatting. Keep coming back to inform us, I'm following with interest, as I have some old 16mm film I'm considering having converted. I want to know how to have it formatted the way P5 wants it.

I submitted the same clip again and it was flagged by their duplicate detector. I sent P5 an e-mail and in their reply, they recommended that I submit the clip as a 4:3 file instead of 4:3 inside of a 16:9 file. So I selected 4:3 with an NLE program and exported it as  3840 x 2880. When I view the thumbnail of the clip, there are no more black bars on the left and right. Though now there are thick black bars on the top and bottom. I wasn't expecting to see those.

Why not just crop it tightly and tidy to 4:3?
I'm with them with this one, if the original is 4:3 submit as 4:3, buyer can easily incorporate it into 16:9 as he pleases.

I have some old 16mm film I'm considering having converted.

Oh that sounds cool. I hope you get that 16mm footage added to your port. Ive shot a bit of 16mm with a Russian camera (Krasnogorsk 3.) The K3 had a wind up spring motor and was very reliable for a few years but one day, it refused to run anymore.

Okay this isn't as clear cut as it seems. I'm not sure if I'm using the right pixel dimensions for the 4:3 4k export. The 16:9 version is 3840 x 2160. According to google, 4k video for the 4:3 aspect ratio is 3840 x 2880. But if I chose those dimensions, that would mean that the height of the image would be greater than the original - going from 2160 to 2880. That sounds like an increase in pixels for the height. If that's the case, would that be the equivalent of upscaling to a certain extent which is probably frowned upon? I'm not sure if reducing the long side / the width (3840) to a lower value would be better as that is simply cropping rather than adding more pixels. So keeping the height the same but cropping the sides might possibly be better.

Are there some specific pixel dimensions for 4k 4:3 video that people could recommend?

I guess one way of working this out would be importing some SD 4:3 footage into an NLE program, capturing a frame grab and opening that frame grab in Photoshop. Then take a look at the image dimensions, change the height (in pixels) to 2160 and see what the width value says.

The only problem is I don't have access to my usual computer which has Photoshop and NLE software with frame grab capability.

Edit: Silly me. I just thought of using an online tool to do the conversion rather than going through all that trouble I mentioned above. Apparently, the pixel dimensions I should be using are 2880 x 2160.