Most common camera settings and codec customers globally purchase?

Hello,

I shoot mostly 24fps 1920p and I export in H.264 format.

If I shot at 25fps, or 30fps, and perhaps offered my footage in an extra codec as well, would this ultimately give me a greater chance of hitting the most purchasers? - a rhetoric question mostly.

I am looking to double my earnings in 2014 which would give me roughly $1500, and after some research I feel I am missing out by shooting my footage in 24fps, and to a lesser extent the codec I use to export.

If any kind soul could give me advice, ideally if you work at pond5 and happen to know what frame rates and codecs sell the most!

Also if this has been covered then please point me in the direction :)

Thank you in advance

Anth

For USA sales which seems to be the biggest market so far, I would suggest 29.97 or 30 fps. Also the up-till-now- standard has been QT with PJPEG for processing. Many of us are finding especially with 4K the h.264 gives a more manageable file size. Many agencies still don't accept h.264. So for me I don't process in multiple formats, some agencies do it for us automatically which is great. For here, I personally don't think it will increase sales to send multiple formats or fps. The subject matter and quality is far more important. If you shoot a subject that is needed the buyer can put it into the format they need. Good luck.

I shoot only 24fps and have had no problem so far. Would I have more sales if they were 30fps? I don't know, but I'm happy that sales are increasing as my portfolio increases.

Hey RekindlePhoto,
your point about shooting a subject that is needed by a client is most important, I went ahead and had a price restructure to start with, as for shooting Im going to stick with 24fps for now at least. Im in no rush for sales, just want to maximise what I get from my footage. Thanks!

Hey MichaelWard,
thanks for replying, Im happy your sales are increasing, would you put that down to simply uploading more, or has your tagging/pre/post production skills been enhanced?

Anth

You have some nice clips be sure to put as much effort into keywording them without spamming. For your council house's you could also add a north american term (public housing), I clicked on your clip of some shops in Kingston upon Hull, you could add flats, apartments, housing, retail, parade of shops (strip mall). I think being UK based that 25 fps would be a better frame rate as that is the UK T.V.standard. 24 fps is really for cinema, your Canon 5D MKll shoots 25 fps so I would keep your clips at that. If you want more sales I know this sounds flippant but increase your portfolio size and keyword accurately and comprehensively. Best of luck on your goal.

Yes, definitely from uploading more as there is more of a variety in subject matter. I also found over the year that beautiful landscapes that I have painstakingly captured at just the right time do not sell as good as my cat drinking from my sink. As Normstock said, tagging is very important. When I started out I didn't realize the importance of tagging correctly. I have actually gone back and re-tagged videos that never sold and they sold within days of re-tagging them. If people can't find them, they can't buy them.

Thanks for the response guys!

Ive been hard at work reconceptualising alot of my tagging, and also thinking of the larger audience like Normstock said and adding words that would be searched by our friends across the pond.

I have now switched onto 25fps, so next time I shoot ill be that little bit more marketable. I didnt think 1 frame was going to make much difference but im not taking chances.

MichaelWard thanks for your continued input, I kind of left my Pond5 account after setting it up 18 months ago, I have now come to realise after much reading that it should be treat like any shop, where the produce needs continual management, so Ive dusted off my clips, restructured the pricing and the task of re tagging begins. At least I only have a relatively small amount so its better to learn the right way now. Oh and if anyone is interested I have been busy working on a new website for my photography http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/anthony-bean.html I hope to get this stock and photography thing down to a T! :)

I have a question and I know it's been addressed a few times in older forums but I would like to hear some current responses since technology and everything else changes at the speed of light these days.

My camera, Canon XF 305 produces native .MFX files and I have 3TB of older clips and have been batch uploading them and batch key-wording them, raw and not edited or trimmed as most of it is editorial weather news and event stuff, I just don't have the time to go through each one now so I figure I will let prospective buyers pick what they want and edit it, eventually I will go through them again and delete the crap ones, my question is, I am uploading .MXF files, can most buyers use that format or convert to QT/MOV?.

I assumed they could but now I am seeing most files on the system are in QT/MOV, I am wondering now that I have PremierPro7 and media encoder if I should re-do the entire project and encode everything or just leave it as MXF, I am also worried about the extra work for the curators if I re-upload this massive project.

Once I am caught up with the old stuff that's on the external drive I will upload the daily work and it will be a little cleaner and edited/trimmed.

I am not going into this to make a ton of money but the video makes no money sitting on the drives so I finally decided to put it up here and eventually if it takes off great, so far I have had a few sales which is nice, I am also worried about pricing, tempted to go low so low budget producers can afford, or go high and wait for bigger budget producers but I feel guilty then about cutting out the smaller productions......of course if I was any good at business I would price everything in the stratosphere and hold and that's what I might end up doing, "perception of quality", but for now I just want to get the whole batch of the older stuff up there in the most usable/convertible format....MXF (native from camera) or convert to MOV?

Thanks

MOV PJPEG If you are not going into to this to make a ton of money then don't start. You can make good money if the quality is there and you hold your prices up. Don't get suckered into believing footage is the same as a dollar stock. Volume won't make up the difference if quality is bad or prices are low. Good luck.

In P5's specs for preferred upload formats, ProRes 422 is the first preference, followed by PJPEG. When P5 first announced (with no fanfare) their ProRes preference about a year+ ago, I started uploading ProRes (here and with SS), assuming P5 knows their market. Am I limiting potential buyers? What do you think?