| Size |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| 240 x 320 | $3 | $4 | $3 | $3 | |
| 480 x 640 | $9 | $8 | $6 | $5 | |
| PAL/NTSC | $15 * | $9 | $12 | $9 | $8 |
| High Definition
720 x 1280 |
$20 # | $12 | $16 | $12 | $15 |
| High Definition
1080 x 1920 |
$25 & | $15 | $20 | $15 | $18 |
Micro
Stock Footage Guide top
by Stephen Finn
updated 28-02-2009
Micro Stock Photo Agency Guide
Basic Requirements
If you have a video camera and a tripod you can make some money from your movie clips.
Don't bother submitting footage from a point and shoot camera even though the frame may be big enough for Shutterstock it will be compressed so appear grainy.
All agencies want stable footage using a tripod, most hand held work will not be accepted.
The footage should be well lit and in focus.
Movie clips can be very big up to 100 meg.
Most home internet connections in the UK have a maximum upload speed of about 100 meg/hour so uploading can be very slow. All agencies will accept a DVD filled with clips posted to a North American address. iStock will let you upload a compressed proxy clip if this is accepted you can submit the full sized version.
Where can you sell your footage?
Unlike Micro Stock photo market there are currently only five agencies selling royalty free footage clips.
Pond5 50% of the price that you set - 122,000 clips
iStock 20% of price for non exclusive videographers largest portfolio about - 200,000+
Shutterstock 30% of price plus $8 or $13.25 from footage subscription sales, portfolio of about 95,000+
Stockxpert 40% of price smallest portfolio
Fotolia 30% of price due to go live in the spring
Only one agency Shutterstock accepts editorial footage it can be quite simple to make a photo royalty free (by removing copyrighted material) but a movie clip is 25 photos per second so special software is needed.
This table shows how much different sized clips would earn you.
* Pond5 prices stated if you set a Pal clip at $30
# Pond5 prices stated if you set a 720 Hi-Def clip at $40
& Pond5 prices stated if you set a 1080 Hi-Def clip at $50
Istock prices assume 1 credit = $1
| Size | |
|
|
|
|
| 240 x 320 | $3 | $4 | $3 | $3 | |
| 480 x 640 | $9 | $8 | $6 | $5 | |
| PAL/NTSC | $15 * | $9 | $12 | $9 | $8 |
| High Definition
720 x 1280 |
$20 # | $12 | $16 | $12 | $15 |
| High Definition
1080 x 1920 |
$25 & | $15 | $20 | $15 | $18 |
Advantages and Disadvantages Top
Advantages
Accept a wide variety of codec even MPEG2 no need to buy extra software also compressed clips are faster to upload
accept editorial footage
Fast reviews
Footage subscription sales
Advantages
You set the price
No resizing so clients have to pay full price
high acceptance rate
Fast reviews
Disadvantages
No resizing so clients have to pay full price which may discourage some sales if they only wanted a web sized clip
Don't accept editorial footage
Advantages
highest earnings per clip
small portfolio so plenty of gaps to fill
Fast reviews
Disadvantages
No sales so far
Need to Quicktime Pro to convert clips to required codec
Required codec have large file sizes so slow to upload
Advantages
largest portfolio so will attract buyers
Disadvantages
Without FTP uploading is a tedious process one at a time.
Required codec have large file sizes so slow to upload
Highest prices and lowest percentage of sales
Largest portfolio
Slow and strict review process
Need to Quicktime Pro to convert clips to required codec
Advantages
Percentage of earnings sales increases with number of sales
Disadvantages
Haven't reviewed anything yet.
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|
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|
|
|
|
| Minimum size | 480 x 640 | PAL/NTSC
576 x 720 / 486 x 720 |
320 x 240 | 480 x 640 | PAL/NTSC
576 x 720 / 486 x 720 |
| Clip length seconds | 7 - 60* | 7 - 40 | 5 - 60 | 5 - 30 | 5 - 30 |
| Codec | virtually any | PhotoJPG, MJPG A/B, H.264, | flv, dvvideo, h264, mjpeg, mpeg1video, mpeg2video, mpeg4, rpza, svq1, vp6f, wmv2, wmv3 | PhotoJPG,
MJPG B |
PhotoJPG, MJPG A/B, HDV, DV |
| Sound | ambient | None | ambient | ambient | ambient |
| FTP | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Only for exclusives |
* Shutterstock only state the maximum length of a clip and not to submit more than 20 clips at a time.
ambient is the normal background noise if there is music playing or people talking you will need to mute it.
If you wanted to submit the same clip to all five agencies it would have to be 7-30 seconds in length with no sound saved in PhotoJPG or MJPG B codec. Pond5 (apparently don't accept Motion JPEG A codec) or Motion JPEG B codec with sound if you were excluding SXP.
I would suggest submitting to shutterstock first if your movie editing software doesn't have PhotoJPG, MJPG A/B codecs and you feel confident you can make some money from your clips you may have to purchase Quicktime Pro and possibly a plugin for playing MPEG in Quicktime.
Both iStock and SXP require you to send a test submission of footage which can be compressed details on their websites.
MPEG Streamclip is free software for trimming and converting movie files though it needs Quicktime's codecs
