Is it US? I live in Europe... here we have with fiber 1g download and 400mb upload + 5g unlimited for smartphone. Still when i upload to P5 sometimes it takes a minute or two to upload 6 videos of 400-600mb.

Yes - in US.

High-speed and fiber internet options are much more plentiful in the areas of the larger cities.

In smaller cities/towns and lower-population density areas of US choices/options for high-speed or fiber internet service is not nearly as readily available as in the larger cities.

The high-speed and fiber ISP builders want to provide service 1st to the more profitable high-population density areas and then the rest of us sometime later - maybe if ever. 

Quote from: PCDMedia on December 01, 2024, 09:12

My speed when ftp'ing clips to Pond5 is around 4.5 mb/sec.

This is not enough. And this is probably when you are loading only 1 file. If you are loading 10 files at the same time, the speed of loading one file will probably be much lower.
I see, so 1Gb/sec internet doesn't solve the problem.
It's strange that your upload speed is only 35. My upload speed on 100 Mb internet is about the same.

I rarely upload 1 clip at a time.  Usually ftp upload in batches of 5-10 video files or more.  Files sizes typically 200-600 mb  for each file.

The 4.5 mb/sec is the typical speed consistently shown by my FTP s/w when uploading batches of video clips. 

At least in the US throttled upload speeds are not uncommon depending on the ISP. My ISP is a cable TV provider that also provides internet services over their copper cable TV system. At present my area has no other choices that can provide any decent speed. 

The 4.5 mb/sec ftp upload works ok. 1 gb/35mb is the fastest available in my neighborhood at present - so until a fiber ISP is available in my neighborhood it's the best available we got.

 

Interestingly the current total number of clips at P5 is approx 44.6 mil

Of that 44.6 mil only 4.2 mil are Exclusive as shown by the "All Exclusive" search filter.

Less than 10% Exclusive. 

That appears to indicate most contributors consider being non-Exclusive and submitting to more platforms than P5 is a better deal even with lower commission rates and increased effort required to submit content to multiple sites.

It's seems obvious given the not-so-good Exclusive participation that P5 is doing little to promote it - even the 60% commission isn't much incentive.

It's also known that being exclusive does not give you favorable placement in search. As an exclusive you still compete on a level playing field with non-exclusives. I have shared a while back with P5 that they should consider a search boost to exclusives if they wanted to attract more of them.

That would be a plus for being P5 Exclusive.

I suspect there are "private" contracts between P5 and their bigger content aggregator/agency contributors such as Reuters, PA Media, etc.   Those contributors appear to have different prices compared to the recent change to 2 tier prices for most contributors including Exclusives.

Perhaps the contracts with the big aggregators also have "customized" search result preferences that they don't want impinged on by allowing same for Exclusives.

There's seemingly a lack of transparency with how different groups of contributors are treated.

I use gamma 2.4 timeline with output gamma set to same as timeline.

Probably doesn't make a lot of difference.  My assumption is our stock video footage will be used in a larger project whose final output's gamma is set to whatever they need/want.

Yes - I agree.  Something seemed to have happened/changed on P5 in January.

After a decent 2023 I had one sale in 1st week of Jan. and then nothing, zip, zilch, zero, until finally 2 days ago after almost 10 months a sale finally dropped.   

Maybe it will be better going forward - couldn't get a lot worse.

If pond5 starts really promoting exclusive content and with 60% plus personal pricing they can draw all the great content of the industry.

Never understood why they didn't do more with it.

On istock the exclusive content is favored in the searches, as it should be. They also promote their exclusive artists.

Yes - doing more to promote P5 Exclusive content exposure is certainly needed.  Adjusting the Search algorithm to increase Ex's content search results would be a big plus. 

This leads to larger question(s). 

P5 is owned by SS, a publicly-traded bottom-line driven enterprise. 
SS ownership obviously influences management of both companies stock footage businesses.  .

Despite what SS has publicly stated why would a for-profit enterprise buy a competitor only to let it continue as a competitor in-house - makes no sense.  There is potential for siphoning/steering customers and even contributors by various means from one platform to the more profitable platform.

Is P5 going to languish and suffer slow strangulation over time to reduce competition for SS?  Under the status quo and not doing more to improve things such as making Exclusive more attractive to current and potential contributors there's little to deter a decline.

I think Alexander summarises nicely at the end of his post all the valid questions we as contributors have about the new pricing model:
https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2024/08/09/exciting-times-ahead-pond5-reduces-1000-prices-to-just-two/

His comment
"...the management at Pond5 are being forced to match Shutterstock�s pricing points and (close to an) all-you-can-eat subscription models."

appears to be off-set in part at least by Pond5's statement in their email:

"Pond5 customers prefer licensing individual assets over subscriptions because their work is project-based."

Quote from: WendyT on July 05, 2024, 17:57

Quote from: PCDMedia on July 05, 2024, 10:57

Seems to me that getting out of stock all together and removing a portfolio is poking oneself in the eye.    Just leave the portfolio to produce whatever it can under new plans but stop investing in creating new content if it doesn't make business sense to continue to do so.     

Unless you have other options for that portfolio and then it would make sense to remove it.

Says he is going to go independent as the technology enables it now (I assume this means something like his own website but not sure). I can understand the frustration with building an exclusive portfolio of 37000 clips and then come Shutterstock with its controlling influence begin tampering with exclusive ports. But surely had to see that coming sooner or later. I'd never go exclusive with them or any agency for that matter.

The now ex-CEO of Pond5 was in a YouTube Pond5 video about the time P5 was starting their Exclusive program.  In that video he convincingly made the case that becoming a Pond5 Exclusive contributor was an effective way to counteract some buyers shopping around various stock sites to get the lowest price for a clip.   

He claimed that Pond5 sales teams encountered the price shoppers everyday.    Whether that was true or not is open to speculation.  But many including myself listened - it sounded good at the time for that and other reasons. 

Selling your own stuff on your own site is a sweet siren song.  But the 800# gorilla in the room is not the footage or the platform - but driving large volumes of potential buyer web traffic to your site.  It's not a case of "If I build it - they will come".

Reading on FB a contributor with 37000 exclusive clips on Pond5 said in a discussion on the OP message he will likely be suspending all of it and getting out of stock entirely. Thought this was an interesting comment from someone with a well developed port.

Depending on if/how this all plays out - each contributor will have to decide how to respond.   

Seems to me that getting out of stock all together and removing a portfolio is poking oneself in the eye.    Just leave the portfolio to produce whatever it can under new plans but stop investing in creating new content if it doesn't make business sense to continue to do so.       

In the past 2-3 years Alamy has told it's own contributors at least twice that Alamy planned to soon open video footage submissions to them.  Hasn't happened yet.

In that time they've added video from PA Media Alamy's parent organization and just recently they've partnered with and added 14m clips from depositphotos.  These are in addition to the Pond5 footage.

I guess they don't want to add the workload of QC checking their own contributor's video submissions to their photo submissions QC overhead.

Yuri gave great examples of how he works, how they do their research and how extensive and authentic the post production is. For instance with tech images that show overlayed computer code, they actually have code written by real software people.

When they do team sports images, they actually design the team clothes specifically for the shooting, they work with a lot of authentic locations etc�it is very, very impressive how much attention to detail goes into his work.

I wonder what his annual production costs were to generate all his microstock photos and clips? 

HD, IMO, is all but dead and it's up to you to invest in new equipment and start submitting 4K clips if you expect to "enjoy" success in a similar way that you did when HD was popular.

I submit mostly 4K myself.   With that said there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that HD continues to be very popular. I suspect on P5 that a larger percentage of footage sales are HD vs 4K and that will likely continue for some time. 

How/where is most video media consumed?  On small HD screens - smart phones, tablets, computer monitors, and most TV's with 4K TVs gaining but not getting full traction with the bulk of TV consumers as industry had hoped.  HD works just fine on the small screen real estate devices that are so ubiquitous.