Providing RAW clips instead of comprressed

I'm new to stock video, and was wondering if customers ever contact you requesting the original RAW video clips, instead of the files available through Pond5 (or any stock for that matter). I ask because as a video producer myself, I'd rather have the RAW stock file, that I can still edit and fully color correct, instead of a compressed video file that has lost some it's dynamic range/plasticity.

In over 10 years of doing this no one has ever contacted me to give them the raw files.
If they did I wouldn't do it anyway. Too much legalities in play which is why I sell through stock sites.

There have been many discussions about edited footage. The common thought is most if not the majority don't care about the footage. If it looks good they will buy it.
That said, this is the main reason when I edit footage from my cameras I always render Prores to give them the least compressed footage they can get being one generation from my camera.

... yes, sometimes they are asking... it`s up to you, but not worth to hassle ... I keep my files in native format, straight from camera with lower contrast, color and sharpness values... trimming unnecessary ins - outs will be fine, in most cases it`s enough for them to manipulate further...

The ability to get RAW files would be excellent, but not many cameras support RAW and they are generally pretty expensive. I know that Blackmagic's new 4K camera is reasonably priced and has RAW capability, so maybe that will provide a pool of RAW shooters out there to make Pond5 interested in providing this capability.

That said, when you buy a file like that on a stock site, you can't really be sure what you are getting. There are at least a few people here in Pond5's forums who have said that they shoot in MEPG4 but upconvert to ProRes to upload to Pond5. So you may think you're buying a 550 Mbps ProRes file, but it actually started life as a 100 Mbps MPEG4. If RAW becomes a popular thing and buyers perceive that there is a benefit to downloading RAW files, the same people will probably encode their MPEG4 files as RAW files for uploading to stock sites. My camera shoots MPEG4 and I upload those files directly whenever I can.

I believe when the original poster said RAW, he meant original from camera, not necessarily a camera that shoots RAW.

Yep I'm one of those people. I think I explained myself on that one a while back but you seem to think we're trying to cheat people into thinking our footage was originally ProRes?

Not sure how that could be since I always add which camera my footage came from.
My C200 does shoot RAW which I use mostly.
But my Sony cameras shoot 100mbit mp4, sometimes if I'm in the field I'll use the camera as is but in the studio I always use external recorders which record ProRes.

If I'm editing an MP4, I will render it ProRes. As I stated before, the best the footage will be is from camera. But I will always edit for content and give minimal contrast to make it look good.
So all of my 2nd generation footage is rendered ProRes so it's not squished a second time.
That's my workflow, works for me and others.
Your mileage may vary.

With 12 years in this industry, I fully agree with JHDT assessment on the subject.

Some think 4K (3840 x 2160) is overloading their systems hard drives but 4K and up raw files would require bigger computer and storage systems. So raw footage isn't practical for the majority of contributors in this industry.

Problem with nomenclature: "RAW" isn't "raw". Some cams shoot RAW (or with external recorder), but are we talking here about unprocessed (flat or otherwise) compressed camera-native files as "raw"?

Always had the offering of unprocessed footage (RAw or otherwise) except for a bit there, never had anyone take me up on it.

Only sold actual RAW (C-DNG from Inspire 2) clips to a company once, and that was not through a stock agency. Many terabytes of data. Not fun to send more after the fact, either, but it's doable (the beauty of Dropbox and the fact that the files are individual frames as opposed to a stream) Took 24 hours to upload 2 12 second shots.

Piles of 2 and 3 terabyte drives lying around here ... not so fun to wrangle.

But I am also curious ,,, why not do people want the flat, camera-native (or transcoded to ProResHQ (or similar) files? Maybe it's because those who really care about dynamic range and file integrity also have the budget, skills, forethought, resources, to get their own and don't need stock? Or is it that they also have the skills to manipulate many stock transcodes as they want, regardless of the dubious quality?

Thank you all, this has been very useful. To further explain, I'm shooting with the Panasonic GH5, which shoots MOV 150Mbps (4:2:2 10-bit LongGOP). Directly out of the camera, the video files are extremely flat in appearance because they contain so much dynamic range. It's this original file that I'd want as a customer. But obviously that's not possible to provide through a stock site because once you trim the clip and process it (so that it doesn't look so flat), and then export as H.264 (or whatever you choose), it's "as is". But I think I understand pretty well how the system works based on your comments.

cophoto, I also have a Panasonic GH5. If I need to trim a clip, I use the PHOTOfunSTUDIO software that Panasonic provides. It's not intuitive, but my understanding is that you can trim clips without re-encoding. Viewing clips and trimming them are the only functions you can do with the GH5's 10-bit 4:2:2 video using PHOTOfunSTUDIO. You can't mute sound with it, so I shoot video with an unwired 3.5mm connector in the camera's audio jack to kill the sound. This way, I don't get my clips bounced back for having unwanted sound.

PVReditor, thank you, I was unaware of PHOTOfunSTUDIO!