Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic - What kind of footage should I submit? And other questions...

themightyshrub · Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 5:39 pm

Hi all.

This may sound like a very stupid post, but I was wondering if I could just get some basic information about footage stock.

- What kind of stuff sells? I don't really know what stock footage is used for, so any information on this could be really helpful.

- What kind of quality is needed? I have a Canon XM1, which is fairly old, but it is 3CCD and I think the image quality is pretty good.

- Is it advisable to shoot 4:3 or 16:9?

- Sound or no sound? And if sound should be included, are there problems with trademarks? Obviously we can't use commercial music, but what about people voices? Do we need some kind of release for the use of peoples voices like we do for faces, because presumably people can recognise their own voices in the same way they can recognise their own faces.

- What's the best way to post video for review (if at all)? Make is smaller and more compressed and upload to the net, meaning things like focus and quality might not be critiqued properly, or export some jpegs from the footage and attach them on the forum in the same was you would for photos? Or both?

- My camera shoots PAL. Is this going to be a problem? Is there a way of changing to NTSC, and if so, is it a good idea?

- Keywords. Is there anyway to just attach them to the footage in the same way you would with photos (IPTC)? Or do we just have to do it manually every time?

Hope nobody minds me asking these simple questions, but I've searched the SS FAQS and stuff and couldn't really find anything.

dapoopta · Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 7:51 pm

Glad to see you here :-)

I will take a stab at a few of your questions, and I imagine some others will hop in.

What sells?
Everything. And anything. Look through some of the videos in peoples ports. That might be a bad indicator of what sells, since you can't see sale totals here, but you can go to other sites where it lists amount of downloads. Have fun, shoot what you like. The market is young and you can pretty much jump in wherever you want.

Quality needed?
Well... hard choice here. A recommended quality would be HD, which would be good for the future. What you have probably might suffice, since it is 3CCD. 16:9 is becoming the standard, so if you have that capability I'd use it.

Sound?
I'd recommend only using sound where it is relevant to the clip. If you are recording a dog in a park and you have someone in the background screaming, like a baby, delete it. But if the dog is barking at a bird, and the audio is good, keep it. I like to think that the final editor can delete the audio as needed. Recognizable/identifiable voices are not allowed without model release.

Review?
You can upload to youtube or vimeo. I'd recommend that you put a watermark on it to avoid issues with copyright, especially with all this crap going on right now. You can also post 100% crop of an area in your video as jpg, that helps too.

PAL vs NTSC
Shoot in your native format, let someone else deal with it in post. This is probably the best way to handle it, since you don't want to screw up the footage and handicap it for someone else. People who buy PAL and want to use it for NTSC know how to convert it properly. Not saying you don't, but you will be wasting your time. This also brings up the topic of shooting interlaced vs progressive, and I'm not sure what that camera does, but again, go with the native format.

Keywords?
I don't THINK there is a way to do it, but might be wrong. I just keep an excel sheet with all the video names and keywords. you get quick with it once you do a few hundred.

kapai · Joined: 05 Jan 2007 Posts: 139 Location: New Zealand

Also looking at getting into video Can I submit in AVCHD from my Sony camcorder

milinz · Joined: 10 Mar 2007 Posts: 3452 Location: Planet Earth

As Dapoopta said - Yes anything and everything goes for video... But, there is something as concept which might sell a bit more than anything...

Format? I do have 4:3 PAL and some HD CG animations... More sales brings me PAL... I don't know why.

About AVCHD... Looking forward to see some answer too... I am cosidering to switch to that format soon.
The main what is blocking me is H.264 codec which has peak at 24mbit and most of cameras still didn't made that peak above 17mbit... There was some rumors about H.264 Version 1.2 which now has better results... But really I'd like to see someone who has it to give opinion here...

Only what I have expirienced on top-model shootings are BIG HD PRO and Beta DIGITAL cameras - not mine of course ;-)