Quote from: leaf on July 11, 2019, 09:07

I received the 'Shutting down' email today as well. Sad to see the site go down.  I was hoping they would succeed.  I still think blockchain could hold potential in this industry but perhaps we'll have to wait for it to mature another 5 years.

I know very little about blockchain, but in what way do you see it providing a benefit to stock photography/video etc.

Hopefully Leaf won't mind me jumping in here...one immediate and more or less mature application would be as a way of tracking online copyright infringement and image theft. With an open and accessible accounting blockchain registry of all licenses issued we would be easily able to track where our content is being used correctly or not. Enforcement is another issue though.

Quote from: Dennis Radeke on July 09, 2019, 05:51

Hi there Rasika,

I think a support case came through that is probably yours.  I have responded to Adobe support and they will no doubt get back in touch with you but let me try to provide some guidelines for the future here as well.

in general, we want to provide you the contributor as much opportunity and creative expression as possible and provide the creative customer with a large and high quality library where they can easily find the perfect clip to add to their project.

As the content lead for motion, I have provided our moderation team guidelines for accepting similar clips.  In general, I have loosened those guidelines because a different take, magnification/zoom/focal length or other factors can result in a clip that a customer wants.  It's tricky though - there are always going to be grey areas and opinions on what constitutes a unique clip or not.

However, it doesn't make sense for us to have both an ungraded file and a graded file of the same clip.  Especially if the files are 8bit color where the idea of "raw" isn't really applicable.  Once you get to 10bit color or greater with cameras such as a RED, ARRI and some others, then the idea of a RAW version may be very appealing to some.  As Adobe Stock develops, we may be able to offer a customer a choice of a raw clip versus a graded one.  The team here certainly have discussed many ideas and we hope to bring them to our users in the future! 

Today, I like to suggest to contributors is to submit a lightly graded version of your clip.  This means that it isn't flat like a clip shot in log might be and it brings out the luma range (black to white) and lightly touch the color (based on your preference).  The end goal is that the novice buyer will see a beautiful clip and the experienced editor/buyer will see a clip that fits and provides enough latitude for them to push the color to whatever the need is.

I hope that this provides some guidance and if you (or others) have any questions please feel free to hit me up with them here.  Please note that I'm technically on holiday so my response to answer may be a bit slower than normal.

Thanks and happy shooting!
Dennis

Even 8bit file non graded are much easier to color matches inside a timeline compared to
Graded files.

Very true. I'd almost say that a log version might even be more important for 8 bit vs 10 or 12. Even light grading with 8 bit in the wrong hands can quickly destroy any hope of recovery. Also, I don't think Dennis's compromise of grading lightly would work out too well in terms of sales. I could be wrong, but it seems to me the vast majority of buyers in that category are attracted to the finished product. Period. If there are two similar clips side by side and one is bright, vibrant and pops while mine might be technically better but is comparatively flat and muddy looking I am pretty sure I know where the sale is going.

Dlog is DJI's flat log profile for thier drones etc. I agree with Jimbo and have often wondered myself why submitting both flat profile AND graded versions of videos is not actively encouraged by all the agencies. I think they are leaving money on the table by not offering this option for pro level studios who can easily drop it into their timeline and grade match to the rest of their footage. Next to impossible with pre-graded clips.

Quote from: DavidK on June 16, 2019, 08:00

It is abundantly clear to me now that SS no longer has the best interests of contributors or even the industry as a whole in mind;

Obviously contributors no longer matter nor do the rights of content creators outside of their platform,

They never had our interests in mind. It's a big multi-million dollar corporation with clockwork monkeys with no authority, responsibility or care about the industry as a whole. The only thing that matters is the bottom line, i.e. shareholders' revenue.

I get what you are saying but to be fair I can recall a time when even the hint of copyright infringement was taken very seriously by SS. With entire portfolios subject to immediate suspension while a thorough investigation was initiated. Those days are gone. Part of my point was that there was a time when the interests of both agencies and contributors were much more in line - with their success tied directly to ours and vice versa. Now it is just a crap show where even fundamental concepts like copyright are ignored with impunity.

Hi Marthamarks, do you believe that iMovie is an ok starting point for a newbie? All I do is trim any movies down to 10 seconds, lose the audio and maybe a slight colour balance check, then export in 1080p.. What would Final Cut or Premiere offer that iMovie can't for very simple edits

Instead of that why don't you just use DaVinci Resolve. If you are only exporting 1080p then the software is absolutely free. Work on simple edits etc. for now while you learn the ins and outs of full blown editing and colour grading software and move up to the studio version later if you decide you need  4K capability. Lots of tutorials online and once you get a grasp of the basics it's pretty intuitive. Very similar to PP actually.

I've been wearing that tinfoil hat for a while now too. The beauty of a good conspiracy theory is that it explains the otherwise inexplicable.

Quote from: DavidK on April 30, 2019, 08:12

Funny how things change as you get older. I used to be a huge fan of hypercars and supercars. Now I really like the idea of an understated sleeper like a Golf R with an APR stage 3 tune. After the warranty is up of course. The Trackhawk looks like a great deal of fun too for straight line pulls.

+1

I still have my 16yr old Fabia VRS... been tinkered with a little. Custom road map, larger turbo, Large FMIC, Miltech Sports Exhaust, Uprated clutch for the 400lb foot torque... rear ARB, big brakes, Coilovers, big air intake and last year... treated it to a fresh coat of paint (all over). It doesn't get driven a lot but it is great fun to drive on twisty /single track roads in Northumberland & Scotland.

Sounds like you've been tinkering more than just a little! 400 lb-ft - have you had it dyno'ed? BHP? Big question, what did you do other than the coilovers up front? How is the hop and understeer? Genuinely curious even though we have not had Skodas here in Canada since 1989.

Glad to report that SS have recently wacked 77 out of 111 remaining moles!

And now it seems they've publicly warned you not to do it on the forum anymore. Looks like you've touched a nerve. Really starting to resent SS in an actionable way.

Quote from: DavidK on February 20, 2019, 10:43

Factor in economic disparity. Factor out race. Period.

I don�t see where race was mentioned, only locations.

Nor do I. Just commenting on the comments.

Quote from: Brasilnut on February 17, 2019, 13:17

All-time summary:

Total moles identified to date: 448

Total moles wacked: 337

Summary for week ending Feb 17:

Moles wacked (by SS) from Feb 3 - Feb 17: TWO (2)

Moles pending: 111

This is my last week doing this as it's apparent that SS don't give a fk about this project with only two wacked moles after 2 weeks. I and others helping out obviously have way more important things to do with our time. If anybody else wants to pursue this apparently fruitless task further, please be my guest.

Perhaps I'll re-continue if I see SS pull their weight. Meanwhile the number of thieves keeps growing...

https://forums.submit.shutterstock.com/topic/96484-thieves-thread-update-week-ending-feb-17-448-so-far-flagged/

Its the culture in these organisations ~ a manager comes round says "we have a problem" they work furiously on it for a week or two then the manager stops checking and they go back to their laissez faire attitude.

You are right they don't give a f.u.c.k and the only thing that would make them give one is for a major law suit or government legislation

I think SS has been straddling a very thin line for a very long time now. I also think it's only a matter of time before a major law suit does materialize due to Brasilnut's very public exposure of the problem. All it might take is for a well known photographer finding that their work has been stolen and offered up for sale. From there all it would take is their lawyer discovering the true extent of the problem during their research and realizing that there are many many more potential clients involved beyond just one. Class action.

It wouldn't take a team of paralegals very long to scour the forum archives for evidence showing not only SS's complete awareness of the issue, but also its failure to act quickly in addressing it - if at all. Of course their entirely defensible position will be that they are merely a global platform for people to sell their work, and can not be expected to research every image accepted into their database for possible copyright infringement. They will point to their contributor agreement to show that every contributor warrants that the copyright is their own and that any wrongdoing or misrepresentation is therefore the sole responsibility of the contributor. Honestly, fair enough. What I think they would have a very hard time defending at this point is what is they have been allowing for so long within their own database.

There will be some potentially embarrassing questions asked including exactly how many infringing images are in the database, why existing technology wasn't enabled which could easily ferret out these images, as well as perhaps the most embarrassing one - where did the sales revenue from these stolen images actually go? Was any effort ever made after the discovery of suspect images and deleted accounts to identify and contact the original copyright owners and at the very least turn over any sales revenue? Depending on the findings it  could answer the question many of us are naturally asking ourselves - is Shutterstock actually complicit at this point or not?

Quote from: Zero Talent on January 31, 2019, 11:07

I have not read the details, but crypto-payments aside, are they planning to use the block-chain technology to keep track of the way images sold through them are being used, thus enforcing their copyright?
If yes, this can be a break-through worth paying attention to.

It won't necessarily make any difference. Thieves will steal, international law is prohibitively expensive, and block chain won't make one iota of difference to that. How is blockchain any better than having your copyright in meta (where it's still in the thief's use?).

Wemark aside, one distinct advantage I can see is that a blockchain ledger can quickly and easily provide dispute resolution in the case of a copyright infringement claim. For example, instead of going through hoops proving to a site like SS that you are actually the legitimate copyright holder of a stolen or suspect work - which can take a lot of time during which your account will likely be suspended - you can simply point to the original copyright registration and that is that.  Same goes for DMCA takedown notices or even threatening letters from your own lawyer.

Quote from: DavidK on January 28, 2019, 16:56

Quote from: Minsc on January 28, 2019, 14:44

This is one thing that SS is dropping the ball on. I've flagged so many infringers over the years and it's starting to make me numb. People were straight up stealing or tracing my work. It unbelievable how many people out there think it's okay to do this kind of thing. And they all come from the same few countries.

SS need to implement some kind of machine learning into their approval process to automatically flag similars before they get approved. They should ban any contributor who attempts to upload infringing work so that we don't have to deal with this nonsense. For a company with so much money, they have the resources to do this.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but the tech is already implemented. All the major sites have a search visually similar images or footage option. When SS lists similars I don't believe they use a keyword or tag based metadata function. I think it is image recognition. If it's not robust enough maybe they should look at something we are looking at implementing from TinEye. If you don't know who TinEye is you really should.

https://services.tineye.com/MatchEngine

As some have alluded to in another forum, the real question is how so many of these are making it past the review process.

Something else many of you might be interested in is https://binded.com. I dare say a fusion of these technologies (plus others) on a single platform is not far off and is exactly what the microstock industry needs right now.

You're right, it is implemented... on the search side.

I don't know the inner workings of the approval side, but if that tool was available during the approval process, a lot of these thieves would have caught before they had their first approval. Coming from working in a tech company, we have lousy internal tools and there isn't a lot of resources dedicate to it.

Good points. I don't pretend to know anything about the SS review process either, but it seems to me that they used to reject on the basis of similar not all that long ago. Maybe I assume too much but if the tech is still there on the search side then why on earth has it been disabled/not implemented on the review side. Too slow perhaps for the sheer volume of images they want to push through now? Too many DB queries for a poorly scaled infrastructure? Who knows, but something is definitely not right. SS is a giant in the industry with arguably the most resources to tackle an issue they were aware of for quite some time now. Ripping off CC licensed images from wallpaper sites or UnSplash etc. is one thing, but uploading content which already exists in their database over and over again is inexcusable.

Absolutely spot on. With Alexandre' s initiative and the hard work of all those involved SS has been effectively  manoeuvred into a position where they can no longer simply  ostrich the problem. I think it has also exposed for all to see an embarrassing hole in their infrastructure which if left unchecked would undoubtedly leave them highly exposed in terms of litigation. One glaring  example that comes to mind is the "berries" shot in one of the threads over there. A shot which returns nothing but the same image multiple times in the "similars" grid in search results. Unbelievable how tenuous their platform really is. Either that or the extent of collusion at some level.