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Messages - increasingdifficulty
Pages: 1 ... 45 46 47 48 49 [50] 51 52 53 54 55 ... 74
1226
« on: April 16, 2017, 03:26 »
This is an age old debate, but you can't improve the quality of the clip by re-encoding it as a Photo JPEG. I don't know what editor your processing your clips with, but I would suggest you look for solutions that use the native file format i.e. H264, and take care to setup the output bitrate settings to something comparable to the original file. This could be something between 75 and 100 Mbps at a variable bitrate.
You will find arguments to justify Photo JPEG for stock but in my experience, having uploaded both formats, for the time being H264 is the least problematic.
As soon as you make a change (color/contrast/exposure etc.) you're essentially unpacking and need to encode again. A higher bitrate than the original can then indeed mean better quality. That is, not better than the original, untouched file, but better quality than encoding with the same settings as the original. Especially with heavy compression like h264.
1227
« on: April 15, 2017, 08:58 »
Forget that site.
1228
« on: April 15, 2017, 01:28 »
I'm shooting some videos with an Olympus OM-d E-M5 Mk II, with the best possible quality.
For each video I cut the parts I don't need and I encode it with Photo JPEG, but the result is a lot bigger than the original file...
For example:
Original file: 21 seconds - 191 MB
Exported file: 21 seconds - 464 MB
Am I doing something wrong?
Is there a lossless way to decrease the exported file size?
QuickTime, for example, lets you cut files without re-encoding. I would, however, recommend basic (color/contrast/exposure) editing to heavy editing so the clips look their best. As soon as you do that, you need to re-encode, and it's best to do that with a higher bitrate than the original to keep the quality. Even though it's nice to have raw material as an editor, the vast majority of best-selling clips I've seen are quite heavily edited/graded.
1229
« on: April 14, 2017, 10:48 »
It was a good month with a bunch of 4k sales, but they all got refunded (fraud or something). What a joke...
1230
« on: April 13, 2017, 16:22 »
Let me clarify: $/clip/month = monthly earnings divided by how many clips you have.
1231
« on: April 13, 2017, 16:16 »
Just out of curiosity, how much do you currently make per month per clip at Shutterstock only? Or which site has the best $/clip/month for you? Question aimed at anyone.
Currently an HD sale nets me $17-$23.
That is not what I asked.
1232
« on: April 13, 2017, 16:05 »
Just out of curiosity, how much do you currently make per month per clip at Shutterstock only? Or which site has the best $/clip/month for you? Question aimed at anyone.
1233
« on: April 13, 2017, 12:55 »
The real money for musicians lies in touring
A $9.99 download on a program like iTunes nets artists a modest 94 cents, less than a 10% cut. The record company takes $5.35 and Apple keeps the remaining $3.70.
Artists get nine cents for each individual song downloaded on Napster and iTunes. You would need to get about 13,000 downloads a month to equal minimum wage.
Being a musician is worse than trying to be a digital photographer. Anyone with a pencil and paper can be an artist and draw. Musicians work hard and study for years to get underpaid because honestly, really good guitar players are on every street corner. That's how some make a living. Singers are even more common. Buy a camera and make 15% is better than what musicians in the real world make. Sure there are some stars and then the other 99%. Same for Microstock.
Dare to dream and hope you make it, but a dose of reality is also good for the soul. Don't expect that the world will come to you, expect that you need to be different and the best of the best just to barely make it in the arts.
Absolutely not! You are incorrect. It costs a lot of money to tour. Only the biggest artists in the world make money touring (and they of course make a lot of it). Most struggle to break even and most often lose money. That means most artists that are not Avicii/Kygo/Ed Sheeran. Even bands with several albums out that are somewhat famous don't make much money touring. Your iTunes numbers can be anything from 0% to 70%. It all depends on the contracts. There is no normal. An indie artist gets 70%, and there are more and more of those making decent money. A big new artist with upfront money from the label makes 0% until the upfront money is paid back. This can be a couple of hundred thousand dollars. The good money is in licensing for non-superstars (and sometimes merchandise if you are good at branding). It is much easier to make money (licensing/stock etc.) with music than photography, trust me on this one. Sure, there are lots of musicians in this world, but you can't write, record and produce a selling track by accident. That is indeed possible with photography. And there are countless more photographers than musicians in the world. There are many more opportunities for a track to make money after the sync fee in the form of YouTube money and PRO money (broadcast). This is not available for images/footage. A placement in a commercial can easily get you an extra $1,000-2,000, and sometimes MUCH more. A bigger commercial that runs for a while can mean an extra $20-40k.
1234
« on: April 13, 2017, 11:58 »
I don't make masses of money from the clip on Shutterstock, so I won't lose too much sleep, but I agree it would be nice to be paid their earnings. But as they've probably already paid out and they'd be losing money to send me that money after the fact... I can understand why they don't.
It would probably be less than $250 or so. Better in my pocket than theirs, but still.
If they go through the trouble of stealing and uploading to Shutterstock you can be sure they're trying to sell your stuff all over the web under different names. I would do some detective work on all sites, small and big. Shutterstock is most likely not the place they got your item from in the first place.
1235
« on: April 13, 2017, 05:45 »
Their account has disappeared. Good stuff. Even one of the few works I recognised and told the owner of... he said he recognised a few more... so it definitely wasn't a one off.
The sad thing is that not much more happens. It's virtually risk-free thievery with the biggest risk being that the latest payout won't be received... I've had this happen too and I didn't even get the money from the sales of my stolen items, which was several hundred dollars.
1236
« on: April 11, 2017, 16:04 »
As with all sites it's more about YOUR individual search placement than anything else. A small site with fewer buyers can outsell the biggest site many times over if you are hidden at the big site, but very visible at the small site.
No site is the best for all.
I sell very well at some smaller sites where I know the search engine well and my stuff shows up on page 1-2 for common searches. At some big sites with 100 times more buyers I still don't sell much because it's simply impossible to find my stuff and there's nothing I can do about it except wait a few years for sales so I can rise higher in search.
1237
« on: April 10, 2017, 13:44 »
If you want to live in Monaco, you have to open a bank account there and keep a minimum balance of 1 million euro. I doubt there are many microstockers there 
Not quite, it really depends. 100,000 is the minimum for the cheapest bank, and I'm sure there are plenty of microstockers who can afford that. You have to show that you can support yourself in Monaco of course, and since property is insanely expensive I suppose 100,000 doesn't last that long... 0% tax, however, would mean more than double the income for many, including myself. That makes a pretty big difference. Not sure I'd want to live in Monaco though...
1238
« on: April 10, 2017, 12:42 »
Music on Shutterstock is nothing new, but nowhere do they say that they only do buyouts when you apply... PRO money is good though, unlike the completely terrible (for artists) Epidemic Sound.
Stay away unless they offer $5,000 per track (which of course they don't) or you are a very bad producer (in which case you won't get hired anyway).
A decent track can make $2,000-50,000 over a couple of years. Retaining control over your music is important.
1239
« on: April 10, 2017, 07:45 »
Indeed it is. And when things go south over at P5 on Tuesday/Wednesday, the others pick up.
1240
« on: April 10, 2017, 05:36 »
In any case, it really does brighten up the weekends when everything else is slow. Good mental boost.
1241
« on: April 10, 2017, 04:28 »
In old Dreamstime interview, they said that about 25% use the categories to find stock.
1242
« on: April 10, 2017, 04:26 »
Now it looks like there are only 2 days delayed.
Yes, I have suspected this too, as Wednesdays have become better. Have you been able to confirm it?
1243
« on: April 10, 2017, 01:22 »
Their reports are delayed a couple of days (it was officially confirmed as three a while back), always.
It is normal.
1244
« on: April 09, 2017, 04:14 »
It happens sometimes that a day is skipped followed by an unusual spike, yes. But it's quite rare now, maybe once every one or two months. And you are right about the delay, which makes weekends a lot more fun!
1245
« on: April 06, 2017, 13:29 »
The answer is:
Wait for it.
No.
1246
« on: April 05, 2017, 08:39 »
Yes, PhotoDune was always their weak point, mainly because that's the area of stock products that is most mature with the most intense competition.
The other areas don't really have giant competitors in the same way.
1247
« on: April 05, 2017, 03:32 »
Yuri still number 5 and he left ages ago. that list hasnt been updated in a while, because pressmaster has over 200K sales.
That list is updated every 24 hours. It's only showing image sales since you're checking the PhotoDune site. The rest of Pressmaster's sales are for video/audio. Yuri was number 1 by far when he still sold stuff there. Not surprising he's still number 5.
1248
« on: April 05, 2017, 03:26 »
mp4 is not a codec, it's a container (like .mov) and can contain different kinds of codecs.
You can't compare mp4 to ProRes or PJPEG...
1249
« on: April 04, 2017, 09:08 »
2x post...
1250
« on: April 04, 2017, 09:07 »
A pixel by pixel comparison of frames is irrelevant. Of course it LOOKS the same. What is relevant is how much you can grade and edit the clip before it is completely destroyed. THAT is important.
Footage is almost always used with other clips, which means the buyer is likely to want to tweak the colors.
You can't tell the difference between a high quality jpeg and the RAW file with the same settings either. But when you edit them, the difference is HUGE.
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