Pond5 Production Studio

Okay, from talks a while back with a Pond5 developer, P5 is using FFMPEG on the back end for converting between video codecs.

So, I have suggested this before and I would like to suggest it again...

When someone buys a clip, stick it into their personal "Pond5 Studio". They can download the original file, OR they can have the P5 server convert it to a selected codec. No need to keep multiple copies of the original clip when the buyer can convert them on the fly. You can delete conversions after 7 days or something to keep from using tons of server space.

That will fix the problem with 4K where we've uploaded PNG encoded files with alpha and you're not providing that alpha info to the buyer.

If your developer is any good, this can be coded in less than a week (trust me, I did it already for my employer's web site). Our reporters upload their videos to our server and the server re-encodes/optimizes them for YouTube, Facebook and Mobile.

How to make PNG encoded files from my original mp4? With what kind of software and how big will the file be?

I use After Effects to render everything for stock.

What I'm talking about above is allowing buyers to have the Pond5 server re-encode a purchased clip to whatever codec they need. Doing it "on the fly" which would take fewer resources in the end.

I use Ae CS6. When you render original file (eg. mp4) to PNG, the file is huge, each image is a few mb. It is a killer for the internet. No No for Pond5 clouds storage . I would not do it. Too much resource for me and P5.

What is good may be we upload the original (normally smaller size of mp4 ) and let P5 render for customer (on the fly) .

So like an other agency does ...