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Messages - dragonblade

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201
Adobe Stock / Payout query
« on: November 15, 2021, 20:16 »
With Adode Stock, I'm assuming that the minimum payout amount is $100 like some other stock agencies? If that's the case, I'm above the minimum but I haven't received any notifications about payout. I guess it's not automated so do I have to manually request a payout? I went into my account on the AS site but couldn't find anything related to payouts. How exactly do I go about this?

202
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

I think it was SS closing down the forums.

203
Off Topic / Re: The Hummer Thread
« on: October 15, 2021, 02:29 »
I was never a regular poster on the Hummer thread but I do know a few of you from there. Might get to catch up with you from time to time here now :)
Dragonblade = Patrick?!

Hey there Caymia. Good to have you onboard.

204
Off Topic / Re: The Hummer Thread
« on: October 02, 2021, 04:01 »
Some nice imagery there of the hummers. Ah that's good to know of the best states to see them. My sister has seen hummingbirds when travelling through South America.

Oh yea I could imagine that they would be very challenging to photograph! I guess you prefocus on a flower and wait for them to move into the right spot?

And that's a good move setting up your garden to attract the hummers. Must be great seeing them in your own backyard.

205
Off Topic / Re: The Hummer Thread
« on: October 01, 2021, 22:48 »
Martha, that's great to know. There's one particular bird that I would really like to photograph and that's the humming bird. But I confess that Ive never seen one in my life as I live in Australia. I know that they are unique to the Americas. I visited Canada in the late 90s and was hoping to see hummingbirds there but didn't see any. A few years ago, I went to Michigan, US but didn't see any there either. Though I did see fireflies for the first time in Michigan and they were amazing. Really surreal. I regret not being able to photograph them because my camera battery was being charged at the time.

206
Off Topic / Re: The Hummer Thread
« on: October 01, 2021, 18:36 »
For those of us who were not regulars on the Shutterstock forums, could you outline what the topic/purpose of the Hummer Thread is?

A very good question. With the word 'hummer', some people might think of a certain car. But I believe in this case, it relates to the hummingbird. So discussions about birds and other wildlife do feature a lot. But it's not limited to wildlife. Many other topics are discussed as well. The reason it developed on the SS forums is because there was no 'off topic' sub-forum over there. So basically, the Hummer thread was an off topic thread. That's the purpose it served.

Now some people might wonder what is the point of having the Hummer thread here as there is already an off topic sub-forum that is kind of used for the same thing more or less. Though on the Hummer thread over on SS, there was only a fairly small number of forum members who contributed. But at the same time a huge number of views - 1.5 million. I opened up this thread so that many of the people who participated on the SS Hummer thread could catch up here and continue their discussions. And other people who are not SS forum regulars are welcome to join in too.

207
Off Topic / Re: The Hummer Thread
« on: October 01, 2021, 11:10 »
Welcome! Good to see you here, Thijs.

208
Off Topic / The Hummer Thread
« on: September 30, 2021, 23:08 »
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.

209
Alamy.com / Surprised to find my videos on Alamy
« on: September 27, 2021, 22:15 »
I did some random video searches on Alamy today and I was surprised to find some of my videos on there. By the way, I was not contributing to Alamy in the days when they accepted video.

I clicked on a few videos of mine and under 'contributor', it says: "Pond 5 / Alamy Stock Video." And yes, I also have these same videos on Pond 5.

Actually, I vaguely recall some deal between Pond 5 and Adobe Stock where your editorial videos on Pond 5 could be sold through AS. But I wasn't aware of any deal between Pond 5 and Alamy.

Interestingly, only some of my Pond 5 videos are available on Alamy - not all of them. I wonder if there's some kind of selection process or I guess it could be random.

Though it does seem odd that some of my videos on Alamy are also on my Pond 5 exclusive account. Since they're exclusive, I would have assumed they could only be sold through P5. And there are also non exclusive P5 videos of mine on Alamy.

I did check the details of a few of my videos and I notice my Pond 5 account name on them (on the Alamy website.)

210
Shutterstock.com / Re: Is SS site down?
« on: September 04, 2021, 23:39 »
Contributor site is functioning as it should be but their forums are drowning in spam. I have never seen so much spam in all of my life.

211
Pond5 / Re: How has Pond5 been in 2021?
« on: September 04, 2021, 23:23 »
I started with a non exclusive account at P5 some time back. Despite having an extremely small port, I was surprised at the number of sales I was getting. I was quite happy. It looked like P5 had really good potential. But around the time when I opened up a separate exclusive account, everything changed. My sales dropped almost completely. From that point on, sales on my non exclusive account were extremely rare. And after waiting many months, I finally got my first sale on my exclusive account.

If I transfer all the videos from my exclusive account back to my non exclusive account, I wonder if my sales will return to where they used to be. I am actually considering doing that.

212
Pond5 / Re: Unusual rejection reason
« on: March 16, 2021, 21:14 »
This clip has been rejected again for exactly the same reason - the aspect ratio. And yep, I submitted the 4:3 version. Unbelievable.

213
Pond5 / Re: Unusual rejection reason
« on: March 11, 2021, 21:36 »
Okay this isn't as clear cut as it seems. I'm not sure if I'm using the right pixel dimensions for the 4:3 4k export. The 16:9 version is 3840 x 2160. According to google, 4k video for the 4:3 aspect ratio is 3840 x 2880. But if I chose those dimensions, that would mean that the height of the image would be greater than the original - going from 2160 to 2880. That sounds like an increase in pixels for the height. If that's the case, would that be the equivalent of upscaling to a certain extent which is probably frowned upon? I'm not sure if reducing the long side / the width (3840) to a lower value would be better as that is simply cropping rather than adding more pixels. So keeping the height the same but cropping the sides might possibly be better.

Are there some specific pixel dimensions for 4k 4:3 video that people could recommend?

I guess one way of working this out would be importing some SD 4:3 footage into an NLE program, capturing a frame grab and opening that frame grab in Photoshop. Then take a look at the image dimensions, change the height (in pixels) to 2160 and see what the width value says.

The only problem is I don't have access to my usual computer which has Photoshop and NLE software with frame grab capability.

Edit: Silly me. I just thought of using an online tool to do the conversion rather than going through all that trouble I mentioned above. Apparently, the pixel dimensions I should be using are 2880 x 2160.

214
Yaymicro / Re: Yay reopening??
« on: March 05, 2021, 23:36 »

Same, flat $4.

better than SStock 0.84c/clip

I don't know how anyone could be satisfied with $4 per clip. That's pretty insulting. I was considering submitting some commercial videos of mine to Yay but now I'm glad that I didn't. I think I'll keep my distance from this agency.

215
Pond5 / Re: Unusual rejection reason
« on: March 04, 2021, 10:39 »
Hi! this happened to me too in P5.

If you're resubmitting the same clip you will get the double detection. Double detection reads metadata of your file. So the workaround that i found was to render it again. That will create a new metadata ID for your clip and will be good to go.

Ah yes, I found that out the hard way.   

When you edit your 8mm clip before submit to review you got at the end "curator note".
Just write there "Native format 8mm 4:3" and use some tags like 8mm, old film, archival in the description.

Good tips. I'll definitely write a note to the reviewer. I wish I could use tags like "ld film" and "archival" but in actual fact, this footage was shot two years ago. I shoot mostly digital these days but once in a while, I'll expose a little bit of super 8 with a 1970s movie camera. I like that retro look.

216
Pond5 / Re: Unusual rejection reason
« on: March 04, 2021, 10:08 »
I have some old 16mm film I'm considering having converted.

Oh that sounds cool. I hope you get that 16mm footage added to your port. Ive shot a bit of 16mm with a Russian camera (Krasnogorsk 3.) The K3 had a wind up spring motor and was very reliable for a few years but one day, it refused to run anymore.

217
Pond5 / Re: Unusual rejection reason
« on: March 04, 2021, 09:57 »
Why not just crop it tightly and tidy to 4:3?
I'm with them with this one, if the original is 4:3 submit as 4:3, buyer can easily incorporate it into 16:9 as he pleases.

Yea I'm trying to give them what they want. By exporting the clip as 4:3 and 3840 x 2880, I thought it would end up as 4:3. Just a little surprised to see those black borders on the top and bottom.

218
General - Stock Video / Re: To 4K or to not 4K...
« on: March 04, 2021, 01:36 »
Upgrading to 4k equipment isn't necessarily a steep investment. You can pick up a second hand Panasonic G7 for pretty cheap if you keep looking.

219
Pond5 / Re: Unusual rejection reason
« on: March 04, 2021, 01:09 »
I submitted the same clip again and it was flagged by their duplicate detector. I sent P5 an e-mail and in their reply, they recommended that I submit the clip as a 4:3 file instead of 4:3 inside of a 16:9 file. So I selected 4:3 with an NLE program and exported it as  3840 x 2880. When I view the thumbnail of the clip, there are no more black bars on the left and right. Though now there are thick black bars on the top and bottom. I wasn't expecting to see those.

220
Pond5 / Re: Unusual rejection reason
« on: February 06, 2021, 07:11 »
Theres a field where you can post explanations for the reviewer at the end of the submit page- have you tried to explain?

Ah I didn't realise that was the case. Then again, it's clearly stated in the description that the footage is super 8 so that should have been a clue. I would have thought a decent number of reviewers would have realised that super 8 is 4:3.

Regardless, I submit my footage with Stocksubmitter. I'll have to check if there's a way to leave reviewers a note with that program.

221
Pond5 / Unusual rejection reason
« on: February 06, 2021, 02:57 »
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.

222
Alamy.com / Anyone still getting big sales on Alamy?
« on: November 21, 2020, 20:57 »
With peoples latest reports on sales on Alamy, all I'm hearing about is very low prices these days. And I had two sales there recently myself. Both of them were fairly low. Are the big sales becoming an extremely rare occurrence? I admit I'm reluctant to put the work in and submit on a regular basis because sales in general are very rare. And it seems that these days, if you are lucky enough to have a sale, it's likely that it's just going to a few dollars.

223
Alamy.com / Re: Lets Discuss: Alamy Personal Usage Licenses Misuse
« on: November 21, 2020, 20:49 »
I had my first personal use sale recently on Alamy. I haven't bothered checking online for it. Hopefully, the buyer was honest.

224
iStockPhoto.com / Re: So where's my money?
« on: November 21, 2020, 20:41 »
They got back to me and said that because I hadn't updated the tax form, they put my payment on hold. I had to complete a tax interview and some time later, they delivered the payment. I got most of what they owed me (seemed to be short of a few dollars.)

225
Sales on Alamy for me are just as rare and elusive as they've ever been. Then again, Ive got a really small port on there with a little over 200 photos so I can't really expect much in the way of sales anyway. I made my third sale on Alamy last month.

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