Curator Training

You're curators need more training... They need to stop "Assuming" that there are "lots of similar clips" online.

First, don't reject a 4k clip if there are lots of similar HD clips and almost no 4k similars. You guys do know that 4k will eventually be the new HD, right?

And second of all, ask them to actually do a real search. Because right now they are ASSUMING that a lot of subjects are covered, when they are not. Stop comparing apples to oranges, if a clip has a new angle, more details, or other features that make it unique, don't reject it.

AND DON'T COMPARE ANIMATIONS to Real Footage. Seriously... There are some amazing animators on Pond5, but an animated camera moves/looks differently than a real one. As do most organic subjects.

The same applies to music. I've submitted tracks lately only to have them rejected two minutes later. It's obvious that the curator isn't really listening thoroughly, but probably plays the first 5 seconds of the track (in order to get through the queue as quick as possible) and assumes it's "too similar". Pretty frustrating when you see another track from someone else that is blatantly similar to everything else on the site get approved at the same time.

80% of my submissions are curated by the same reviewer. With over 400,00 tracks on the site, I really think it's more about "ear fatigue" than market saturation at this point.

Agree with the 4K point - footage in this format should really not be compared to what's already out there in HD.

Well.... I'm done with P5 photos. To be blunt but honest the curators are not doing good for P5. I guarantee I'm far more professional and capable than any of their photo curators that I'm aware of. With my photo sales alone of over $45,000 in the last year (not here at P5) I know what I'm doing and how to do it. I shoot with top end cameras not a cell phone like many here. Since P5 bought the photo agency in Europe it has gone to crap on the photo side. 45 rejections and another 14 put on hold because my wife mistakenly didn't write a good title. None approved, 100% rejection. Yes I agree my wife screwed the titles pretty bad. So she's been told the same thing as I'm telling the photo curators. Photo sales are so slow it's not worth the time or effort here. With the curation that is completely wrong it is just not worth it for anyone. I process photos with a top 4K monitor not a low end old laptop like many curators use. There is no doubt that P5 would have rejected the photo i sold for $35,000.00. P5 is loosing tremendous sales opportunities because of the photo side. Too bad. So Canon 5D MK II, 5D MK III and Canon 7D cameras, don't waste your time uploading. They will say too much chromatic and too blurry. "Chromatic aberration may be caused by insufficient lens quality", I only shoot with the best Canon L Lenses. So sharpen the hell out of your photos and make them worthless for any producer to use in order to get approved. I have had my cameras calibrated and check many times by Canon factory. They are are in great condition. Some of these may be from a Sony 4K dslr camera, so blame them on Sony noise.

Photos are so cheap to store and sell. No one knows what will sell and what won't. Some of my self personal rejects have made me thousands of dollars at multiple agencies after I uploaded them. Footage rejected at SS have made me thousands here at P5 and vise versus. It is easy to see bad quality, even I can see what is bad.

So my friends, stick to cheap over sharpened cell phone photos, better chance to get approved. I reject almost all of my Sony photos as too noise and don't submit them, bet they would accept them because of the over sharp in camera photos they shoot.

I had this discussion a couple years ago, the Photo boss, refused to budge. Sad, sad, sad. No problem accepting cheap cameras with even cheaper cameras. Incredible.

So like they rejected my photos on a continued basis, I hope they accept this rejection as a friendly rejection notice of their quality, poor laptop monitor quality, poorly calibrated monitors etc. If curators are going to reject for these reasons they sure should be using top level monitors that are full color corrected, contrast corrected and aberration corrected. I don't believe this is what P5 photo team uses.

Hope for the best in P5 sales, really do and good luck to Artists and curators.

Ok, my rant is over. I don't have time for this nonsense since I'm in Europe for three weeks of capturing footage and photos for P5. I put in a lot of time and money to get P5 the best locations with the best equipment. My guess is my new Canon 1Dx MK II with all L lenses will not be acceptable for photos.

This is how the competition re-trains the curators:

hahahahahahaha

I had to come back here and watch that video wideweb posted, it makes me laugh every time. I just imagine 100 of these 'training' stations setup.

Can anyone help here? I have had music uploaded here for a year and I believe they're rejected but the message is so implicit that I cant even tell what they mean. The curator's message just says "3 returned" in yellow font? I tried to do P5 search for my titles and nothing comes back. Thanks.

I suspect it has nothing to do with quality and all to do with costs even though they are not saying it, they still accept cell phone camera photos and videos and reject content from high end broadcast cameras?, no, it's about managing costs not higher standards.

I think the reality is it costs them a fortune to store all this data, so just like in a physical library once the shelves are full and you have a little bit of everything you are kinda full and that's what I think is happening here and it's perfectly reasonable as much as we don't like it, sales are not what they used to be anywhere and if our sales are down so are theirs.

I also suspect the reviewers performance metrics are measured by how much they keep out of the system vs letting in, just like a goalie in hockey.

and if they really did contract out reviewing to India they sure didn't do that for better quality work, it would be for costs reasons and of course quality suffers, I'd rather go back to waiting two months for review and have good reviewers in New York and maybe a fast lane for breaking news for those that shoot news.

Wonder how much it costs them or anyone really to store 5 million files and these files are getting bigger with 4K now becoming more prevalent.

Just received 100% total rejections! Unbelievable! My email to P5:
Unbelievable!!!! Once again!!! Continuing rejections for videos that Shutterstock reviews in 1/10 of the time and the same clips have actually sold on Shutterstock by the time your new "highly inexperienced" (What a JOKE) reviewers get to them!!!
"Thanks for the upload but we have decided not to include this clip as part of our collection. As the clip is highly compressed and has a very low quality which may also affect the buying process of this clip. (This is B.S. - these are only trimmed and trans coded/processed as Quick Time in adobe Premiere) we are in the process of applying stricter standards and increasing our scrutiny of submissions to improve the overall quality of accepted submissions into the database. Please contact if you have any questions."
I have had nothing but nearly 100% acceptance rates over the last several years!!!
Great news once again from your new crop of highly inexperienced Indian reviewers..... what are you doing Pond 5?????????? Great news once again from your new crop of highly inexperienced Indian reviewers..... what are you doing Pond 5?????????? Curator 73, obviously a high curator number and thus new....

Sainath Kumar | video | Pond5 Curator 73