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Author Topic: Any videos?  (Read 10001 times)

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« on: August 14, 2008, 11:27 »
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I tried some searches for videos, like 'people', 'background', 'abstract', 'globe', but never found more than 1 video, if at all. How many videos are there actually on Zymmtrival? Is it even worth uploading?


zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #1 on: August 14, 2008, 11:45 »
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Hi Maui,

We started off with Video Jockey loops, and have phased out this type of video as we prepare to launch a royalty-free video section which is probably more in line with the type of content you are referring to.

Currently our video section is in a holding pattern as the backend is being upgraded to deal with the much larger and more complex professional footage compared to our previous inventory of low-res, avg. 5 second MJPEG clips. Stay tuned and you should see some movement in this area, and be able to judge for yourself whether it is worth it to participate.

Thanks!


I tried some searches for videos, like 'people', 'background', 'abstract', 'globe', but never found more than 1 video, if at all. How many videos are there actually on Zymmtrival? Is it even worth uploading?

« Reply #2 on: August 14, 2008, 11:49 »
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Ok,  I'll come back some time in the future, then. Thanks for the info!

« Reply #3 on: August 14, 2008, 11:51 »
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If I might suggest...

You need to support H.264, Photo JPEG, PNG and Animation codecs.  If storage space is an issue, I would consider only accepting HD footage as on most sites where I sell footage SD sell through is around 25% and only when similar HD footage doesn't exist.

You need to allow sound, trust me it's important.

Consider allowing artists to submit a 2 minute "show reel" which is displayed on their profile page.

zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #4 on: August 14, 2008, 14:01 »
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Thanks, those are excellent suggestions. Disk space is not an issue but obviously like with the photos, we have to cap things off at a level that will deliver reasonable $ returns vs the electrons we're burnin' up.   

We have some frameworks for specs on what to accept already, but if you want to lay out your ideal vision of format/codec requirements that would satisfy buyers the most, please do continue! :)         

I've already caught a few tidbits about PAL vs NTSC sales performance here on MSG that are firsthand reports from the field - this type of info is invaluable, I personally don't feel like blowing a week wrestling with programming the site to accept some wacky format, that no one ends up buying anyhow. 

« Reply #5 on: August 14, 2008, 14:21 »
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I don't have much to say about formats, but I would like to suggest that contributors can upload their own thumbnails if they wish. (I am asking that because e.g. StockXpert currently assigns thumbnails from some random frames out of the clip, which is completely silly.)

« Reply #6 on: August 14, 2008, 14:33 »
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Most sites are now accepting H.264 because the compression is outstanding and the image quality is still great.  Prior to H.264, Photo JPEG was the standard and you should still accept it.

Sites that accept footage with embedded alpha have accepted the "Animation Codec" which does preserve the alpha channel, but files can get very large (I have a 20 second clip encoded with Animation that is just over 700 megabytes).  I think the primary reason that the PNG codec wasn 't support for alpha was many transcoders had problems creating the flash from it.  If your transcoder supports PNG, I highly recommend it because it supports Alpha and has better compression than Animation while still preserving quality.

JPEGA/B and MJPEG are outdated and personally I wouldn't bother with them, but people with older encoding software might complain.

As for PAL vs NTSC...  I don't see much PAL sales from sites that do not do effective marketing overseas.  If your primary marketing is in English, I don't see much PAL business.  But there are a couple of footage sites based in Europe which specialize in non-English languages and only sell PAL footage.  They do well from what I understand.  In the HD market, it doesn't really matter for the most part.   Which is why all of the companies that sell their own footage directly encode at 1920x1080@30fps or 60fps.  It's easily downsampled to 720p and SD in any format.

« Reply #7 on: August 14, 2008, 14:36 »
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I don't have much to say about formats, but I would like to suggest that contributors can upload their own thumbnails if they wish. (I am asking that because e.g. StockXpert currently assigns thumbnails from some random frames out of the clip, which is completely silly.)

I agree that StockXpert needs to allow flexibility in thumbnails, but I completely disagree that we should be allowed to upload our own.  It's too easy to make a thumbnail look better than the actual footage.  Instead I would suggest that you allow contributors to specify which frame number from which to pull the thumbnail image.

zymmetricaldotcom

« Reply #8 on: August 14, 2008, 15:02 »
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This info is gold, thank you.  Yes, I wouldn't want to be in charge of an Editorial policy where we try and determine if frame-grab thumbs are actually jazzed-up photoshops or straight grabs. Talk about a major manpower suck.  An online player with a frame-grab option would be ideal.      I've noted this in our issue tracker and hopefully we can whip this up.     

« Reply #9 on: August 15, 2008, 07:29 »
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Most sites request that the length of video be kept to between 10 and 40 seconds.  While this is a good "general rule", your system should allow larger/longer files.

One prime example of this is the political season here in the U.S.  I've seen some 2 to 10 minute editorial footage of speeches from the candidates uploaded to a couple sites that don't enforce the max length and they've sold extremely well (wish the candidates would come my way).  Reviewers should determine whether or not the content is worth the extra time/size.



 

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