Maybe it's April Fool's? No it can't be - it's not April anymore.

Blogs like this have even more people jump in and start putting 'images sitting on their harddrive' on micro sites, thus flooding the sites with utter rubbish

Yea sadly people think that they can upload any and all photos that are sitting on their harddrive, not their very best. Micro sites definitely don't need any more snapshots.

Ive got an external Pioneer Bluray burner that shows up intermittently in Windows. I tried to use it in conjunction with Windows DVD Maker to burn some DVDs but it won't show up at all in that software program. Only the built in disc drives (F and G) show up as selectable options. Is there something I have to do to get this software (or other disc burning software) to recognise the external burner?

However, I don't submit editorial images to iStock anymore. Simply because they've made it too hard. Ive tried different browsers but I cannot mark a submitted image as editorial within their ESP website. So eventually, I gave up.

Then why would you still upload and spend precious time resubmitting rejected content?

So I can reach payout sooner.

Okay, I did some more stumbling around on the ESP site and actually managed to find a rejection reason. It says:

"Release: Unreleased people
File contains recognizable people that are not model released."

Well that's strange because I did attach a model release form. The other odd thing I found when I submitted this image is that I had to upload the release form from my computer (a second time.) I thought it would already be in their system from the last time I uploaded it. Regardless, they're acting like I never attached the form.

Edit: Ive just attached the release form again. Here's hoping I'll be more successful this time.

People often complain about slow sales or lack of sales on DT these days. Though is anyone else finding this year particularly bad? I know Ive mentioned that I don't have all that many photos on DT but the interesting thing is the majority of my sales on there were from 2016. 2017 by contrast is just about dead. It's like someone pulled a switch or something. I also notice a number of newcomers to DT with ports of 323 photos, 348 photos, 93 photos etc with 0 sales. Must be so hard being a new contributor there in this current climate.

lots of software will do it. I use MovAVI

I'm specifically after software that can combine clips without rendering or re-encoding.

If you look at the most popular images of Arnhem, the difference is night and day.

https://www.shutterstock.com/search?search_source=base_landing_page&language=en&searchterm=arnhem&image_type=all

Those are the most popular images of Arnhem? To be honest, I think a lot of those city images on the first page look pretty ordinary. Though I guess some buyers might have a use for them.

I have a ton of new problems with MPEG Streamclip. It will not even render a video....keeps repeating the render as if it is not creating a lead out.  So it has become useless for me and I deleted it.

Uh oh, looks like I'm not alone with issues with this software. It used to be so reliable but in my case, that might be a file compatibility issue.

I uploaded my MP4 file to Shutterstock as is. Over an hour later, it was no longer pending review and discovered it in my rejected video files tab. It had the following rejection reason: "File Integrity -- File is corrupt, will not open properly or there was another technical problem wit..."

So I don't know what's going on there....whether this MP4 container is at fault or something else. I also uploaded the same video to Adobe Stock so I'll wait and see if they have any issues with it. I'll also upload some other videos to SS as MP4s and see how they fare.

Yea I'm using a Windows pc. With the MP4 files, I'm not sure what codec Sony Movie Studio uses and if it's one of the ones that the agencies accept. I could try and find out.

I didn't even realise Photoshop could work with videos. And VLC can convert video files?

That $30 software sounds like an attractive option too.

Edit: Ive just gone into Sony Movie Studio but I can't find any information on what kind of codec it uses. I assume that an MP4 is like a container and that it could contain any kind of codec inside? Correct me if I'm wrong. I notice on SS, their list list of accepted codecs is as follows:

�   PhotoJPEG
�   MotionJPEG
�   DVCPro
�   ProRes 422 / 422 HQ / 4444 .
�   H.264
�   PNG

I guess I could submit my MP4 and see what happens.

1.   Don�t shoot stock photos on your family vacation thus bring only your cell phone � your family will truly appreciate this!

This is similar to the advice I read in a book about making money from your photography. The author stated that when submitting images to publications, don't use photographs that you've taken on your holidays.

In any case, I disagree with this advice. Sorry to burst your bubble but not all photographs taken on holidays are snapshots. When I was on holiday on Kangaroo Island in South Australia in the 90s, I shot a pelican in flight over water with my Canon T70 35mm SLR and 75-300mm zoom. I made greeting cards out of the resulting image and sold them through a small art gallery (well, one of them was stolen as well.) Ive also sold a number of the cards at a market stall to tourists from passing cruise ships in addition to an 8 x 12 inch print. I also sold a framed 8 x 12 inch print of the very same image in an exhibition for $100. And recently, I sold a photo through Shutterstock that I took on a visit to Bora Bora with family (that had only been online for a couple of days.)

I used to use HJSplit with good success for joining together different segments of videos Ive downloaded from the internet. I haven't used this software for a long time and I'm not having any luck with it this time around. I have a Windows 7 pc which struggles to render long videos so I split my latest video into different segments and rendered each one seperately. I tried to use HJSplit to join them together but it wouldn't recognise the files.  I did the right thing by attaching the .001, .002, .003 extensions to the end of the file names. The files are mpeg2 / m2t by the way.

I also tried using HJSplit to join another video I downloaded from the net but that didn't work either. At least this time, it recognised the files. I selected the first file for the 'input file' but when I click on 'Start', an error message appears: "I/O error 123." Would anyone know of any other good, reliable freeware that can join video files together?