Ive just submitted some HD video files to SS via Stocksubmitter. According to Stocksubmitter, they were submitted earlier this evening. Though when I got to the SS site, there are 0 files pending review. And 0 files to submit and no files have been recently reviewed. Is this a bug?

SS did have an issue like this in the past where files pending review would not be visible.

Ive been trying to install Stocksubmitter on a new pc running Windows 10 Pro / 64bit. I went through the usual installation steps but the program won't open. When I try and open it, I see the horizontal green bar moving across the screen from left to right with the text: "Checking for updates."

After that, I get:

"Comparing files"
"checking whether the files get modified"
"No updates found"
"Completed (success)"
"Differences found: 0"

This is all displayed very briefly and then disappears. The Stocksubmitter program never appears. I got the same result multiple times last night and today as well.

Should I delete the program and reinstall it?

I just logged in to Alamy now and in the Recent Sales within my dashboard, I see one of my images has $0 next to it. Though it's still classified as an RF sale.  So what exactly is going on?

I'm currently uploading two HD videos to SS. According to the status in Stocksubmitter, the clips are submitted and there is the green circle that indicates exactly that. And I have logged into that catcha thing for SS that pops up within Stocksubmitter.

When I log into SS on Google Chrome, there are 0 pending video files. And 0 clips for 'not yet submitted.' In other words, there's no sign of these files on SS.

However, last night, I had no issue submitting a video file to P5 via Stocksubmitter. That clip is pending review within P5.

There is a belief that with some stock agencies, there is such a thing as having too many keywords. After a few years of shooting stock, I still don't really know if this is really a thing or not. On DT, there are some contributors who advise against adding too many keywords as supposedly, this can hurt sales. By contrast, on SS, the general philosophy is to add as many keywords as possible. I actually mentioned on the SS forum that folks over on DT were advising against putting in lots of keywords. An SS contributor replied that this was nonsense and urged me not to listen to them. So since then, I have been adding as many keywords as possible with all the agencies that I submit to.

Though now I'm wondering if I'm doing more harm than good with certain agencies.

AS is another agency that, if I recall correctly, warns against adding excessive numbers of keywords. But unfortunately, I can't help myself.

Actually, some time ago, I did a little test on DT. I tried some searches for one or two of my images on there that had a rather large number of keywords. And I had no trouble locating those images in the search results. So I'm guessing that buyers wouldn't have any trouble either.

Continuing the 'Hummer' thread from the SS forum which will soon expire in late October. Hopefully, there will be some wildlife discussion here and all manner of other topics too. And also a place for people from the old SS forum to hang out.

Recently, I submitted some super 8 footage to Pond 5 and got a rather surprising rejection reason. They claim that they cannot accept this clip because of the visible black bars on the sides and that I should resubmit it with it's native dimensions. Well of course it has black bars on the sides - it's super 8 film footage. As most people know, super 8 has a 4:3 aspect ratio and so there will be black bars on the left and right when the footage is displayed on a 16:9 screen. That can't be helped.

And yes, obviously it has the native dimensions - super 8 cameras expose a 4:3 frame (unless the gate has been modified.)

I have also submitted another super 8 clip in the past and there were no issues accepting that one despite the 4:3 aspect ratio. And a search on P5 will reveal many 4:3 clips.

I wonder if they're developing a bias against 4:3 clips.

I don't take a regular look at the ESP site because I find it awkward and tricky to navigate at times. However, I noticed that late last year, my earnings were just over $70 and then the following month, the amount was slightly over $2. So my question is - where did the rest of that money go? I didn't receive a payout. I checked PayPal and there is certainly no payment from iStock / Getty for that time period. I did get a payout from them once before.

Another thing I should add is that I actually earned just over $100 in that period but due me foolishly not updating the tax form, they took out a huge chunk of tax which left me with a little over $70. Though regardless, I don't know how it dropped from over $70 to just over $2 with no payout.

It seems that I can't reply to existing threads or start new ones on the forums at SS. Can't send private messages either. Hopefully, the ban is temporary. I didn't receive any notification about it or anything like that. No e-mail.

Ive hardly said anything negative on the forums. I did share my outrage of the new massive payment cut but so have most other contributors. And I expressed my thoughts about that ages ago - not recently. And some contributors have been a lot more vocal and aggressive about that topic than I have.

Oh well. I guess I'll just have to wait it out.

This query relates to buyers who purchase a license to use model released stock images from a stock agency. Obviously, the buyer is informed by the agency that the photo or clip featuring a person has a valid model release form. Though does the buyer ever see the model release? Is the buyer given a copy of the release? Or is it a case that they have no access to the release and rely on the trust of the agency that there is a release that was provided by the photographer?

The reason why I'm curious is I am considering trying to sell some stock directly with no agency involved. And I may have some images featuring myself and possibly other people (who I would normally need model release forms for.) I would inform any interested buyers that I have releases for the models. Though is it likely that they would demand to see the releases or download them? And if they go ahead with that, I'm wondering if there would be any disadvantages like the risk of identity theft etc.

At the moment, I'm trying to sign up for an exclusive account at Pond 5. Just to clarify, I don't want to make all my clips exclusive. I just want to make certain clips exclusive and make the rest available on more than one agency. Of course during this turbulent time period, there's so few agencies that pay respectable commissions for videos. SS has just thrown it's contributors under a bus (unless you can make massive amounts of sales over there to get to their top paying levels.) So as far as I know, that leaves just P5 and Adobe Stock as the only two viable options.

However, I'm curious about this second account that I have to set up. According to the instructions, I have to click on a button that says "Sign Up Now" on the Sell Your Media page. I can't see that option so I guess I'll just click on the "Sign Up" option. I'm asked to create a new user name which I'm finding a little unusual. I think I would prefer to have a single user name when I'm selling both exclusive clips and non exclusive clips. That way, I have a common identity and buyers would realise that all my videos were produced by the same person. If they like one of my clips and are considering purchasing it, chances are that they may like another one of my clips on my second account that has a different user name. I'm not even sure if P5 lets buyers know that two accounts with potentially usable videos may belong to the same person.

Tonight, I was having a problem with the pop up Shutterstock sign in page that appears when I'm using Stocksubmitter. Specifically, it's to do with the 'I am not a robot' option. When I click that option, no tick appears. Instead, the photo test appears where I have to select which images feature cars, motorbikes or traffic lights etc. And no matter how many times I click on the 'I am not a robot' option, it always remains blank. I cannot get the tick to appear.

Ive closed this pop up screen a few times and each time it reappears, I have the same problem.

I currently have a dilemma concerning stock footage. Not too long ago, I recorded some 4k footage of some news worthy content (I guess I should say potentially newsworthy.) However, the laptop that I usually use to edit 4k video is being repaired and so I don't have access to it. So I'm forced to use my 9 year old pc with only 4GB of RAM and old processor. I seriously doubt it could handle rendering 4k video files so the best I could do is render HD files from 4k footage. But a weird thing happens when I do that. I currently use Shotcut for editing stock footage and I always use a two pass render for optimum quality results. Though at least one of those passes will fail (and I get a big red X to indicate that.) Ive attempted to export this particular video so many times and what happens is that either the first render pass will fail or the second one will. Or sometimes both passes will fail.

Though surprisingly, when I play back the exported file, the video looks completely normal. I don't see any issues. Though logically, there must be something not quite right since I repeatedly got failed render passes. So the question is - should I submit or not? Just wondering if there might be some kind of issue that's invisible to me but might be apparent to an editor working with the clip on a timeline.

I also took some photographs of the very same subject that I recorded footage of. And one of those photos sold through SS over week ago. I couldn't find whereabouts the image was used though I'm assuming it may have been featured in a news article. I'm probably thinking now that this is old news and so I'm likely too late in trying to submit the footage of the same newsworthy subject. However, this morning, another one of my photos of the same subject sold through SS. So there could be hope yet.

Though like I mentioned before, there could be some technical issue with my edited footage that I'm not aware of. Cos according to Shotcut, what I have is a failed video export. And no matter how many times I render, I get those red Xs and the fail messages.