MicrostockGroup Sponsors


Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - increasingdifficulty

Pages: 1 ... 21 22 23 24 25 [26] 27 28 29 30 31 ... 74
626
Off Topic / Re: Not applauding is treason?
« on: February 08, 2018, 07:24 »
Ok, well start in the late 80's when he had his first billion. The point is that he's not exactly this amazing businessman that some people make him out to be. A lot of people would probably be considerably wealthier than him if they started with the same money and connections back in the 70's and 80's.

Not commenting on politics or business skills. I try to stay away from that.

But I just had to get the math right. Can't stay away from that. :)

627
I am myself waiting for the new Mavic Pro with the 1 inch sensor, although in my experience the bit rate plays also a huge role in video quality.
Interesting what you say about the Mavic Air, at first I dismissed it expecting an image quality similar to the p4 (non pro), but I have seen some good footage (although footage on the web doesn't do justice).
I will have a closer look to the Air

Yes, they did raise the bitrate for the Air, so that's probably why the quality is better.

628
Off Topic / Re: Not applauding is treason?
« on: February 08, 2018, 05:53 »
Ok, $1.3m but make sure to take inflation into account.

$350K a week still isn't that bad. Especially if your happy meal was a lot cheaper back then as well.

That was with inflation.

$350k a week starting in 1978 means being broke in the 80s (1985 to be exact). You don't want to be broke in the 80s. Too much cool stuff.

629
Off Topic / Re: Not applauding is treason?
« on: February 08, 2018, 05:45 »
Well if the thing about putting his money in a savings account is true... he could have retired in 1978, sat on some island somewhere and spent $1.3m a week, every week... and he'd be just as wealthy as he is now. Without having to do any work.

Well, that calculation only works if he spends $0.  ;)

If he spent $1.3 million per week, which would have been around $350,000 a week in 1978, he would only have had $82 million + 8.9% of the average total capital in 1979... and so on.

He would have gained $8 million from S&P, but spent $18 million, starting the next year with only $90 million to take from (and get S&P gains from).

At that rate, he would be living on the streets in the 80s (by 1985).

You forget that people also spend money on food, housing, travel, cars. Rich people spend even more.

---

A 30x increase over 40 years (S&P) is 8.9% per year.

If you spend 18.2% per year ($350k per week in 1978) without income you quickly go down to zero.

630
Hi all,

the P4P has a 1 inch CMOS sensor, whereas the P4 and the P4a (advanced) do not. So it's not just the MP, it's actually the sensor that plays a significant role.

Rumors has it that DJI will update the Mavic pro with the same sensor currently in the P4P, but for a lower price than the bigger phantom, so that will increase mobility and flexibility flying drones with increases image quality (both photo and video).

Another advantage of the P4P is that you can easily adjust fstops, shutter speed and ISO in manual mode, do bracket shooting and some other tricks -  therefore you can have more control over your images and videos.

However, please be aware that you need to take (and pass) the Part107 test before you can upload and start to sell. And even with that, you can't simply fly anywhere you want - I highly recommend the free app Airmap to quickly find out if you are allowed to fly in your desired destination or not.

Best, and good luck to all!

I would love it if an updated Mavic Pro got the new sensor. But since they just released the Mavic Air, it might take a while. It seems the Air has slightly better IQ than the Pro.

And regarding the Part 107 - just a friendly reminder that most people aren't in the US. Rules are different everywhere.  :)

631
Video Equipment / Sofware / Technique / Re: Optical flow
« on: February 07, 2018, 02:15 »
Thank you for your answer. Yes, I guess it depends from the actual footage. From what I saw on YT, people use it for "near freeze" effect.

Yes, near freeze works well because the source footage is already very slow.

Filming liquids at 60p is most likely not going to be enough. If you filmed it at 96p or 120p it might work well though, slowing it down even more.

But just go for it and you shall see.  :)

632
Yes, if you have 100+ sales, it would be quite unlikely, although US buyers heavily outnumber any other country.

I assume you have filled out the W8-BEN? I had to do it again not long ago because it expired, or there was a bug.

633
How do you know that not all your video sales are US sales?

634
General - Stock Video / Re: The end of QuickTime PhotoJPEG??
« on: February 05, 2018, 12:18 »
I just remembered though that Assimilate Scratch can apparently still export ProRes from PC. Pretty pricey program though at $650 up-front or $80/month.

Depending on your volume though it might be cheaper than buying a used mac for Prores. Or doing a huge number of ProRes exports in a single month and paying the $80 only when you need it a few times a year. Just some ideas...

As an OS X user, I take ProRes for granted. Is it really this difficult to export ProRes on a Windows machine? After all, it is kind of a standard format.

635
Amount received:                2,34 USD

I took my girlfriend out to dinner

Complimentary bread?

636
General - Stock Video / Re: The end of QuickTime PhotoJPEG??
« on: February 05, 2018, 02:16 »
It looks like maximum quality h.264 is the only one accepted across the board.

Who doesn't accept ProRes?

637
Video Equipment / Sofware / Technique / Re: Optical flow
« on: February 04, 2018, 06:45 »
Hi all!
[This is similar topic to KB's recent topic, but this one is only about optical flow and it's impact on video quality.]
I'd like to make a slow motion clip, but my camera does only 1080 60p. I import my footage into FCPX and conform clip to 24p. I get 2.5x slow motion. Let's say I want 3x or 4x slow motion. Should I use optical flow? How is it going to impact video quality? Will it be good enough for stock? What's your experience?


Sent from my F5 using Tapatalk

There is no one answer to this. Except "it depends".

You need to try it on a clip to clip basis.

Generally, if there isn't a lot of movement between frames, and not too many details (like leaves), it will work well. If there is a lot of movement or small details, you will get artefacts.

To answer your question "should I use optical flow": yes. Or a third party alternative like Twixtor, which is essentially optical flow with more options, like masking.

Frame blending usually looks pretty ugly, but can work sometimes.

---

You can only ever fake something convincingly to a certain extent.

To sum up: it will only look nice if the motion is already slow and even, and you want to make it super slow.

638
I'm not suggesting not selling there at all, at their normal price the royalties are competitive, I'm saying that selling the rights for the videos is a really bad idea, especially at the rate they're offering which is a tiny fraction of what buying the rights to content should cost.

There's a huge difference between being able to license an unlimited number of clips for $149 per year (or whatever discount they're currently offering - frequently free for 7 days), which is what VB gets the rights to your videos for the $25-$35 that they seem to be offering and a single license at $49.  It just takes a single buyer even through videoblocks itself to choose the free version of your clip (which by definition all buyers there have access to) instead of licensing it or a similar clip for the contributor to be worse off. Unless you think you're never going to sell the clip or similar clips on their platform, you're worse off by selling the rights at this price.

If you ever later want to sell the complete rights to your portfolio, having given away rights to some part in perpetuity allowing re-license will also significantly diminish the value of your work to other potential buyers.

All good points of course.

It comes down to whether you have a really big portfolio or not, how many "filler" clips you have and how much you can negotiate the price. Clearly they just start with a low number, and are willing to raise it.

I took a look at one of the top sellers in the industry, and saw that about 30% of the clips in the near 20k portfolio were never sold. I don't know if this is true for most people, but it can give you a rough idea. To compare, a top author in stock music would have very few, if ANY, tracks that don't sell. Less than 1%.

Picking the least likely to sell and putting them in the VB program could strike a nice balance, and also give you a nice chunk of capital for investing (in gear, travel, stock market)...

---

I would never sell the rights to any of my music, unless the money was extremely good, as I sell pretty much all my tracks.

But footage is different, as many clips never sell. I would, however, ask for at least $100 per clip.

639
If you have very unique clips, one-of-a-kind clips, you may hurt your own sales. But most of us don't have that.

Some buyers shop around, absolutely, but far from all. If a buyer is very concerned about price, they will simply find a similar enough clip and not buy yours at all.

Buyers who are not too concerned with price tend to value their time more, and buy where they are already buying.

I have sold assets for up to 8-10 times the price on certain sites for years, and they outperform the cheaper ones.

---

You are very right about the double penalty regarding search ranking, but I still believe it pays off to spread your assets around as much as possible.

Another very good argument against selling to VB is of course that if EVERYONE would do it, and they would gather most of the good clips in the world, it might render the other sites useless.

If that were to happen though, their acquisition costs would be so high that they would have to charge $10,000 or more for the membership, and only big buyers needing lots of footage would go there.

---

I don't think it's an easy yes or no answer.

640
General - Stock Video / Re: Motion elements payment delay
« on: February 01, 2018, 02:38 »
I just got a DEC+JAN payment. Without asking.

641
Keep in mind that this isn't classified, for tax purposes, as "royalties" since you are still actively producing, working and collecting income.  If you did not work on your portfolio, having retired or had another full time job, etc., it turns into "royalties".

This is VERY different in different countries, as are most other rules. She/he's from Holland.

642
Hi Sauletas,

I have had a few thousand in the membership scheme since the beginning.
Up to now it's been brilliant.
I agree with P5 - as far as I can tell it hasn't impacted on my regular P5 sales; membership clips sell just as well outside the membership program.
Everything is changing on 1 March so it's now new to everyone as far as how membership earnings will go.
They've just chosen a few more 1000 of mine - I'm happy about that and reckon it's better to be in than out.

Hope that helps your decision.

How many millions of clips do you have?  ;)

643
Software / Re: How to shoot static timelapses
« on: January 31, 2018, 06:04 »
If you try Boris software let us know your impressions

The trial is absolutely free so why not try it yourself? They only put a watermark on the clip, but it works the same as the full version.

644
Envato / Re: Envato - Set your own price
« on: January 31, 2018, 05:06 »
I'm also curious about what price to set clips.  My prices are pretty high on Pond5.  4K=$200-300 HD=$100-150 wondering if that would be way to high for Envato.

You can wonder all day but there's only one way to find out.  :)

645
Another big site came to me with a similar offer about 2 years ago for 300 clips for 20k USD.  They also wanted my best selling, did the math and between taxes owed for the contract payment, it came about $50 per clip for perpetuity.  I also passed and now after two years those same clips have generated over 30k in 2 years and they are still my property.

That's great, and it will probably be the case for most.

But it's also important to consider that $20k today, is worth more than $20k tomorrow. Could even be worth more than $40k in two years. Or $200k depending on what you do with it.

It all depends on whether you need money right now, or what investment opportunities you miss out on by not having capital.

646
It's pretty obvious that they are just grocer's hand-written labels.

Yes, but they want to know what it means. Just provide a translation in the description and it should be fine. I've done it with Chinese writing.

647
Just a fast suggestion to see if it helps but it has to do with Premiere.
Right click to the clip, choose speed, set it to say 50%
but at time interpolation choose optical flow.
Render it for viewing purposes only and it will probably be smoother.

This has nothing to do with what he's asking about. Optical flow is for FAKE slow motion. This is real slow motion where the frames exist.

Why not read the question and avoid further confusion?

648
There is no way to  keyword your images fast and accurately.
You have to chose: fast or accurately

Exactly.

You have to make a decision:

Do you want to actually optimize the selling potential for your images or just throw them out there in a big messy pile and see what someone might be lucky enough to find?

No keywording tool comes close to a human brain. Not even remotely close.

649
Accurately? In my opinion, only manually.

Less accurately, your alternatives should work fine.

650
Maybe it had something to do with shutter speed. I think I was using 180-degree, so the shutter speed would have been 1/125. Maybe they don't like 1/125 shutter speed rendered at 29.97? Perhaps I should always shoot at a fixed shutter speed of 1/60 when I intend to render at 29.97. I've never really understood that.  ::)

No, you did it right.

When you render at 29.97, the action plays at half the speed so the motion blur would match a 1/60 shutter if the action actually happened at that speed in real life.

---

It's the same the other way around, with timelapses.

A 180-degree shutter on a 5-second interval timelapse means a 2.5-second shutter speed.

When rendered at 24/30p the motion blur matches the action as if it would've happened at that speed in real life.

Pages: 1 ... 21 22 23 24 25 [26] 27 28 29 30 31 ... 74

Sponsors

Mega Bundle of 5,900+ Professional Lightroom Presets

Microstock Poll Results

Sponsors