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Messages - bestravelvideo
26
« on: November 30, 2021, 13:12 »
Being Greek, I can say that Meteora is another story! When I was a kid I remember that the monks would not allow shooting of 007 movie For Your Eyes Only. They actually did everything they could to stop the production. In some Greek churches that gather a lot of crowd, like the Tinos Cycladic island church, there is a sign forbidding shooting. There are religious destinations in Europe that require you ask in written a permit in prior or that you have to give them a copy of your content! They usually only grant you access for a documentary or education work. What has zero worth for stock as a property release is the small amount you have to pay on site when you see the sign: Photographic fee. That's nothing. Maybe you are better to light a candle, if you are a believer!. In Asia, if I remember correctly, Bali temples can be visitted for free but you need to respect the area.
28
« on: November 30, 2021, 04:20 »
My highest earners are all editorial videos. I shoot inside airports, stations, metro, mostly in Western Europe. I never shoot the sequrity checks, or even try to. What I do is never go hidden. I go in the middle of the rail track, or waiting area, making clear I shoot. I was only told to not record in two airports (runways in Greece and Spain) where the airport is also a military one. I also always avoid shooting children or lower the camera when crowd is close. When there is much crowd, I either use my 8K mobile or the latest GoPro 10 that is 5.3K and then scale down to 4K. People tend to find these smaller ones less intrusive. As for shaky mobiles, here is a contradiction. The latest models have O.I.S. but this does not work if you are shooting with FilmicPro and a higher bitrate. Maybe this is just the case with my S21. It says it is using O.I.S. but it does not. The latest GoPro 10 (November firmware update on) really improved stability when moving slow. It is almost as using a gimbal. Suggestion: I also use GoPro with my Ronic SC but I add some extra weight. I bought two SmallRig ones at 100g and 200g that do the job and Ronin balances the GoPro Really good. You only get that though. No other support. But that beats the purpose of portability, so to summarise, for editorials mobile and action cams are more than ok.
29
« on: September 27, 2021, 04:01 »
I own the latest Samsung mobile and my wife the previous iPhone one. On occasions, I have used both for stock. There is no way these phones are close to even an one inch camera sensor.
Also, they might shoot RAW, but not in the highest resolution. If you have a 12 Megapixels phone that is no big difference, but in the case of the 64 Megapixels camera model there is. In case of the Samsung, when I resize 64 Megapixels down to 18 or 15, it usually looks "ok". All these phones give photos with high sky compression problems, which are not clearly visible if you do not shoot the sky. All mobile phone pics - due to the small sensor - have noise that needs to be eliminated. The old trick works here: just zoom to at least 200% in your editing program and see noise before you edit and upload. For videos, things are more forgiving. I would personally give and edge to the Samsung here. The 8K video is useless but because it crops from a bigger resolution (I don't know if it is the 33 needed for 8K or part of the 64 Megapixels) it gives a better 4K video than the iPhone with less or sometimes not visible noise. Do I get sales with these? Yes. In fact I got more sales with videos shot with my mobiles or various GoPro I own or used in the past, than with my Sony camera. Why? Probably because I had the small devices with me all the time and the editorial videos I shot are less offered in the various libraries. In fact my highest editorial video sale, earning me over $600 was shot with a mobile. That covered over half the cost of my mobile with one sale! I am really waiting to see technical details of how will the latest iPhone 13 Pro or Max record videos in ProRes. You just have to buy the 256 GB model (or up) to get 4K, or it will only record ProRes in HD. Also, the 4K will be limited to 30 fps.
The next thing would be to wait for a comparison between the iPhone ProRes and the high bitrate Filmic Pro records (you need to separatelly buy the program though). A final technical detail: I use Filmic and can record 10-bit but Premiere won't "see" the footage, probably for a metadata thing that does not allow it to interpret colors correctly, but Reslove does .Even so, bitrate using Filmic is way higher than the in camera Samsung does, but - even after the latest Filmic update - resolution is limited to a bit over 4K, something like 9 Megapixels instead of 8. I think Samsung does not allow third parties to use the full 8K video resolution.
30
« on: August 02, 2021, 06:31 »
Alamy partnered with Pond 5 for that. They mention they already offer over 6 million videos. Now, the sentence they are using is Premium Stock Video. Is this just a marketing name, meaning curated and selected ones? I went to search under my alias and I see there are already available both exclusive and non-exclusive videos I have uploaded to Pond 5. There is also no indication we can directly upload videos to Alamy. At the Alamy video search page, the contributors name is visible next to the Photographer tab. As for the price, it varies depending in Standard or Enhanced starting form 48 pounds for an HD clip. Could someone please share what is the cut we get and how is it calculated? Do we hope we added a new source of video income or do we hope to get the same video sale directly via Pond 5, so we get the percentage we opted in for, setting our own price? https://www.alamy.com/stock-videos/?utm_campaign=videolaunch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=videopromo&dm_i=2MSD,1RATF,6H6LNF,61ERS,1
31
« on: July 02, 2021, 11:07 »
Thanks for claryfing that.
As for my exclusive ones, I see my prices are not changed.
32
« on: July 01, 2021, 19:35 »
No, the regular acount. (funny my exclusive ones have zero sales!)
I just had another sale reported now, that is in line with my adjusted prices.
I am not complaining about that, I just want to know what is going on and when do I have to stop re adjusting my prices to compensate for the 50 % auto price down.
33
« on: July 01, 2021, 13:25 »
Let's start from the end:
I am now uploading a series of new videos.
New.
This means they are not uploaded to a single other agency, yet.
I set my own prices manually.
When I go to preview the clips (not reviewed yet) they already appear at 50 % down.
This also covers the answer that they might match prices.
The latest videos are not available at any other agency.
If I go to double the prices, they appear to the price tag I wish them to be.
In fact my latest two sales this week were at the prices I saet them to be.
It would just be simpler they come out and tell us we are not to be allowed to set our own prices anymore.
This price ladder game only tires us going up and down, setting new prices again and again.
Idedally Pond 5 would come out with a brief reply and explanation but not doing that is not doing justice to their past and credibility.
Please do not attempt to reply with just witty comments that do not add to the conversation.
Naturally I am not dictating you how to reply but I do not come here spending my time writing to feel better.
It will not and I do need the publicity.
I am just seeking for a logical answer to a stock world that I do not know if it is sane anymore.
34
« on: June 18, 2021, 09:49 »
Lets play a (nave) mind game.
Is the future now, has it come or already passed?
I mean, time is a relative measure that leaves permanent marks.
Its nice to be reminiscent of the past as we dont want to denounce or identity and choices but we need to live for today and adapt to the unknown tomorrow.
We think in stock in terms of the past but stock has changed and evolved.
Do we do stock for fun or money?
As I was commenting on your page after reading the interview Alex, dreams dont pay the bills! They are like Pauls balloons, fun mind games to carry you away, but you will soon have to look back down to earth to avoid the collision with reality!
35
« on: June 13, 2021, 05:45 »
It is interesting to see that prices at my exclusive Pond 5 clips are not affected, only the non exclusive ones appear to be sold 50% down.
Does anyone else with an exclusive Pond 5 account see the same?
36
« on: June 13, 2021, 03:37 »
I was not aware of that.
I went to my Pond 5 page and saw it's true, offered prices are down.
I decided to do a simple test.
I went to edit a price of a single clip of mine.
The 4K was 138 at the price tier but it appeared 50% down to the customer, as 69.
I changed that to 276 and it immediatelly appeared with a new price to the customer page, now at 138.
There is also nothing at their community forum, but isn't that naive, if not to use a worse word?
Do we play that game?
We double or rather quadruple our Pond 5 prices to get them back to where they were?
Do you think that someone from Pond 5 is reading and cares to reply?
It would be easier if they just informed us if this is a limited promotion or not.
We do not sell hype, we sell clips.
If they decide we are not to set our own prices anymore, it would be essential we know so we set our own strategy of uploading too.
Again, if this is a limited time offer, it would spare us the fuss if we knew about it in advance.
I guess it is time Pond finds a ... Mat ambassador to reply!
We are all listening!
37
« on: June 08, 2021, 13:15 »
Yes, as I reported yesterday to help the other readers, Chrome did not work. I had to change to Firefox to do the selection and then it worked. If someone responsible had done in prior the browsers compatibility test it would have spared us the dead end frustration, but at the end all is good.
Στάλθηκε από το SM-G991B μου χρησιμοποιώντας Tapatalk
38
« on: June 07, 2021, 17:34 »
I could not select photos using Chrome but then I used Firefox and it worked. Naturally the selected ones now appear as such back in Chrome.
Στάλθηκε από το SM-G991B μου χρησιμοποιώντας Tapatalk
39
« on: June 01, 2021, 15:43 »
Could you please explain if and how can you transfer a file from Google Drive to FTP? (not locally).
I downloaded the applications and mounted my paid Google drive and FTP or SFTP acounts at my PC.
All I see is that it uses my local drive space and internet speed to copy.
Why do I need that, if I can do it with FileZilla?
I do not need to upload one by one.
Instead, I wish to upload to my Cloud Drive once and then send to all agencies.
I was able to do that with MultCloud but SFTP is now creating so many problems!
I have 20.5 GB of ProRes videos to upload (13 videos - I know, unlucky!), just from my latest edit.
If I wait to do that everytime to a single agency, it will take ages!
Any help will be much appreciated!
Again, I was so happy with MultCloud but that was when I was using FTP and now things are not working with SFTP!
40
« on: May 09, 2021, 10:25 »
I could start writing in a pompous way, instead I choose to just report the facts.
I wrote to Yay via my Gmail to their official email, yet they never responded.
Ok, I then used the form at their webpage and they finally responded.
I am not disclosing the details, I am just summarizing the correspondence in my own words.
I wanted to know why they are rejecting all my latest editorial photos (about 100 latest) one after another for: mark/unmark editorial.
They responded at first, I might have too many similar pics and should upload my best ones.
I dont know about best ones; I know that I was the only one to offer them local editorials.
I asked again what is wrong, how do they want me to upload, what is the mistake also asking they should give me an example based on my rejected uploaded ones about how I should upload the pics.
Is it my titling or they just do not want any more pics form me?
It would be much simpler if they told me so.
My earnings there are not enough to make me have second thoughts about it.
I still fail to understand why they have still not responded.
I am still trying to be positive and think they are busy and neglected it.
If I were not positive and polite, I could easily think that things are different.
Lets imagine what would happen in daily life, where someone might react quite different.
If someone in daily life spits in your face, unless he is holding a gun or is a criminal, you jump back to engage!
Do you thing Yay is telling something in my face I still choose not to accept?
41
« on: May 06, 2021, 15:36 »
I tried with FileZilla now, following the instructions but cannot connect to SFTP.
I used the provided ID, port 21, sftp://sftp.contributor.adobestock.com and generated a new password but still cannot connect.
42
« on: May 06, 2021, 13:54 »
I went to my Adobe contributor's page and requested a generated password.
Because I am using a special FTP, Multcloud I can't add the new SFTP, the program reports an error.
Could I at least get a confirmation that I need to use port 21 and the host should be exactly sftp://sftp.contributor.adobestock.com ?
43
« on: May 06, 2021, 00:42 »
Yes, last night.
Στάλθηκε από το SM-T290 μου χρησιμοποιώντας Tapatalk
44
« on: May 02, 2021, 06:44 »
May 01 2021 was Easter Sunday for the Orthodox believers in Greece. I took the time of recording a video and this is the first time I am uploading such a link here. https://youtu.be/tIsP2ytPX5gIt already has some views so please do not rush to blame me for seeking clicks! This year faithful wearing face masks gathered outside churches to attend the Divine Liturgy Service. In such cases you have to uplod fast, both for YouTube and stock. For the time-lapse parts I used a GoPro Hero 8 in AUTO night lapse mode (and only manual Kelvin) as I did not have the time to experiment with shutter and long times. I se it up at a light stand and it stayed there as it was not windy. For the main video I used my Sony A 6400 on a tripod (stabilise off) with a 18-135 lens at f5.6 (brightest after zoom). The ISO is 12.800 and above. I used the Cine4 profile. The HLG creates (for me at least) many problems at night shots, with artifacts and bad compression that cannot be saved. Due to the fast upload rush, I did zero corrections or denoise but uploaded at a high bitrate. (you can see by clicking stats for nerds!) I think that for such a night scenery, despite the crazy high ISO, noise is ok and when I will denoise for stock with neat video it will pass quality control. Naturally if it sells for $3 or more is another question!
45
« on: April 15, 2021, 17:53 »
For now there is a written mention that video assets are not included in this edition. As for the rest, they go out on an all-you-can-eat subscription. Whats the permanent damage with that, aside earnings loss? People get used to it, like using Spotify or Netflix. You do not own the content, you are merely renting it. Then, the customer is used to that idea and only a small number of individuals rents a movie or buys a single. See what DJs are doing. With closed clubs, they are begging for peanuts on Twitch with live shows, while streaming services are paying them cents for their music productions. That is the worst to happen in stock and it will probably be irreversible. Buyers will get used to that idea. You get the same when you buy from the biggest stock audio library for Broadcast use from a British company. One yearly subscription for all tracks. If not, buying a single track just costs to much. Adobe is trying to tell us that: For now only the big customer is renting the library, the small individual is not.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
46
« on: January 18, 2021, 03:14 »
I saw an equivalent rise on my views on January 15 & 16.
If I am not mistaken, they report sales a couple of days later, to avoid refunds.
Since it's Monday and I have no sales reported, maybe it was just another promo campain like they did some months ago?
47
« on: December 27, 2020, 08:11 »
Please also explain how I can close my acount.
I am logged in but only see the option to edit pics.
48
« on: December 27, 2020, 08:07 »
Thank you for your reply.
Just a final question then, so the rest of the contributors can benefit.
What is the time estimate, the longest it will take for the small money acount to be paid?
49
« on: December 27, 2020, 08:01 »
Understood.
No, I did not use a Germam email but that is not the case. (copies and dates available)
Also, out of my total portfolio only 2 pics are missing model or release status.
The rest were never forwarded to other agencies.
In fact, my only Zoonar sales are with editorial photos.
I log in to my Zoonar acount and request a payout.
Since as I said I am below the 35 minimum, it responds with an error.
Please respond how I can be paid and then close my acount.
50
« on: December 27, 2020, 07:51 »
As for the emails ( I am still keeping my agreement with Zoonar and do not disclose them) almost all are in German!
I am Greek, have studied at an American College, I have a Porficiency Certificate Degree in English and a legally recognised title from UK that enables me to teach English at a primary education school, but my German knowledge limits to "ich spreche kein Deutch", (no used !! or capitals here) from my last trip to Berlin!
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