Hi MrBlues
I find that animating illustrations is easiest in either After Effects and rig up the illustration or use the puppet tool. I also really like using Anime Studio and find it great and easy. Especially for stock. You can import eps files straight in.
http://my.smithmicro.com/anime-studio-2D-animation-software.html

Got to admit that if you are new to both of these programs it's not going to be easy, but with a few hours behind your back you should learn the ropes pretty quick. Just youtube for tutorials and you'll be fine.

Good luck:)

This is kind of like an impossible answer. Everyone will have different experiences.

My experience is that I was doing this part time from 2012 - 2016 and built up a tidy portfolio of 5000 clips. I began to earn more than my day job which was in film and animation so gave that up and now doing this full time (just video).

It's hard to say if this will work as an investment. It really depends on the talent of the person you are employing. What skills does he have? What ideas? Will he copy them for his own portfolio when he sees the potential in it?
Who will be editing / uploading and key-wording? I ask this as this takes way longer than filming. You may get him to film on Monday and Tuesday. Then Wed /Thurs / Friday will be doing all the post production. Pre-production also takes ages. Planning the shot's etc.
Honestly you've got to totally have faith in who you employ as it will be their own sole responsibility and don't get too disheartened if after 4 months they say 'see ya' and start there own stock portfolio.

The experience I've had as a stock videographer is that I still get surprised on what sells.
Ive worked for weeks on stuff that has never sold on all stock sites and yet worked one night where I've made well over $10,000. You honestly don't know?

Good luck anyway.

I had this earlier too but I don't get it? Adobe already has a large video collection. Why would they want to get less money selling via pond5 and vise-versa?

Have you tried selling MP4 to the agencies?

If your looking for a free workaround all I can think of is either import it into Photoshop and export .mov h.264
Or VLC media player have saved my bacon a few times.
Also quicktime player but not sure if you need to pay for the pro license?

I have bought a video convertor software that I used to use all the time in my day job before I went full time with stock video. Really helpful for only $30

I'm on a MAC - are you PC?

Alright cheers mate not just me then. I've always been payed on the 15th by videoblocks and so when it didn't show just thought it was strange. Your probably right about it being Easter though that didn't stop Pond5.
Cheers

I think you should be paid for the downloads the thief's accumulated. It's not your fault that they stole your work. The agencies should have some funds kept aside for this as it's there fault they are allowing obvious duplicates. Surly theres software out there that could pick duplicates up? 

Man alive that makes my blood boil. Nice find Space, just wonder how many others are lurking out there. You wouldn't really notice too if you were doing a random search as you'd think it's your clip.

How did you catch them?

I haven't been able to login to my pond5 account using the desktop app for months now. Anyone else?

you said: "H.264 seems like a terrible codec for resale."

the above statement is simply not true.

I did a pixel by pixel comparison of video frames rendered with various codecs such as PRORES, H264, PJPEG, etc, and H264 performed extremely well compared to prores, and the difference in file size for PRORES makes it a far less efficient codec. The variance in pixels with H264 was hardly noticable (perhaps not even 1%) and the file size savings were absolutely massive.

in addition, H264 is a far more advanced codec as compared to PRORES. there are far more options and features. Any drawbacks with H264 (vs PRORES) have been resolved with H265 in terms of bit depth. PRORES is a very basic, featureless codec.

Are you having a laugh? 4K video in h.264. Is it the 1st of April today or something?

I'm amazed that's what stocksy are asking for in 4K clips? h.264 will compress them to death?

My 4K clips are all less than 100MB.  Doesn't take long to upload.

That's impossible especially in ProRes

Voting again sounds great if you were in the remain camp. The thing is 52% compared to 48% is a huge majority. Although it doesn't look it its close to 1,500,000 people. That's huge.

You can't make these things the best of 3. We had plenty of time to make our decision. we made it, there will always be happy people but also sad.

As a nation I think there is a lot of afraid people. The uncertainty of it all. We need to band together now, get the job done and move on.