Video for beginners

[John Mitchell]

There seems to be some renewed (?) forum interest in shooting video (footage), so I thought it might be instructive to start a thread where beginners like me can post questions.

 

My first question -- Is there an optimum length for stock video clips? Most on Alamy seem to be well under 20 seconds.

[Kumar]

5 sec to 30 sec is the industry norm for stock videos. But Alamy does accept 3 sec to 60 sec

What discourages me to contribute videos here (though 'am approved) is :

1. No online uploading system yet in place for videos. Alamy sure lags much behind others in this regard.
2. Emphasis on minimum, manual/mail HDD-submission of at least 250 videos.
3. Requirement of at least 250 videos at the 'sample URL' or 'actual mail submission' for reviewing one's initial video application.
4. Alamy's perceived (?) priority for promoting 'stills' library vis-a-vis its 'video archives'.
5. Not accepting 2K/4K clips as yet.
6. Providing metadata spreadsheet for as many as 250 videos is indeed a daunting task.
7. Video market is of course very competitive, and video shooting, processing etc very taxing for the contributor. Keeping 'video' issue/representation on the backburner puts the contributor in a pretty unenviable position ... and is a good enough prompt to look elsewhere for his/her video submissions & sales.

http://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-footage/tech-spec-alamy-stock-footage/?section=4

[Joseph Clemson]

If you watch any TV or film production nowadays you will notice that very few shots are on screen for more than five or six seconds, the producer switches from shot to shot to save the modern viewer from reaching the end of their attention span. Even a 20 second clip is unlikely to be used in its entirity. It's useful to have several angles or variations of the same subject to give flexibility.

[Kumar]

 

5 sec to 30 sec is the industry norm for stock videos. But Alamy does accept 3 sec to 60 sec

 

What discourages me to contribute videos here (though 'am approved) is :

 

1. No online uploading system yet in place for videos. Alamy sure lags much behind others in this regard.

2. Emphasis on minimum, manual/mail HDD-submission of at least 250 videos.

3. Requirement of at least 250 videos at the 'sample URL' or 'actual mail submission' for reviewing one's initial video application.

4. Alamy's perceived (?) priority for promoting 'stills' library vis-a-vis its 'video archives'.

5. Not accepting 2K/4K clips as yet.

6. Providing metadata spreadsheet for as many as 250 videos is indeed a daunting task.

7. Video market is of course very competitive, and video shooting, processing etc very taxing for the contributor. Keeping 'video' issue/representation on the backburner puts the contributor in a pretty unenviable position ... and is a good enough prompt to look elsewhere for his/her video submissions & sales.

 

http://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-footage/tech-spec-alamy-stock-footage/?section=4

2. visit a few cities, a zoo and a flower garden and you have 250 clips within a week. Not so hard, really. After a while I decided to count my clips to find out if I already reached 250. Turned out I had more than 600 . I now have placed about 1000 clips but not here.

1. that's one reason my clips aren't here yet.

6. that's the other reason my clips aren't here yet. I have software to extract the IPTC info from my Jpeg images and place them into an Exell file. Can't do that with .MOV files. I have no intention in cutting and pasting 1000 captions and cutting and pasting 1000 keyword strings ............... one ... by ... one.

Sorry, but this is 2016. Other agencies have ways to extract ALL the needed info from the .MOV files directly. Why can't Alamy?

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

Sorry Philippe, by point #2 I didn't quite imply that capturing as many clips was difficult at all. But for a beginner (video for beginners, this thread) getting 250 clips and actually processing those well enough for submission may infact be quite arduous. As of now, after having spent about 8 years doing videos, I have almost +3K clips (processed & unprocessed) in my HDDs, and the sample link that I submitted to Alamy had +750 clips. But, then, everywhere else I hv been submitted & editing the accepted files online. The very idea of manual submission (like the image disks of 2000s) of my ready +1.5K clips is indeed quite chilling. And, as one gets seriously into creative stock video business, mere zoo & park visits don't suffice. Such shoots need to be arranged and executed to a variety of themes and project conceptions, oftentimes spelt out by the stock agencies.

[Kumar]

 

5 sec to 30 sec is the industry norm for stock videos. But Alamy does accept 3 sec to 60 sec

 

What discourages me to contribute videos here (though 'am approved) is :

 

1. No online uploading system yet in place for videos. Alamy sure lags much behind others in this regard.

2. Emphasis on minimum, manual/mail HDD-submission of at least 250 videos.

3. Requirement of at least 250 videos at the 'sample URL' or 'actual mail submission' for reviewing one's initial video application.

4. Alamy's perceived (?) priority for promoting 'stills' library vis-a-vis its 'video archives'.

5. Not accepting 2K/4K clips as yet.

6. Providing metadata spreadsheet for as many as 250 videos is indeed a daunting task.

7. Video market is of course very competitive, and video shooting, processing etc very taxing for the contributor. Keeping 'video' issue/representation on the backburner puts the contributor in a pretty unenviable position ... and is a good enough prompt to look elsewhere for his/her video submissions & sales.

 

http://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-footage/tech-spec-alamy-stock-footage/?section=4

2. visit a few cities, a zoo and a flower garden and you have 250 clips within a week. Not so hard, really. After a while I decided to count my clips to find out if I already reached 250. Turned out I had more than 600 . I now have placed about 1000 clips but not here.

1. that's one reason my clips aren't here yet.

6. that's the other reason my clips aren't here yet. I have software to extract the IPTC info from my Jpeg images and place them into an Exell file. Can't do that with .MOV files. I have no intention in cutting and pasting 1000 captions and cutting and pasting 1000 keyword strings ............... one ... by ... one.

Sorry, but this is 2016. Other agencies have ways to extract ALL the needed info from the .MOV files directly. Why can't Alamy?

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

Sorry Philippe, by point #2 I didn't quite imply that capturing as many clips was difficult at all. But for a beginner (video for beginners, this thread) getting 250 clips and actually processing those well enough for submission may infact be quite arduous. As of now, after having spent about 8 years doing videos, I have almost +3K clips (processed & unprocessed) in my HDDs, and the sample link that I submitted to Alamy had +750 clips. But, then, everywhere else I hv been submitted & editing the accepted files online. The very idea of manual submission (like the image disks of 2000s) of my ready +1.5K clips is indeed quite chilling. And, as one gets seriously into creative stock video business, mere zoo & park visits don't suffice. Such shoots need to be arranged and executed to a variety of themes and project conceptions

 

If you watch any TV or film production nowadays you will notice that very few shots are on screen for more than five or six seconds, the producer switches from shot to shot to save the modern viewer from reaching the end of their attention span. Even a 20 second clip is unlikely to be used in its entirity. It's useful to have several angles or variations of the same subject to give flexibility.

Well, mostly these stock clips licenses are priced by their size/resolution, and not by time duration. Oftentimes buying bigger clips (and using bits out of it) is pretty much like an RF option for the buyers !

, oftentimes spelt out by the stock agencies.

[Kumar]

 

5 sec to 30 sec is the industry norm for stock videos. But Alamy does accept 3 sec to 60 sec

 

What discourages me to contribute videos here (though 'am approved) is :

 

1. No online uploading system yet in place for videos. Alamy sure lags much behind others in this regard.

2. Emphasis on minimum, manual/mail HDD-submission of at least 250 videos.

3. Requirement of at least 250 videos at the 'sample URL' or 'actual mail submission' for reviewing one's initial video application.

4. Alamy's perceived (?) priority for promoting 'stills' library vis-a-vis its 'video archives'.

5. Not accepting 2K/4K clips as yet.

6. Providing metadata spreadsheet for as many as 250 videos is indeed a daunting task.

7. Video market is of course very competitive, and video shooting, processing etc very taxing for the contributor. Keeping 'video' issue/representation on the backburner puts the contributor in a pretty unenviable position ... and is a good enough prompt to look elsewhere for his/her video submissions & sales.

 

http://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-footage/tech-spec-alamy-stock-footage/?section=4

2. visit a few cities, a zoo and a flower garden and you have 250 clips within a week. Not so hard, really. After a while I decided to count my clips to find out if I already reached 250. Turned out I had more than 600 . I now have placed about 1000 clips but not here.

1. that's one reason my clips aren't here yet.

6. that's the other reason my clips aren't here yet. I have software to extract the IPTC info from my Jpeg images and place them into an Exell file. Can't do that with .MOV files. I have no intention in cutting and pasting 1000 captions and cutting and pasting 1000 keyword strings ............... one ... by ... one.

Sorry, but this is 2016. Other agencies have ways to extract ALL the needed info from the .MOV files directly. Why can't Alamy?

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

Sorry Philippe, by point #2 I didn't quite imply that capturing as many clips was difficult at all. But for a beginner (video for beginners, this thread) getting 250 clips and actually processing those well enough for submission may infact be quite arduous. As of now, after having spent about 8 years doing videos, I have almost +3K clips (processed & unprocessed) in my HDDs, and the sample link that I submitted to Alamy had +750 clips. But, then, everywhere else I hv been submitted & editing the accepted files online. The very idea of manual submission (like the image disks of 2000s) of my ready +1.5K clips is indeed quite chilling. And, as one gets seriously into creative stock video business, mere zoo & park visits don't suffice. Such shoots need to be arranged and executed to a variety of themes and project conceptions

 

If you watch any TV or film production nowadays you will notice that very few shots are on screen for more than five or six seconds, the producer switches from shot to shot to save the modern viewer from reaching the end of their attention span. Even a 20 second clip is unlikely to be used in its entirity. It's useful to have several angles or variations of the same subject to give flexibility.

Well, mostly these stock clips licenses are priced by their size/resolution, and not by time duration. Oftentimes buying bigger clips (and using bits out of it) is pretty much like an RF option for the buyers !

, oftentimes spelt out by the stock agencies.

[Kumar]

If you watch any TV or film production nowadays you will notice that very few shots are on screen for more than five or six seconds, the producer switches from shot to shot to save the modern viewer from reaching the end of their attention span. Even a 20 second clip is unlikely to be used in its entirity. It's useful to have several angles or variations of the same subject to give flexibility.

Well, mostly these stock clips licenses are priced by their size/resolution, and not by time duration. Oftentimes buying bigger clips (and using bits out of it) is pretty much like an RF option for the buyers !

[Justin Case]

I am very interested on this topic.
I would really like to work with Alamy, but I only do video, I am not interested in still images.
I sell video and time lapses through 5 other agencies and I have been debating for a while about sending about 1000 clips to Alamy for evaluation.
But I have a few doubts:
- I have never seen in the forum any posts regarding video. Is there really anybody doing video here?
- The thing of sending a hard drive with the files and metadata sounds like a method from medieval times, at first I thought it was a joke... How about messenger pigeons?
- No 4k footage???

So, is anybody really selling video here? In this case I am really interested

[Allan Bell]

But I have a few doubts:

- I have never seen in the forum any posts regarding video. Is there really anybody doing video here?

 

 

 

I think Alamy will set up another forum specially for video when the time is right, just as they are supposed to be doing with Stockimo.

 

I believe the majority of contributors shoot stills only and as Alamy appears to be behind other video libraries contributors don't talk about the possibilities/probabilities.

 

Allan

[Niels Quist]

Don't take that literally. Was just an example that clips add up more rapidly than one thinks. Besides, my clips of animals in wildlife parks do sell pretty well 

Also - at least that's my experience - video specialists seem to prefer unedited footage. So, contrary to submitting images, shooting clips is actually less time consuming. I only edit a fraction of the clips when they are too dark (solved greatly in-camera by using this) or when I need to stabilize my slider footage.

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

- and a nice collection you have.... But it does take time. Animals, people, boats, etc. have a tendency to move differently from what you expect. 

[Joseph Clemson]

One needs to be a little wary of habitually uploading largely unedited clips. Very often there is camera shake at the beginning and end of clips as the shutter button is pressed, even on quite sturdy tripods. This needs to be edited out as it will lead to QC failure in many cases. Clips which are straight out of the camera or only slightly colour corrected are better for the professional editor as it gives more scope for colour grading in post-production. However, such clips tend to look less attractive at thumbnail size on the agency screen than clips which have been given a little bit of colour and contrast. Therefore, unedited clips may not sell quite so well to the casual buyer who expects a user-ready clip they can just drop into their timeline.

 

For a simple 20 second clip I expect to spend about 10-15 minutes per clip editing, colour adjusting, rendering and converting to my preferred upload format. (mov/p-jpeg). Add to this another 10-15 minutes researching the caption and accurately keywording it and your soon  looking at 20- 30 minutes per clip. All this excludes the time needed to upload from your camera  to your drive and upload the finished clip to the agency (another 10-15 minutes per clip, though you can at least have a cup of tea while this is happening). You also need to edit the captions, keywords and other settings on the agency site (and every agency  is slightly different in their requirements). 

 

To my mind, 250 clips represents nearly as many hours work. Not a trivial task which can be achieved in a week or so.

 

All the above also assumes you are dealing with simple clips. You may not be surprised to learn that there is an abundance of the simpler clips (though not the super-saturation of still imagery stock, as yet). To stand out, you may need to focus on timelapses, drone footage and 4K. The investment in equipment,  time and effort starts to go upwards exponentially.  I produce the occasional timelapse and this may involve several hours capturing the images and perhaps half a day of editing to produce a 20 second clip. It is going to take me a long time to produce 250 such clips to offer up to the altar of Alamy video! If and/or when I do, I would like to be sure there are lots of buyers waiting at Alamy for them.

[John Mitchell]

I've noticed the slight camera shake at the beginning and end of clips.  I always change the IN and OUT points anyway, so this hasn't been much of a problem. 

 

At the moment, my video files are .MP4 (AVC). Should I be thinking about converting to something else? Most outlets seem OK with MP4. I'm not sure about the AVC codec, though. Are codecs a big deal?

[Kumar]

I've noticed the slight camera shake at the beginning and end of clips.  I always change the IN and OUT points anyway, so this hasn't been much of a problem. 

 

At the moment, my video files are .MP4 (AVC). Should I be thinking about converting to something else? Most outlets seem OK with MP4. I'm not sure about the AVC codec, though. Are codecs a big deal?

.MP4 files are sure smaller & use less bandwidth while being uploaded, but the most preferred ones are .MOV (Photo Jpeg) saved to 92% quality.

[John Mitchell]

 

I've noticed the slight camera shake at the beginning and end of clips.  I always change the IN and OUT points anyway, so this hasn't been much of a problem. 

 

At the moment, my video files are .MP4 (AVC). Should I be thinking about converting to something else? Most outlets seem OK with MP4. I'm not sure about the AVC codec, though. Are codecs a big deal?

.MP4 files are sure smaller & use less bandwidth while being uploaded, but the most preferred ones are .MOV (Photo Jpeg) saved to 92% quality.

 

 

Thanks. I found this free program that allows me to save .MP4 files as .MOV.

 

However, I don't see any mention of quality settings, though. File size (QuickTime .MOV) for a 16 second clip is around 23MB. Does that sound about right?

[Kumar]

 

 

I've noticed the slight camera shake at the beginning and end of clips. I always change the IN and OUT points anyway, so this hasn't been much of a problem.

 

At the moment, my video files are .MP4 (AVC). Should I be thinking about converting to something else? Most outlets seem OK with MP4. I'm not sure about the AVC codec, though. Are codecs a big deal?

.MP4 files are sure smaller & use less bandwidth while being uploaded, but the most preferred ones are .MOV (Photo Jpeg) saved to 92% quality.

 

 

Thanks. I found this free program that allows me to save .MP4 files as .MOV.

 

However, I don't see any mention of quality settings, though. File size (QuickTime .MOV) for a 16 second clip is around 23MB. Does that sound about right?

 

 

Nope. 23 Mb seems a bit too small for full HD clips (1920 x 1080 px) or even half HD clips (1280 x 720 px), may be OK for SD clips. Please don't pull the quality any lower down than 92%. (using Apple Photo - JPEG compression). A 15 sec full HD clip (with sound) should be around 250-400 Mb at least. Yes, I use the same MPEG Streamclip programme for video file conversions (,MP4 to .MOV) as the one you just found. Please note that this software doesn't read any AVCHD or XAVC (Sony) codecs. Please see the screenshot below for the 'quality slider bar'.

 

[John Mitchell]

Thanks again. Got it. I have to use the movie exporter. Wasn't doing that.

 

A lot to learn...

[John Mitchell]

I've also discovered that I shot some of my clips in the wrong file format, so they aren't HD. The results will still be usable, but...

 

DOH! (to quote Homer Simpson)

[Joseph Clemson]

 

One needs to be a little wary of habitually uploading largely unedited clips. Very often there is camera shake at the beginning and end of clips as the shutter button is pressed, even on quite sturdy tripods. This needs to be edited out as it will lead to QC failure in many cases.

 

Very true, but I make it a habit of clipping the beginnings and ends of each footage in-camera before uploading them to the computer. When I do colour and/or contrast corrections, I offer both the edited and unedited version.

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

Philippe, Do you not get rejections for similar clips when you offer both edited and unedited versions? Does this very from agency to agency? I've generally found virtually identical clips are frowned upon at the agencies to which I submit.

[John Mitchell]

Next dumb question -- Is it possible to reduce the size of these big video files? I don't have an especially speedy Internet connection, and uploading batches of 225-500 MB files will be a slow process.

 

Am I missing a compression step?

[Duncan_Andison]

Well, I've been producing footage since the beginning of this year and was thinking of sending it in to Alamy..... but, as they don't want 4k I guess that counts them out.

 

Personally, I shoot using Cine2 & Cine4 for a flatter image and then Edit & Grade in FCP X with Color Finale. No blown highlights and retains shadow detail. Did use Slog2/3 but prefer the lower ISO of Cine2/4.

[John Mitchell]

Next dumb question -- Is it possible to reduce the size of these big video files? I don't have an especially speedy Internet connection, and uploading batches of 225-500 MB files will be a slow process.

 

Am I missing a compression step?

 

It's obvious that it's about time I moved into the 21st century with my Internet service plan. I'm on it.

[Duncan_Andison]

 

Next dumb question -- Is it possible to reduce the size of these big video files? I don't have an especially speedy Internet connection, and uploading batches of 225-500 MB files will be a slow process.

 

Am I missing a compression step?

 

It's obvious that it's about time I moved into the 21st century with my Internet service plan. I'm on it.

 

 

Oh yeah. I uploaded 40 files the other day to a place that cannot be named and they averaged about 1.75gb each. A couple over 3gb and a few around 1gb but most in that mid range. Thankfully I have Virgin Medias 200mb sec service... sadly their upload is not 200mb/sec though to a few hours still!

[regen]

Whilst It would be great to have Broadband at these high speeds its not possible if you live off the beaten track. Only satellite possible here with very limited and costly bandwidth so I use the Alamy send a drive method a few times a year usually sending about 500gb of stills at a time (about 600 files) never had a rejection and always thro QC before i need to send another. 

 

Whilst i am sure the service has improved significanty over the years when i used to have access to a reasonable speed i got fed up with the slow uploads and the frequent failures during upload- so much easier to stick a drive in the post.

 

With video i can send a terabyte every month or so and the same drive has gone backwards and forwards thro the post without any problems but not to Alamy as they don't take 4K.

 

Regen

[Kumar]

Next dumb question -- Is it possible to reduce the size of these big video files? I don't have an especially speedy Internet connection, and uploading batches of 225-500 MB files will be a slow process.

 

Am I missing a compression step?

No, your aren't really missing anything of core compression technique. If you're preparing your full HD clips (1920 x 1080) clips for Alamy (.MOV files at 95% quality) the only way to reduce the file size is to (1) remove any audio from your clips, (2) use 92% quality (the usual norm), (3) trim the clip somewhat by removing some redundant frames (not keyframes through), (4) reduce clips to half-HD size (1280 x 720) ... it does improve the acutance somewhat. In fact I sell (elsewhere) many more clips of 720p. Also, please do have a look at the following link (kindly bear it, a bit lengthy) and see if you can get something useful out of it. Cheers.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUPh2t8b0gg

[John Mitchell]

 

Next dumb question -- Is it possible to reduce the size of these big video files? I don't have an especially speedy Internet connection, and uploading batches of 225-500 MB files will be a slow process.

 

Am I missing a compression step?

No, your aren't really missing anything of core compression technique. If you're preparing your full HD clips (1920 x 1080) clips for Alamy (.MOV files at 95% quality) the only way to reduce the file size is to (1) remove any audio from your clips, (2) use 92% quality (the usual norm), (3) trim the clip somewhat by removing some redundant frames (not keyframes through), (4) reduce clips to half-HD size (1280 x 720) ... it does improve the acutance somewhat. In fact I sell (elsewhere) many more clips of 720p. Also, please do have a look at the following link (kindly bear it, a bit lengthy) and see if you can get something useful out of it. Cheers.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUPh2t8b0gg

 

 

Thanks very much for the info and link. I'll check out the video. My current Internet upload speeds are OK for still images but too frustrating for large video files. I'm working on fixing that.

 

BTW you mentioned saving at 92% quality previously. Is 95% an Alamy requirement? It doesn't sound like much of a difference.