4KHUB Contributor, Andy Goetze on 4K Stock Footage
It's always great catching up with Andy Goetze of Pond5. He shares his insight on 4K trends and more.
What products do you carry that are 4K or serve 4K workflow?
Pond5 continues to be disruptive in the royalty-free stock footage industry for sellers and buyers and was recently named to be the "shooting star" in this business by a famous european publication. As a true worldwide marketplace for digital content we are also a premier destination for audio clips and offer on top millions of images, illustrations, After-Effect project templates and 3D-models.
We constantly innovate and revolutionize our industry, recently with launching our groundbreaking plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and CC editing environments, allowing digital content creators to seamlessly make high-quality stock media content an integral part of their overall workflow.
Pond5 is leading the way for digital content creators who always receive a 50% commission and have the freedom to set the price for their work themselves. This was the reason that Pond5´s library grew so fast in the past and continues to grow so quickly, becoming the largest royalty-free stock footage provider on the internet with currently 2.5 million video clips.
We launched our new special pool of 4k+ UltraHD stock footage and also Redcode RAW (R3D) videos clips - the native format for the popular RED series of ultra-HD cameras - in late 2013. With 36,000 clips in 4k/4+ and in addition 6,000 R3D clips at the time of writing it has become the largest video collection of this kind in the world.
We constantly innovate and revolutionize our industry, recently with launching our groundbreaking plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and CC editing environments, allowing digital content creators to seamlessly make high-quality stock media content an integral part of their overall workflow.
Pond5 is leading the way for digital content creators who always receive a 50% commission and have the freedom to set the price for their work themselves. This was the reason that Pond5´s library grew so fast in the past and continues to grow so quickly, becoming the largest royalty-free stock footage provider on the internet with currently 2.5 million video clips.
We launched our new special pool of 4k+ UltraHD stock footage and also Redcode RAW (R3D) videos clips - the native format for the popular RED series of ultra-HD cameras - in late 2013. With 36,000 clips in 4k/4+ and in addition 6,000 R3D clips at the time of writing it has become the largest video collection of this kind in the world.
What’s your perspective with all the latest tech, its adoption & Pond5?
As a royalty-free stock footage provider we are seeing an increasing demand for 4k+ UltraHD stock footage video clips already throughout the market and our customer and buyer base. If it´s, besides the usual early adopters with special needs, a post production agency working for innovative TV broadcasters, an advertising agency creating a large projection for a major automobile industry event, a well-known display manufacturer looking for superb content for a demo reel to introduce it´s new line of 4k consumer displays - they are all already in need of 4k+ UltraHD stock footage clips and come to Pond5 to buy them.
In the latter case, the current massive introduction of new 4k consumer displays in this market, we agree with the outstanding 4k expert Michael Radeck that this, as the needed "game changer", very likely will strenghten the demand for even more 4k content heavily, thus also 4k+ UltraHD stock footage.
On top of that, if currently a pro buyer of video clips is searching for a special motif or subject and can choose between a standard HD video clip covering this or a 4k/4k+ clip with similar and comparable visual content, we experience already that the buyer will prefer the 4k/4k+ video clip. Just for any potential future use of the 4k/4k+ video clip with respect to his 4k tech workflow, to be and to stay on the safe side regarding the 4k+ UltraHD resolution. Apart from this more tech workflow related issue our royalty-free license for digital content ("buy once, use forever, worldwide, across all media types") allows this repeated usage expressly.
In the latter case, the current massive introduction of new 4k consumer displays in this market, we agree with the outstanding 4k expert Michael Radeck that this, as the needed "game changer", very likely will strenghten the demand for even more 4k content heavily, thus also 4k+ UltraHD stock footage.
On top of that, if currently a pro buyer of video clips is searching for a special motif or subject and can choose between a standard HD video clip covering this or a 4k/4k+ clip with similar and comparable visual content, we experience already that the buyer will prefer the 4k/4k+ video clip. Just for any potential future use of the 4k/4k+ video clip with respect to his 4k tech workflow, to be and to stay on the safe side regarding the 4k+ UltraHD resolution. Apart from this more tech workflow related issue our royalty-free license for digital content ("buy once, use forever, worldwide, across all media types") allows this repeated usage expressly.
How soon should we expect a movement towards 6K, 8K, and so on?
In our industry 4k is going to stay for the next years to come.
Being a royalty-free stock footage provider our daily experience is that 4k+ UltraHD stock footage is getting just more off the ground and becoming more and more important with a fast-growing demand for it from our buyers: "We all need 4k content, where to get it from, if not commissioned?"
However, a lot of issues still need to be resolved and pitfalls to be avoided, there are a lot of misperceptions out there what "true 4k" really is, how it can be achieved, its real implementation, especially in camera sensors, what cameras can capture (sensor resolution) and what displays finally can show (display resolution), and how it can be accomplished in the professional workflow from shooting over post production to display (like the needed HFR, High Framerate, to recognize motion in 4k clips as real 4k content on displays, and that you can recognize 4k content only if you are closer to the display than 1.5x the height of the displayed content). Discussing this more in depth would go beyond the scope of this interview.
The ongoing issues with the full implementation of "true 4k" are one of the reasons why we are reluctant to make precise predictions on "true 8k" royalty-free stock footage and when it will appear around the corner, it is just way too early - we are eager to learn how "true 8k" will develope given the declaration of the japanese public broadcaster NHK on 8k-HDTV-SuperHiVision with 120FPS as standard broadcast quality for the Olympic Games 2020.
Being a royalty-free stock footage provider our daily experience is that 4k+ UltraHD stock footage is getting just more off the ground and becoming more and more important with a fast-growing demand for it from our buyers: "We all need 4k content, where to get it from, if not commissioned?"
However, a lot of issues still need to be resolved and pitfalls to be avoided, there are a lot of misperceptions out there what "true 4k" really is, how it can be achieved, its real implementation, especially in camera sensors, what cameras can capture (sensor resolution) and what displays finally can show (display resolution), and how it can be accomplished in the professional workflow from shooting over post production to display (like the needed HFR, High Framerate, to recognize motion in 4k clips as real 4k content on displays, and that you can recognize 4k content only if you are closer to the display than 1.5x the height of the displayed content). Discussing this more in depth would go beyond the scope of this interview.
The ongoing issues with the full implementation of "true 4k" are one of the reasons why we are reluctant to make precise predictions on "true 8k" royalty-free stock footage and when it will appear around the corner, it is just way too early - we are eager to learn how "true 8k" will develope given the declaration of the japanese public broadcaster NHK on 8k-HDTV-SuperHiVision with 120FPS as standard broadcast quality for the Olympic Games 2020.
What would you compare the movement to 4K most as?
At the recent BroadcastVideoExpo in London very agile and controversial discussions spun around this. The movement to 4K is comparable to the movement from SD to HD, but has a higher impact in the long run.
Where can readers see and meet with Pond5 next in person (and online)?
We are represented in over 10 countries on four continents worldwide with local country managers on the ground to talk to and to meet with. We have been exhibitors in the past years at all major fairs in our industry, like NAB, SXSW, IBC and BVE, besides the many smaller industry events around the globe. At the time of writing our next fair is a tradeshow for pro footage buyers in London, the FootageMarketplace, and afterwards the Broadcast & Cable in Sao Paulo, July 30 -August 01, 2014.
Online our 4k+ UltraHD stock footage collection can be accessed here (http://www.pond5.com/stock-video-footage/1/4k.html) and our pool of Redcode RAW (R3D) clips here (http://www.pond5.com/stock-video-footage/1/r3d.html).
Online our 4k+ UltraHD stock footage collection can be accessed here (http://www.pond5.com/stock-video-footage/1/4k.html) and our pool of Redcode RAW (R3D) clips here (http://www.pond5.com/stock-video-footage/1/r3d.html).
Want to learn more about our featured 4KHUB Contributor, Andy?
Andy Goetze was named by AMERICAN PHOTO as one of the State of the Art Top Photography Innovators of 2006. He started an early career in medical research on contrast agents for magnetic resonance tomography, but when the Berlin wall broke down in 1989 he went back to his very first career aspiration, photography, and captured for himself with his camera the moments when the air was burning in the crazy and wild years after the fall of the Berlin wall. After working in visual content industry research and positions at various microstock agencies he joined Pond5 in 2011, taking care of markets in Continental Europe and the UK.
