I spent a couple solid hours working with it last night.  Over all, it's not bad software at all.  I ran into an issue with IPTC that I'll post on your tracker later today.

I don't mean to be bitchy, my wife's dog has a bad cold and is coughing constantly.  She won't let me lock him in the car at night so that I can get sleep, so I haven't slept well in a week now.

In any case, I realize that you are probably developing this part time (have a real day job), so I can understand if things aren't immediate like we impatient Americans think everything should be.

Should product suggestions also be posted in the tracker?

You can post new bugs here http://tracker.cushystock.com/
Please, review existing bugs before posting.

Gotcha.  And will do.

Wow, development sure moves slow...  Bugs posted a couple months ago that aren't do to be fixed for 1 or 2 more versions.

I'd rather deal with a set of reviewer, this way there is a set standard on the site.

Name one site where there is a set standard for review? 

Every single site has guidelines, but the reviewer decisions are arbitrary and based on interpretation.

I don't know how many times I've resubmitted the exact same rejected photo and gotten it past a different reviewer.

If someone were to start a new site, I'd offer these ideas:

Allow photographers to set their own prices, no subscriptions.  Split the sale 50/50.

Limit the number of photos a photographer can have online, based on their conversion rate (say a max of 250 to start and then increasing as downloads increase).

Peer-to-peer review to weed out the crap instead of some hired idiot who makes arbitrary decisions.  If enough users flag a photo as crappy, dump it. 

A weighted review system where your photos climb in the ratings based not only on how many users like it, but also against a formula that includes how many photos of others the artist has rated him/herself.  This gets the photographers involved in keeping high quality stuff on the site.

Images that don't get downloaded in a year get removed.  If it's not popular enough for at least one person to download it, then get rid of it.

How do you want me to report the bugs?  In your forums (no posts there since March)?

The biggest bug at the moment is this:

Click on an image and hold down the button to drag it into the categories window.  If you drag it across the divider too quickly, you can't drop it, you gotta start over.  If you drag it over the stock info area, you can no longer drop it.  So I have to slowly drag an image across the divider into the category area to use that feature.

I know of 6 others, I can post those here too if you'd like.

VJ loops are typically longer and have different elements to them.  To decide if your loop is a VJ loop, watch it while listening to music and see if that changes how you perceive it.   If it seems different, tag it.

What it does, it does pretty well.  But *, it's buggy.

If you attempt to upload and your upload settings aren't right, it won't let you try again after you fix the settings.  You have to exit the program and start it again.

If you drag files too quickly from the middle file area into the category area, you can't deposit them.  You have to drag them slowly.

When you type in the description area and hit the space bar, the image in the studio advances to the next, if you hit backspace it goes back to the previous image.

And 7 others that are pretty bad.

And nobody has posted anything in their bug forums since March and the author hasn't responded to anything in a couple of months...

Too bad, it has potential.

Is DT like all the rest where "beauty is in the eye of the beholder?"  In other words, if I re-submit the exact same file again is it possible for it to be accepted by a different reviewer?

I've emailed support to clarity their generic reason for refusal of an image because the description didsn't make any sense based on the type of image it was.

But on other sites, I've just re-submitted the same image and gotten it through.

If you are shoot HD and putting it up, no conversion is necessary.

I submit everything as HD 1080 at 30 fps.  The customer can easily convert it to 25 fps if they want.

From my personal experience (and extensive research) 1920x1080 outsells all other formats nearly 3:1 as it can easily be downconverted to other formats, but upconverting from SD or even 720p doesn't always work well.

From the StockXpert forums:

Hello Elixirpix

Thank you for voicing your concerns on the forum and for participating in our first ever Town Hall conference call last Thursday. We want you to know that we heard (and read) your concerns.

As stated on the call, we want to apologize for how this policy change and its communication were handled. We have taken your concerns seriously and decided to step back and review our initial plan. There will be no changes in your ability to control where your content is distributed. All three opt-out options will remain fully functional.

If you are not familiar with these options, as a contributor to Stockxpert you can earn more by:

Choosing to include your content in subscriptions on Stockxpert and other Jupiterimages sites;
Choosing to include your content with unrelated third parties Jupiterimages does business with, and/or;
Choosing to sell extended rights for your content enabling it to be used in products and services which are sold.

Please review your opt-in selections in your account profile to confirm your selected licensing options.

Based on three factors in the market, we believed the time was right to make all content on Stockxpert automatically available via these three opportunities. First, these options used to be opt-in, not opt-out. We discovered earlier in the year that most contributors wanted to be included in these programs but did not realize they had to opt-in. In response, for contributor convenience and customer benefit we made these options opt-out. Very few contributors opt-out which tells us that these revenue opportunities are viewed positively by virtually the entire Stockxpert community.

Second, the amount of revenue earned through extended licenses was negligible. If you earn a lot of money from extended licenses, you are among an elite few. We thought we could differentiate our community by offering customers a more simplified licensing option while increasing the value of using Stockxpert without taking anything away from contributors.

And finally, the customers on Stockxpert who license your content were expressing confusion over content that was available in the Stockxpert subscription versus content that was only available for single image sales. To adopt a highly customer centric approach, we wanted to have content consistency across any product or service which includes Stockxpert content.

These issues and challenges are real, and as a community, we need to figure out how we're going to address them so that we remain competitive and deliver the best experience for the customer. But as contributors you are customers too and we let you down in how we chose to discuss these issues and in how we decided to bring changes to the community.

While we take a step back to re-assess these issues and how we can have a constructive dialog with the community about them, Jupiterimages will be actively experimenting with the unique opportunities we have to expand your exposure throughout our Jupiterimages properties and worldwide distribution channels. Across all of our businesses we license more than $100 million worth of content annually. We want to leverage this traffic for the benefit of Stockxpert contributors and all our customers. Some of these experiments will be successful others won't be. But we're not standing still.

To that end, shortly we will be launching two new opportunities for contributors to earn additional revenue. These opportunities are linked to your subscriptions opt-in selection and they are completely optional and you may easily opt-out (if you're not familiar on how to do this, directions will follow).

The first opportunity is the coming launch of our Photos.com Plus subscription plan. This opportunity is automatically available to you if you are opted-in to subscriptions. The Photos.com Plus plan is based on Photos.com, one of the oldest and most used photo subscriptions on the Internet. The content in Photos.com is what we call wholly-owned. That means we own it and don't pay any royalties on it. We will be adding a new subscription level for Photos.com customers (Photos.com Plus), and in this we are proactively including Stockxpert contributors in a multi-million dollar revenue stream. Why? Our customers want the fresh, stylized images that you're producing and selling on Stockxpert.

Your images will not only be exposed to thousands more customers and downloads on one of the leading stock photo sites in the industry, but you will also have the opportunity to sell your images at higher price points with the pay-per-download option that is available. On the regular Photos.com subscription, the two highest resolutions are not included. As part of this experiment, we've adopted the same approach for Photos.com Plus and we're excited to see if we can sell microstock images at traditional royalty-free prices, yielding more revenue for everyone.

Another subscription plan where you will earn additional revenue is coming in the near future, the Jupiterimages Unlimited Plus subscription, or JIU+. We have heard you in the forums and we want to let you know about these options ahead of time so that you can make your choice. Again, the Photos.com Plus opportunity and this Jupiterimages Unlimited Plus opportunity are automatically available to you only if you are opted-in to subscriptions. Jupiterimages Unlimited is one of the fastest growing subscription businesses at Jupiterimages and we're excited to add the fresh, stylized images of Stockxpert to the collection for all the same reasons we're doing so for Photos.com Plus.

Experimenting with these new offerings is fairly complex as we're trying to balance the needs and expectations of our customers and those of our Stockxpert contributors. The best source of new subscription sales for both new offerings are from our installed base of existing subscribers so we need to try to match what they're used to without giving away too much value. We're doing our best but it's a bit tricky. The End User License Agreements (EULAs) for Photos.com and Jupiterimages Unlimited, for instance, are different from the EULA for the Stockxpert subscription. So we're making compromises in both as we prepare to bring Photos.com Plus and JIU+ to market. To make this clear, we have created a special web page to help clarify these areas for you. Please visit http://www.stockxpert.com/lpages/contrib .. to read more.

While we think Photos.com Plus and JIU+ are great opportunities for you to earn more revenue from your images, we also understand and respect that you may not want to be part of these new subscription opportunities. If that is the case, please be sure to visit your account profile and deselect the checkbox under "Number 7 Subscription to Stockxpert.com" by August 15 to be removed. If you are already opted-out of subscriptions, then you don't need to do anything. Understandably, we cannot create opt-outs for each new subscription offering, so if you opt-out of subscriptions, your Stockxpert content will not be available in any subscription on Stockxpert, Photos.com Plus, Jupiterimages Unlimited Plus or any future Jupiterimages subscription offering. For those of you who are interested in being a part of this exciting new subscription, please double check to make sure you are opted in.

Thank you for staying involved. We've definitely learned an important and valuable lesson in how we need to engage with you in the future. While we will continue testing and being an innovative leader in this field, we know we need to be sure to include the community in all future initiatives.

Again, for a better understanding of the Photos.com Plus and JIU+ opportunities, please visit http://www.stockxpert.com/lpages/contrib .. and remember to opt-in (or out) by August 15.

Please feel free to contact us if you still have questions and thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,
The Stockxpert Team
[email protected]

SS's method for approving photos leaves a LOT to be desired.

I uploaded my 10 best sellers from other sites and all 10 were rejected, most as not good enough for stock.

Somehow, nobody told the people who bought them elsewhere that they were no good.

Although I see SS as one of the top sites, I'm pretty much giving up on them until they start making sense.