Video Quality and Specifications
The video clip you submit is the final product that is delivered to the client, so please take great care to submit only your best footage.
VIDEO QUALITY
- Footage must be sourced on professional format cameras. We currently accept HD and Ultra HD 4K+ formats, and high quality SD footage for extremely rare or unusual behaviors, species, or locations.
- Footage must be well lit, have clear focus, be adequately framed with good composition, and stable with no shake.
- We recommend you set proper levels and white balance before submitting to ensure a quality product.
- Moderate color correction is accepted; however, please remember that many clients will color correct or otherwise modify the look of the footage after purchase and will desire a high-quality, minimally manipulated, or RAW image to work with.
- If you shoot in Raw/S-Log, please submit both the RAW/SLOG (for HDR mastering) as well as a ProRes422HQ export in the native resolution that is trimmed and color-corrected (Rec709). Please upload the ProRes files via Catapult. When you are ready to submit the original, unedited RAW/SLOG files, please contact us at support@naturefootage.com to find out how.
- Please note that we do not accept Raw files in .mxf, .mov, or .mp4 formats. Examples of Raw formats we do accept would be .crm, .braw, .dng, etc.
- Please be ready to provide specific frame size and frame rate information for your Raw master files.
- Please also note that you will need to match the original filenames of your Raw files to the original filenames of your ProRes exports, so that clients will be able to download the correct Raw file that matches the footage they are interested in licensing.
- If you shoot in RED, please color correct and trim the RED files and upload the .RDC folder(s) via Catapult. It is important to remember to upload the .RDC folder itself and not the individual .R3D or .RMD files. Please refer to our Help Article regarding further information and tutorials on submitting RED footage here.
- Your video clip submissions should have NO visible timecode, titles, or watermarks, and should be assembled in a way that ensures no, or minimal, loss of quality.
- Please also make sure that your footage is exported at the correct frame size; clips that have black edges around the footage on the master file itself will not be accepted, such as the example in the screenshots below:
- If there is no useful audio associated with the clip, please delete the audio track. If the audio associated with a clip could be useful to our buyers, and doesn’t contain any copyrighted material (such as music) or recognizable voices (which would require a talent release), then the audio should be included with the clip. Audio should be in its native format, without any additional compression.
VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS
- Upload the video clip in the native format, or convert to ProRes422HQ (ProRes4444 for video sourced on RED and other 4:4:4 formats) or DNxHR.
- Clips should be minimum of 3-5 seconds and ideally less than 60 seconds when possible. Clips that are shorter than 3 seconds are too difficult to license, and will be deleted from Cliplog.
- Clips should contain only a single shot. Please do not submit compilations comprised of multiple shots unless we have specifically requested Edited Videos for licensing or unless you are submitting Video Decor content for our Natureflix collection. For more information about specifications for Video Decor content, please see the help article Edited Video or Video Decor Submission Specifications.
- Please add a 1-2 second handle at the beginning and end of any significant action in your clip (e.g., shark swims through frame).
- Please do not include fade-ins and fade-outs on the shots.
- Clip filenames should not exceed 200 characters (including spaces), or your clip's original filename will not be fully displayed in Cliplog.
- Please make sure that all clips in a submission have unique filenames. If you are uploading RED footage, make sure that each .RDC folder has a unique folder name that includes the .R3D filename. For more info on submitting RED footage, please see the help article Submitting RED Footage.
- Please make sure that you are not uploading duplicate clips that have different filenames. There should only be one copy of each clip in your NatureFootage collection (exceptions can be made for duplicate clips where one clip is real time and the other is time lapse).
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