haven't seen a VB sale since I got one in Nov.

Wow, absolutely identical for me. And the two months before Nov were my best on VB (admittedly that isn't saying much, but still much better than one or none).

But SS is dead for me, completely. Had 1 sale on P5 this month.

Pretty similar for me, again. Two sales on each, but that's just barely better than none.

I finally received a response from Shutterstock regarding the video filters. At least they were honest.

Paraphrase: it's by design and not going away.

This doesn't surprise me, but does greatly disappoint me.

I asked about this issue last December, and was quoted a post on the SS forum which said, in part, that they have taken my "concern to heart and will actively work to resolve it". Specifically:
" ... we are gearing up to qualitatively and quantitatively test an updated logic - users selecting HD will not only see original HD videos, but all videos that are available in HD. Same for SD and 4K. [snip] Rest assured, you will love the new filter experience that we hope to roll out sometime in January next year. " (Please note that "January next year" meant January, 2015.)

So they've been aware of this as an issue for well over a year, but do not GAD. In fact, that same post strongly discouraged uploading duplicate clips of the same video in different sizes.

If I understand what you are asking, try this:

Select the "Window" menu, and look for a checkmark next to "Metadata Panel". If there isn't one, click on it, and the panel should appear. If there is one, then I don't know what the problem might be.

Looking back to those big sudden changes in Sept 2012, it seems that every move since then has been a disaster for suppliers, and a disaster for iStock too, given its falling financial results.  But still new changes are implemented, and still the sales fall...

And a disaster for buyers, too.  They hit the disaster trifecta.

ClipCanvas paid me the entire balance due today, which was amazingly fast (I must have hit the pay cycle just right). I must say, Paypal really takes their cut. It's bad enough that the exchange rate they used for EUR to USD was 1.11 (the current exchange rate is 1.138), but they also charged an almost 4 EUR "fee" (reason unspecified). Since the balance wasn't that large, Paypal's total cut wasn't far from 10%. 

I do wish ClipCanvas could get back on their feet. It's hard to justify the time to upload given how few sales I've had, however since they've paid me what they owe (unlike you-know-who), I feel I should support them by UL'ing some more clips. 

New look or not,site is -still- slower than a turtle doing pot,

     

I hadn't been on since the new site was introduced, and had never noticed the slowness before that. But before I posted earlier I tried to look at a clip, and it was excruciating. I was hoping it was a "one-off", or just something about my connection. So it's disappointing to hear it isn't just me.

But I will say that the few interactions I had with support in the past were all wonderful (and the two words 'support' and 'wonderful' don't often go together). I wish they could get their act together, but it must be extremely difficult in the current environment.

I wonder if the commission rate is back up to 50%? They announced a "temporary" drop to 40% in March 2014, promising to raise it back up after 12 months. If they haven't done that, then that would seem to indicate things aren't getting better there. In fact, I see now, sadly, that I can answer that question. At least as of my last sale in May 2015, it was still 40%. 

How can they call it subscription? They are selling credits packs and calling it "subscription" in order to steal the money from their own contributors? How can one remain exclusive of these kind of con artists? They must be desperate for cash what means that they must be going out of business soon.

I'm absolutely as upset about this as everyone else. I'm sure my income, which has already been halved in the last year or so, is going to take an even bigger hit now.

But this also hurts iStock's bottom line.  Let's say there's a buyer who would buy 60 credits, enough for 20 Signature files (I'm exclusive, but I suspect the math works similarly for Essential files). They'd pay $520, and iStock would get (in my case) 70% of that, or $364. The equivalent monthly sub gives the buyer 25 Sig files, and they pay only $150. Even if iStock kept 100%, they'd still be making about 40% of what they would have made.

So it seems like a desperate move by iStock to grab subscribers, at any cost. And that cost will be very steep, indeed.

As has the US, sort of (or at least, my area of it).

There's a banner on the iStock home page that reads: "Get a 10 image one-month subscription for as low as $40. Buy now".

However, at the moment, the page linked to by the "Buy now" link does not yet mention the 10 image option. Typical iStock / Getty.

That works out at a commission rate of 7%.  Or, to describe it differently, they get to keep 93% and pay their suppliers 7%.

 

And it is probably even worse, because 93% / 7% assumes that every "subscriber" always downloads their maximum allotment. While most probably will, some won't for various reasons, leaving 100% of non-sales to iS / Getty.

I believe Exclusives get between $8 and $14 for a sale.

Not all exclusives. I'm at 30% commission, and my Signature sales are mostly around $7-$8, with some as high as almost $10, and others below $5. I'd guess my average is close to $7. Essential sales are obviously less, generally around $2 - $2.50.

My sales there have been very good so far.Do i at least have the right to NOT feel enthusiastic about it and start spreading thumbs up to everyone cheering them on?

You absolutely do; the internet is a free country. 

Just as any of us can complain a year from now how we haven't had a sale on VideoBlocks in, like, forever, because suddenly there's 2,000,000 other clips competing with ours. I have no idea how that could happen, though .... 

Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of very unhappy people on this forum that constantly complain about Istock? And for months and months and months to no end. It's the herd mentality.

Then their are very few people that even remotely suggest life is good on the other side and the result it very abusive and negative on this forum. So in effect it silences people. Even mention you are doing well on Istock and you get kicked in the nuts, not by one, but by many.

I work hard at shooting stock photos, I am exclusive, and I make a great living doing it. I submit images and they sell.

Naysayers will always be unhappy and blame anything, everyone, and everything on their own failures. Naysayers often band together to live the dreary existence of being negative almost to cult status.

It's a pattern I see on this forum far too frequently to the point of being utterly boring and repetitive.

I am likely one of those people to whom you refer. I am well aware that it gets boring and repetitive, that is one reason why I post infrequently.  I am very happy that you are doing so well at iStock. Congratulations, your hard work and talent are paying off. If you have had your nuts kicked in by me at any time, I am sorry. I certainly wouldn't do that on purpose. I think the only reason others might do it is because they find it hard to believe that such positive posts are actually authentic. People probably think that Getty has shills here, trying to put a positive slant on conversations whenever possible. It is unfortunate that we can't know who here is real, and who is not.

I used to absolutely love iStock. I thought it was the best microstock site on the internet. That's why I left independence and became exclusive in 2010. It all started to unravel only 2 months later. (It had actually begun in 2009, however it was Sep 2010 when RCs were introduced, and the first Big Lie was revealed: Their "grandfathering" contract was entirely worthless.) Things have been deteriorating ever since, with each new change leading to less and less income. So I think I have a legitimate reason to be angry and unhappy. But I do try to limit such posts, as I realize they serve no useful purpose other to vent my frustrations.

FWIW, my credit RPD is rising. Clearly, that is based on vastly fewer credit downloads, as my overall $$ is shooting down due to subs*. My hypothesis is that iS are doing their best to get subs buyers (there have been a few vacancies over the past few months specifically to sell subs, and there are still several vacancies for same at the moment), so many of the people who are buying credits are the smaller buyers who have no need for a subs package, or even a large credit bundle, hence are paying more per image.

I think a better way to see if that is the case is to look at your average $/RCs. That's because your RPD can be influenced by a change in the ratio of Ess to Sig/Sig+ sales. $/RCs shows exactly what you're referring to: Is the average price of credits going up or down for your typical buyer? In my case, it's pretty much unchanged, between $1.68 and $1.78 this year, with no clear direction month-to-month.

I am non exclusive for a couple monts, as I see, my istock revenue down to almost half but the other site sales going well, for now, my other site's total revenues are bigger than istock earnings, so it was better for me to be a non exclusive

Ha, perhaps that explains my results this year. Maybe I became non-exclusive this year, I just didn't know it. 

Congrats on making the transition so smoothly and successfully.