ok, quick question from someone who admittedly has no idea, why is video different to say illustration which can take hours or photography which can also take hours for the right shot (not to mention almost $20000 now in gear, books, workshops etc) ?

(please take this as asking a question by someone who has no idea , not as someone trying to start a fight

Honest truth?  Photographers sold out and let stock sites rape them.  Since most footage people went through that, they know the signs and will hopefully be more pre-emptive in fighting sites that try this crap.

As noted, all Digital Camcorders today, no matter what the medium (tape, hard drive, flash memory) store the video in DIGITAL format.  Most MiniDV tape camera use the HDV format for compression.

Also noted, image quality has a lot to do with compression.  The less compression the fewer artifacts and noise you'll find in the video.  HDV compression is notably less than AVCHD compression (AVCHD is the popular format for hard drive and flash memory camera these days).

When AVCHD was initially released there were a LOT of issues with quality and most video camera experts felt that it was not ready for any kind of profession work.  Most camera manufacturers valued compression over quality so they could tell consumers (their intended target) about how they could get 4 to 8 hours of video in 16 GB of space.  MiniDV is a PITA because you typically can't get more than 45 minutes to an hour of high quality video on a tape.  And trust me, when you're recording an event, having to switch tapes in the middle of the action sucks.  Even more, having to carry dozens of tapes on you also sucks.

In the past year AVCHD has grown and matured.  The Canon Vixia line of camcorders maxes out the AVCHD spec by using the lowest compression and highest possible bitrate in the spec.  As a result, the producers of the movie "Crank: High Voltage" bought 10 of the Vixia HF10 camera so that they could shoot every scene from a dozen angles (when you include their 2 higher end primary cameras).

If you visit sites like Camcorderinfo.com, ConsumerReports.com, and the site for Video magazine (I don't remember the domain), they all rank test footage shot on the HF11 and HF20 "higher" than footage from the HV30 and HV40 for both low-light performance and action shots.  They note that if you record at 60i and convert to 30p in your NLE the noise and artifacting is nearly non-existent on their test shots because of the maxed bitrate in these new cameras.

Yeah, the HV20/HV30 use MiniDV tape instead of SD Flash cards.  In fact, the HV30 is probably one of THE most popular HD camcorders for non-professional stock shooters.

The PowerShot you linked only does HD 720 footage, which is still HD and will sell.   But it isn't designed for video it and has issues with action/fast movement and low-light.  Great for home videos for the family, but not for stock from what I am reading in various forums.  Also the H264 compression in the PowerShot has a lot of artifacting in poor lighting conditions.

Bestbuy actually has them in stock at the moment, so if you have one near you, go in and take it for a test drive.  That's what I did the last time I was looking for a P&S digital camera.  They even let me hook it up to one of their big screen TVs.

The cost of the HF10 and HF11 is coming down.  The HF10 was used in the making of the movie "Crank: High Voltage", so you might wanna look at that.

Also, if you don't mind dealing with tape the HV20 and HV30 are excellent choices as well.  I noticed the price of the HV30 has dropped to $600 at a few places that are taking pre-orders for the new HV40.

One major issue that is not addressed by the existing agencies and would be a huge benefit of a coop is REVIEWS.

When you upload to an agency you are at their mercy as far as both review times and acceptance.  Review times on many sites are out of control taking weeks to months in some cases.  It's hard to be timely and current when it takes that long to get something reviewed.

More importantly, the review criteria between the sites is not uniform.  Some sites reject images that are best sellers on another site.  And the rejections are, more often then not, very arbitrary based on opinion of the reviewer as opposed to technical details.

By creating your own site and linking it to a common search engine, YOU CONTROL your own content.  Not some unknown person who may or may not know what they are doing.

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BTW, getting an agency such as Zymm, FP or CutCaster involved is not a bad idea.  Since they already have an existing infrastructure, they could easily build the central search site, provide artists with an API to hook into the searches, handle the transactions and pay the artists taking a small cut to handle transaction fees and a profit for themselves.

Question is... Would any agency be willing to do that?

Good news.

Also, I successfully uploaded a clip using the Quicktime PNG codec.  Many thanks for supporting it.  Makes it easier to provide pre-keyed footage.

Set the time-out to zero and that may force the server to keep the control connection open.  (Edit->settings->transfers).

My control connections drop regularly during upload but I don't get a transfer failure at the end of the upload.  I assume you are using Passive?

Yup, passive mode.  I'll give that a try, but on many sites keep-alives don't work because the server closes any control connection that does not initiate a transfer within 3 to 5 minutes.  So, if I am uploading a file that takes 30 minutes to upload and FZ (or my own test program) is sending keep-alive commands the control connection is still closed because it doesn't initiate a new transfer.

For the moment I am just using my own program that I wrote and having it ignore the connection error.  That pretty much works, but I wrote it as a command line utility, so I have to stick a GUI on it to make it more useful.  In the meantime, I'm still hopeful of finding something else that works.

What if you just open the terminal application and use ftp direct from the bash command line ?

Same basic problem..  The control connection is closed by the server and the FTP utility closes with an error after uploading the first file.  The good news is that duplicates aren't uploaded, but you have to write a script (or batch file as the case may be) to upload batches to account for the error.

I am running into major upload issues with most of the stock video sites.  Because video files are so large, they can take a VERY long time to upload depending on your connection speed.

Using CuteFTP or FileZilla, I run into an issue that if left unattended, they will think that a file has not been successfully uploaded and will attempt to re-upload the file.  On a number of sites (such as Shutterstock) this results in many duplicate copies uploaded of the same file.

Since I am a programmer, I decided to write my own FTP program to try and diagnose the issue.  And what I discovered is that on those sites where I have the problem, the FTP server closes the control connection while the file is uploading.  So when the upload is done, the client software gets a time-out error trying to talk to the FTP server through the closed connection.  Most FTP clients assume this means the file was not successfully uploaded and attempt to upload the file again.

The root of the problem is actually the fault of the Stock Sites.  FTP servers are NEVER supposed to close a control connection if there is an active data connection.  The stock sites are not enabling (or disabling) this feature in their FTP servers.

I have tried to discuss this with the sites I have these issues with: Shutterstock, Fotolia, Clip Canvas, Can Stock and Dreamstime with little success.   Either they don't understand what I am talking about, or they don't care.

So my only solution is to try and find a client program that does not attempt to re-upload files. 

Does anyone have any suggestions?  This is not so much an issue with photos as they are smaller and can be uploaded before the control connection is closed.  Only when you start uploading 200 megabyte files and larger does this issue rear its ugly head.

The frustration is that is takes weeks for anything to get reviewed on Fotolia...

After two solid weeks of research, I have decided on the Canon Vixia HF11.  It's flash based, so no moving parts to break down and has higher marks on many review sites for low-light, fast action, and compression artifacts than it's HV30 cousin.  Has 32 GB flash memory built-in plus an SD slot that supports up to 32 GB more.  And the final nail for me was the lens adapters than let you use Canon and Nikon lenses/filters.

Just waiting on a payout and I'm ordering from B&H.

Thanks, I got a few files to upload and am dipping my toe into the waters.

Will the clips only be visible on Fotosearch or also on Can Stock?