Pond5, 4K, and ShutterStock: My Humble Opinion

+1 to what ODesigns said.

I concur entirely, the file associations request is an understandable procedure under the present structure, but seems somewhat outdated when other services are downsizing automatically.

I wonder how much one can get for a special 4K license on SS...

Great, no lower than 720 HD please. and give us full control over each price. An easy way is allowing us to setup a template with each price as we desire that automatically fills the price blocks. Not sure if same price for all sizes (like photo side) is best on higher priced footage. I would like reduce price a little but only a little from 4K to HD and maybe 720 HD.

Try to figure out what SS is doing with the high priced options. They are selling a lot of $300-$500 HD that are normally $79. There are many big players that have no problems with a little extra care and service and will and do pay these prices.
Thanks for the update and looking forward to getting all my 4K to you.

Will you go back over all previously submitted 4K and do the conversion automatically?

@ Avtandil

Good to hear from you. How about artist can do our own association of clips before we send to curator for approval? Instead of we (artists) have to request for association by providing the ID numbers. This is time consuming to type the ID numbers.

Thanks for listening..

DNA wrote:
"I ranted about this a couple years ago... Pond5 does not have to spend money keeping multiple copies of each clip. Once purchased, they can have the server render out the smaller size and put it into the buyer's download area for however long they allow downloads.
In fact, they should have a "Pond5 Studio" where all of our purchased items go. And in that studio we should be able to manipulate our purchases in any fashion and have the Pond5 server handle the conversion. So, I could buy an HD clip and in my "Pond5 Studio" I can request a resize to 960x540 and re-encode to H.284 or Flash.
As a seller, I upload my highest resolution and simply select what formats I want to allow for prices. So, I can select that buyers only be offered 4k and 1080HD for pricing. But of course, once they buy it then can downsize it to whatever they want in their studio.
If I were a web developer at Pond5, I could code this in a few days for beta testing. It's literally THAT easy to do with modern web servers."

I wonder what a buyer are you like, when you don't even have the proper system for manipulate/edit/downsize ? Remember you have the right to test before you pay. ;)

Good question Patuwe97, I am certainly capable of downloading whatever format is here and encoding it to my needs. However, the people I work with are less savvy.

I have an intern working with me for the summer and she still doesn't get all the "format, encoding, bitrate, resolution" stuff. We use low-bitrate H.264 in proxies for editing, but prefer to use PhotoJPG for the final render.

Everyone in my department has access to our corporate Pond5 account, so them having the ability to put in the details on the Pond5 web site and download a clip at exact specifications makes their (and my) job easier.

Also, before Pond5 started taking care of such requests, we used to get a lot of emails from buyers asking US (the artist) to do the conversion for them because they couldn't use the format we uploaded.

DNA: "Also, before Pond5 started taking care of such requests, we used to get a lot of emails from buyers asking US (the artist) to do the conversion for them because they couldn't use the format we uploaded."

Pond5 provide MOV, PhotoJpeg and MP4, all are common file format nowadays. FHD is popular for 7-8 years now, still are producers/Production house using old system, OMG !
A German consumer software Magix has all format inside the package. Tell them to buy one, and it is very cheap.. ;)

I agree about the auto downsizing from 4K, it might be useful to have an SD size also. Please build in a viable minimum price that cannot be adjusted down after curation. If P5 allows $5 to $30 4K clip prices it will kill 4K here and other agencies with higher prices will get the majority of contributors submissions.

Pond5 is THE leader in being contributor friendly in ALL areas apart from minimum price allowed for clips, do not let a handful of bottom feeding $5 and $10 contributors ruin Pond5 for us all.

"Pond5 is THE leader in being contributor friendly in ALL areas apart from minimum price allowed for clips, do not let a handful of bottom feeding $5 and $10 contributors ruin Pond5 for us all."

We should not tolerate those $5-50 bottom feeder. IS and SS they are both much higher than $50-