Rejections

I realize that you guys are actually starting to have standards and not just accepting everything now (Kudos!)

However, your curators are going TOO FAR with their rejections. I'm getting stuff rejected that has actually sold on Shutterstock and other sites. And when I spoke to you guys at NAB, you AGREED with me that they were going to far.

So, rather than me having to resubmit stuff all of the time now, can you PLEASE just go talk to your curators and properly train them. Because when I resubmit and explain to them that they are wrong (and remind them about our NAB discussion), they always approve everything. So the rejections are a waste of my time and a waste of your time.

As a reminder... One thing we discussed, and you ALL AGREED WITH is that Artists with a positive track record of sales and submissions should be given the benefit of the doubt that we're not deliberately submitting crap just to see if we can sneak it past you. We actually put a LOT of thought into what we're submitting.

If there is an OBVIOUS mistake like missing releases or glaring obvious errors, then it should be rejected. But if it's a "judgement call" from the curator, they should let it through because, to be honest, our judgement is better than theirs and we do a damn good job of curating ourselves after all these years.

It would also probably DRAMATICALLY speed up the curating queue.

I actually just posted on this issue as well. I have shots that were taken on tripods with remote shutter release all of which were accepted on other sites and all of which were rejected here for blurring... Its really confusing to have such extremes. On one site everything is accepted and some have sold, I feel great then this one all my stills are rejected and I wonder if I even know how to shoot a photo. Lol. Like I said confused.

If it's on the photo side .... well definitely a problem area.

Yeah no issue with video its fast its all been accepted I'm starting to get views but man Ive never seen anything this harsh on photo. Every other site ive tried took the shots. I'm admittedly just starting out though with the stock sales so maybe I just have some major things to learn.

Hi you all, I am new here and also annoyed cause my first two (very properly shot) video clips were both rejected. Reason given?

"we already have too much similar content in our collection"

My questions:

is there a passage on Pond5's Terms of Use that clearly states that clips are bound to be rejected because of this reason?

How in the world can I know which video footage falls into the "we already have too much similar content in our collection" category?

If there are no clear lines on why this is happening, uploading footage here might well turn to be a waste of time.

Does anybody know what Pond5 has to say about this? Any constructive feedback would come highly appreciated.

Have a great day.

@ FilmFusion

Oha, that's frustrating! So long your both clips were not about ducks ...... maybe your curator has had a bad day.
I wonder more about that you got a review for only 2 clips. Usually i get reviews when i've a batch of around 50 clips or more.

You just have to get used to the new trend of rejection. Infact there is many similar footage around (Bird for example! ;) ), including mine as well. Customers has to go through all similar footage to get what they want, it is annoying.

I suggested P5 to make Stacking system to stack all similar footage of each subject of the same artist. No answer yet..

<<<I suggested P5 to make Stacking system to stack all similar footage of each subject of the same artist. No answer yet..<<<

Alamy tried that - it was an unmitigated disaster and they swiftly removed the feature.

One major problem is that curators "assume" that many clips have duplicates and NEVER ACTUALLY CHECK.

I had several rejected for that reason and when I challenged them to find them, they couldn't and accepted my clips.

First, NOT EVERY CLIP IS THE SAME. And Pond5 has a method for catching exact duplicates after they're uploaded.

Second, a lot of categories of similar clips are HD with very few 4k variations. So don't reject 4k clips when all of those "supposed" duplicates are HD.

Third, read the description... A flooded street might look the same every time it's flooded, but news agencies want today's flood footage, not last year's flood footage. Editorial and Commercial are two different animals and should NOT be treated the same.

VideoStock50

Alamy has another stacking system, by group all keywords to make a group.