Curating News and Updates

Hello Everyone and hope you are all having a productive 2013 thus far. We are opening this thread to establish better communication about curation developments.

Let's please stick to the topic. This is not a thread for requests, site fixes, bug reports or suggestions on speeding up the approval process. Be assured these issues are being dealt with 24/7/365 and there are other threads dedicated to those topics.

So in this first post we would like to announce that we are accepting .mxf container files as of this week. We have updated the video specs page to reflect this.

Stay tuned for more announcements!

Thanks for the update, as an EX1 user I'll be looking forward to testing out .mxf uploading!

Has there been a change in curating policy when it comes to audio with video clips?

https://www.pond5.com/community?forum=76121&thread=20404554&lp=1

Excellent question @TheEngineer. The policy has always been 'leave the sound in the video only when it is relevant to the clip' however, we are finding more and more clips with 'hot' levels of audio which makes it really distracting even when previewing: wind, blaring sirens, etc... Also, we have been seeing more clips when the shooter is talking as he/she is shooting and this makes the clip immediately appear as if it was a home video. The policy has not changed and we do accept audio with clips but we will be rejecting and asking for the audio to be stripped and re-uploaded when we do see clips that contain obtrusive audio. Since we do have more curators now, it will be easier to keep a better eye on these kind of issues.

Maybe the problem with new/old artist including audio that is distracting or isn't relevant to a clip is because they haven't read the video guildlines or know where to find them.

I have a suggestion (again) that I have submitted about a million times regarding this.... when one creates a master clip of a series, then uses that clip as a template to copy to others in the series... even if that first clip has "contains audio" unchecked, it does not retain that unchecked status when copying from clip. I have asked Marcus several times about fixing this but it never has been fixed. This is more of a annoyance. Particularly when one submits clips without audio (99.99% of the time in my case). Hence, by default, the system assumes that a clip contains audio. This actually encourages new users to believe that this is the norm.

@Vadervideo +1
Same with contains recognizable people or logo.

Very good point @vadervideo. I will run it by the team asap.

Hello Everyone.
The "should I include audio in my videos?" question has been popping up more often recently and Pond5 would like to clarify.
In the 'uploading specs' we mention: 'If there is no useful audio associated with the clip, please delete the audio track.'
We encourage contributors to leave the audio associated with a clip only if it is relevant to the video clip. If you determine that the audio needs to be left in, please be aware of the audio level. Most DSLRs do not have usable, in-camera audio capabilities unless external mics are attached. Also, some cameras have the ability to disable audio recording in the settings menu so this may make it easier for some of you.

This does not mean we will automatically reject all clips with audio but our curators will be paying more attention to this going forward. However, clips with bad audio such as wind noise, blaring sirens and shooters talking while filming will, most likely, be sent back so that the audio is removed.

Previewing clips with harsh audio is distracting when mousing over and selecting clips.

Isn't it possible to make a 'mute audio' option on the video page?