Nice start,
time lapse videos are very touchy to do (in my opinion - I'm trying to get them perfect...).

First problem is the sun moving around and especially creating funny shadows in your scene.

Well it takes careful scouting to find the right spot for that and the right time of day to do that.

Secondly I have to mention you got a lot of flickering going on. If you don't use a fixed aperture lens you will inevitably get flicker. That has to be removed within After Effects or any other video processing software (often using a 3rd party plug-in).

I throw my time lapses together in After Effects. For a 2 minute video in Full HD and with Photo-JPG compression I think 2GB  are pretty ok.

For web purposes 720p is perfectly fine, especially if you do it in h.264 (that's enough for my taste - people submitting to vimeo probably will burn me for that). I'm trying to be practical and somewhat efficient.

I would redo a version with flicker removal and taking only every 5th shot to reduce the overall length to a clip that you can submit to the footage sites. If it passes I think it could sell a few times.

Keep going!
Good luck

Hello,
it took a LOT of emailing, but my account is working again. They are still investigating situation, but I really believe in happy end now. 

Charles79:  I would suggest to contact more people from Fotolia management. There is section Management on Fotolia Blog, where You can find email addresses. I wasn't trying to contact them on the phone, because I am more confident in written communication in English.

Forget contacting them by phone, they will just tell you to write to Chad.

You might get lucky if Chad has time when you are calling, otherwise it's a waste of time.

I know a guy in USA who register his images and he won a sue of a few thousand dollars.  Not a microstock thing though, as he isn't in this market.  That's when I lernt about this sending-a-CD thing, although there are images that he register differently (I don't remember why).

I don't know if we have something similar in Brazil - would I be able to register in USA?  When one registers his images in a country, does this automatically give him protection everywhere? 

I believe you can register in the US from anywhere in the world.

Use a Voip software to call the copyright office in the US (or straight from your phone if you can afford it). They are very helpful and they can tell you for sure.

Once you have them registered in the US it will help a lot!

I never checked this before but I can't get this straight now:

Today I got money deducted from my account due to a credit purchase from 2-22-2009 with a stolen credit card.

When I check all my sales from 2-22-2009 there is no amount from that day that matches the deduction or any combination of sales added together either.

Before I contact support I wanted to know if anyone else experienced this kind of math before.

Peter, as you've pointed out the upload process is simple, but then again so are some people!

OK RT, it's on. 

First of all, I do agree that bulk editing in itself is an important feature during the upload process. However, since the FTP upload process is designed the way it is, I'm forced to go through the Briefcase thing even if I upload images that are not a group or don't require sorting.

I tried to express in my first post that other sites don't require the push of a button to tell the server that file transfers have completed. It's pretty much a redundant process when (again) you look at SS where the uploads are instantaneously available after they are completed in your FTP client.

Another thing that I accidentally forgot what "simple" Laurin" brought up was the simplicity of having no categories. Look at Crestock, 123RF etc. who make my life a whole lot more efficient by dropping categories. I really would like to hear one day why the category system is sooo important to other agencies.

Then again:

You don't have to move the files around though, they are just grouped for easier editing. Maybe that's not the best concept so please share your favourite way to edit files and we'll definitely consider implementing it.

Uhhhm, ok let me illustrate that:

1. I drag and drop my files into my FTP client - transfer starts
2. Once the transfer is over I navigate to StockXpert's "My images" folder
3. Here would be the perfect moment to apply check marks to images that don't need a release to be submitted by pressing submit! BUT NO!!!! 
4. I have to click "StockXpert Briefcase"
5. I (human) have to tell the server "Pretty please move my transferred files to a place where I can actually edit them" - absolutely redundant and time consuming
6. Files will be moved to a new folder with a funny Briefcase identifier
7. Since I haven't uploaded via FTP in a looong time I'm not sure if now I have to select my briefcase folder from the dropdown menu on the upper right hand - let's assume this already happened and take a "shortcut"
8. My transferred files are happily sitting in the briefcase folder. As they include IPTC they were good to go since step 2 but here we are at step 8 and it's not over yet...
9. Assuming that we talk about image uploads that require the least effort possible (non-released) I happily select all the check boxes of my images that I want to dump in my home folder.
10. I will stop doing this now because everyone knows who to move files from the briefcase folder to the home folder.
11. One day when I have too much time on my hands (yeah right...) I come back to StockXpert to delete all those Briefcase folders that I simply don't need

So obviously I'm the simple one who wants ONE folder at StockXpert that contains my pics.

I think the files should all be dumped into the home folder after upload (no button pressing necessary). Then the non-released images should be check-marked and submitted (check marks could be defaulted on "ON" for all new uploads which makes it easier for sets without releases.

Files that require releases could be then check marked in order to hit the button Attach release (or have a look at Crestock's system - awesome).

This way you have to put in the work for images that do require work and not the entire uploaded batch.

Looks like everyone has his/her own favorite way of submitting.
Take a stop watch and process your uploaded (non-released) files on 123RF and then at StockXpert.
For image preparation with releases one can argue again which system is the best there.
Someone else can discuss that...

Of course I might be a simpleton and have used the system in a completely wrong way. So please enlighten me how to do it faster.

Thanks for that Yuri!

Still you have to admit that you do employ outstanding models!!! I doubt that they still do TFCD and how could one like "us" afford professional, "next-door" look like models???

It does take a determined and eager and suited model (including the proper wardrobe...) to get the shots that you do. I've met too many (almost only) "models" and/or "actors" that just won't pull off what your models are doing...

I still believe you have to have the luck of meeting the right people for the job in order to nail it.

Anywho. Great read! Keep up the outstanding work! All the best to you!

Quote from: Phil on April 13, 2009, 20:13

to earlier if you take a pic me sprawled over my ferrari (maybe in a couple of years , ferrari dont allow you to sell it (probably only wife would buy it, but thats not the point because of copyright on their vehicle.

Phil

Now there's an image!

*shaking head to get image out of head*

It would be useful if someone on this forum who sells "personal-use" prints would chime in (explaining legal rights/issues for the respective country - ideally after consulting a legal representative).

As some stated above I am totally under the impression that as soon as there is money involved I tap into commercial grounds which could heavily upset potential copyright owners.

Remember without the boat, yacht, race car or whatever you are photographing the picture would be quite boring. So in the end only the years of engineering and millions of $$$ from their sponsors make it possible to even take that picture. Now most of the people think that they can make money off of that because the guy next to them doesn't have a camera with them at the time or doesn't know how to handle a D-SLR? 

Sounds a bit like wishful thinking to me.

Or let's look at this: You take a photo of a race car (Nascar, Formula 1 whatever). In order to be sure that you can sell your photo as a print simply contact the manufacturer of the car, the racing team, the driver, the tire manufacturer, the sponsors, the management of the race track where you took the picture and find out if they approve it. If yes, then I believe you have solid grounds to charge money for prints. I know that people do this all the time but I think they simply fly under the radar and that they might get away with it while they're lucky...

Here's another one: Let's say you take a photo and sell it through SS and it gets downloaded and used for a huge billboard along a major highway. Let's say the advertising company that bought the picture made some amazing piece of advertising out of it so that people would want to have a picture taken with them and the board in the background (or maybe without them in the frame if they are not so pretty...). Now since not all people who would want to do that, know how to work a camera, they would have to ask someone else to take the picture for them. Since some professionals won't work for free you would have to pay them in order to get that picture taken and printed.
So is this still "ok" to see that along that highway people take pics of your billboard photo charging money for prints? I look at it that way, without your photo the billboard wouldn't exist as such and therefore there wouldn't be any picture the people would want. So since your work is an integral part of this photo I believe you have rights to claim compensation.

I understand that this is by far not common practice but I don't think that it's legal either. In many, many, many (did I say many?) cases the copyright owners, models or property owners don't have a clue what happens with their unreleased stuff.

Quote from: FlemishDreams on April 12, 2009, 14:08

... That's why they are courting Flickr cellphone shooters 

I don't want to derail the discussion, but I just wanted to say that made me laugh 

Yeah, that was funny.

Don't know if this should be in another thread but I was wondering about Getty buying the competition and letting it dry up.  Where does that leave all the buyers who prefer microstock to Getty prices?  Isn't it reasonable to believe there will always be a market for "cheap" pictures?

I, personally, do not see how Getty, or any other huge company, can completely eliminate a Market.

I took the freedom and started a new thread about your question here: http://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/getty-buying-the-competition/

Getty won't be able to eliminate a market but they will certainly be able to control it to a certain extent.

...

Edited to add following quote:

centrill:
I built this site myself about 3 years ago with some help from the admins from sxc.hu (which was also built by me) and my collegaue at HAAP who does a lot of paperwork. I managed the site until Jupiter joined in.

After that I decided to move to the background a bit, but as you can see the site got off the right track. I don't want to go into details because it's not ethical, but things didn't work out as planned.

Luckily a few weeks ago the Getty deal put an end to the JI era, and finally we can fix the things that have been annoying everybody (including us) for a long time.

Personally I'm very excited about the future and I can competely understand the frustration of some people because I am also very frustrated. This is all I can tell you for now.

Copied from the StockXpert Forum.  Was posted by "Admin"

WOW.

I don't get a good feeling when internal things, especially management issues "leak" into any forum. Being posted by "Admin" - supposedly - I'm more than hoping that this will work out.

It takes a lot to run a site, like StockXpert used to be, into the dirt. To pull out it will be even harder...
Quite a few contributors have stopped uploading or left StockXpert altogether. Footage has died for me many months ago. I have no clue how they will manage to get that going again.

SXC.hu was a great venture and the development of StockXpert was a logic and smart move which came at the right time.
I can't stop repeating how sad it is that StockXpert took such a dramatic turn. I would really like to see them rescue this agency since it had a great potential it would be tough to lose such a potent business partner.

These days I have sales only on old photos..

Almost have no views with new photos...

Sold yesterday one XL "bestseller photo"  for ONLY 30 cent sub...

My heart is bleeding...

Tell me about it - I get 5-15 sub sales a day as Vectors, XL and XXL. Theoretically that would mean $25+ per day if those were StockXpert credit sales, instead I get $3 (selling 10 a day).

That's a lot of $$$ that StockXpert used to make in the years before but for some reason their net revenue (straight credit sales and StockXpert subscription purchases) won't lead them to a better future anymore. They seem to rely on Photos.com and JU and lean back because they don't have to worry about marketing anymore. Maybe Getty told StockXpert not to "waste" more $$$ on advertising (assuming they would die over time anyway...).

Any serious business owner would show a lot more interest in fixing all those bugs on the site and also communicate what the plans for the future are. But instead it's just a communicative wasteland.

This is just devastating...