I was planing to invest into 8K, but after it was clear that even 4k isent yet the standart in TV and online yet, it would be a total overkill, and slowing down the editing and file storage for nothing. Makes you wonder if we ever go to an 8K standard ever.

Are you investing in equipment to produce 8K for CGI stock video or footage shot with a camera? Either way I would definitely wait until the market decides if or when it becomes standard. And even then who knows how the microstock landscape will pan out in the future.

Logically they must earn more than HD because they reach more buyers, both those who want HD and those who want 4K.

I remember synthetick, is this the same lady who used to post on the old istockvideo forums back in the day?

Your analysis pretty much sums up my thoughts (or fears) where CGI producers are now forced to create and render out at 4K just to stay at a level playing field with other contributors.

I also agree where there may be a benefit to selling 4K at sites such as Pond5 where you can price videos individually on size. However, nowadays I rarely get the percentage you'd expect due to the way they distribute clips, variable pricing depending on country, and other factors unknown to me.

I think the top 3 agencies now allow 4K videos to be downloaded without effecting the price of the subscription, which is great for the buyer but not so good for CGI creators. Another thing I've noticed on Adobe is that on the 1st page of results for video, they're ranking AI clips high together with normal clips, which obviously is pushing human made clips down the ranks.

Just out of interest, do you remember when adobe began to allow 4K clips to be downloaded at the same price as HD, was it this year or before 2024?

So it seems in general, for CGI videos at least, unless you've created something far better than competitors in the same niche then you're at a disadvantage if you're not uploading at 4K. Which is a shame because there used to be a clear financial incentive when creating clips at 4K.

Funny how this landscape continually evolves and as you quite rightly pointed out, is racing to the bottom. But unfortunately this directly impacts my decisions about the quality of future CGI clips which is bad for the buyer.

After a quick browse through the top agencies istock, shutter and adobe, I noticed that 4K CGI videos are almost as common as HD in the search results nowadays.

So I was left wondering if 4K is now the norm, and the only reason to create and render out at 3840 x 2160 is not to earn more money but instead to compete with other contributors who by default are only uploading 4K.

In your experience is this the case or do you earn more from 4K video?

Mine is down about 80% on 2017, same on RPD so its not just a case of uploading more and more.

The various cuts of going from minimum $0.38 for photos down to effectively $0.10 etc.

Video used to pay well and ive got about 1400 videos.  But you used to get $40 per clip, thats now down to $1 to $8.

The level system then further trashed earnings as you get paid a LOT less earlier in the year and even when you've levelled up you're miles off what you used to have.

Moving to a percentage based earning as well means whenever SS sell things more cheaply (always....) you now get a percentage of that new low figure so make even less from the sale.

It all adds up.

SS now pretty much sells ALL of its products massively cheaper than before *and* gives contributors a far lower percentage of that cheaper deal price.

Without going into earnings and incurring the wrath of SS, im significantly north of $1000 per month in reduced earnings since 2018 although the amount of downloads has actually increased.

AS is slowly, steadily improving.  Its got fewer images and videos (no editorial) and as of last year overtook SS in average income and continues to pull away.

Your experience with SS is identical to mine.

I wonder if their annual revenue is suffering in the same way as ours.

I take it back, I wont be submitting there anymore. Did a quick search and the overall quality of videos is pretty low and the search isn't that accurate either, but what did it for me was that they are selling both HD and 4K at the same measly price of 30 credits (1$ = 1 credit), I swiftly deleted all of my 4K videos.

Just chiming in here guys to let you know that after 3 attempts of trying to contact 123RF including not being able to join their discord server support group. I finally got a response from [email protected] saying that they were looking into why my videos were pending for months. And after around a week my videos finally got accepted.

I miss the good old days where I would receive an email from P5 saying I had made a sale, and I didn't even need to look at it because I automatically knew the commission would be 50% of the price of the video.

Yesterday I received a commission of $2.80 

I remember Mr. Hayward promising this years ago, now he's gone silent.

How about an update on this feature, adobe can't be struggling for money and it's long overdue.

I've got an extra $3.53.

Hopefully it doesn't disappear as quickly as it arrived.

Will you be buying the drinks for us tonight?

I'll have a tap water please.

I recently uploaded a video to istock that was not accepted, but instead it was requested to be 'revised' by the inspector.

However, I don't agree with the reasoning for the request to revise the video. And the instructions were to revise it and resubmit it as a new file.

But within ESP, If you select the video it allows you to resubmit it again for some reason, so I resubmitted it and also wrote a note to the inspector (not sure if they read it) explaining exactly why the video is correct and why it doesn't need to be revised. However, once again it got requested to be revised for exactly the same reason.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong, should I resubmit the same file as a 'NEW' file and write the same note to the inspector? Or is there a way to open a support ticket in order to help me resolve this?

Thank you.

In the microstock poll results, why does istock no longer appear in the top 3 even though its rating is higher than DT?

Zero sales so far this year.  I dont think I've ever gone 3 months with no sales on Pond5

Anyone else?  Anything I should do?

So Far 2023 is shaping up to be an awful year for me at P5