Review Queue Changes for VideoHive & PhotoDune

Envato Announcements
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Two weeks ago we announced a temporary shutdown of the stock footage review queue while we made some changes to our team, systems and processes.

Today, we’re announcing that we will be reopening the queue to all Photos authors and a limited number of Stock Footage authors. We will be adding more Stock Footage authors to the queue over the next few months. We will also be migrating all Stock Footage authors over to the new video uploader.

How did we get here?

Over the last year we have been on a journey to implement improvements to our review process for Stock Footage. Our goal has been to make it more sustainable, predictable and timely for authors and Envato. We began implementing a number of changes to improve the experience and set expectations for everyone. Here’s what we’ve done so far:

These efforts have helped to reduce the average wait times from 250 days to around 32 days today.

Our goal is to continue to improve on these wait times while enhancing the experience for authors with a proven ability to meet or exceed our content requirements.

What’s changing today?

From today, we are introducing some changes designed to further improve the queue wait times. These changes include:

  • Recruiting and training new reviewers
  • Enabling uploads for authors with proven success meeting and exceeding our requirements (Group 1)
  • Enabling uploads for authors who consistently meet our requirements as review capacity grows (Group 2)
  • Disabling upload permissions for authors we want to show us their ability to meet our requirements through portfolio review (Group 3)
  • Requiring all new authors to submit a portfolio for review (Group 4)
  • Inviting all enabled authors to use the new video uploader
  • Decommissioning the old video uploader

Next Steps

Group 1 authors will receive an email informing them that they are now able to upload items for review.

Group 2 authors will receive an email that informs them of their status. If you are in this group, access will be granted in a staggered approach that will be based on our capacity to review items. This is likely to happen over a period of months and we will contact you as your upload permissions are restored. Items currently in the queue will remain in the queue until they are reviewed.

If you are a Group 3 author, we will be contacting you to let you know that upload restrictions will apply until you submit and pass a portfolio review. Your existing items in the queue will be removed and you will have to wait six months before submitting a portfolio.

Group 4 authors will also be restricted from uploading Stock Footage and Motion Graphics items until they pass a portfolio review.

We’re committed to reducing wait times, setting clear expectations and doing what we can to streamline the experience for authors with a proven track record of meeting and exceeding our requirements and guidelines. This includes exploring ideas around auto-approval for items, providing more feedback and more.

We’ve come a long way and made significant progress. Thank you for your patience and commitment, especially when the queues were lengthy. We’ll be actively monitoring this thread for the next seven days, responding in batches to your questions. Please remember our community guidelines as you post.

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I have just received a ‘no-reply-to’ email ‘informing me’ that -
“…We have assessed your current portfolio of items as well as your review history and have decided to suspend your ability to upload items for Stock Footage…”

The annoying irony here is that I don’t recall having EVER uploaded any video to Envato!!! - and there’s apparently no way to respond to that email, other than here in the forums.

(I have been a member of Envato for a couple of years in the 3D section)

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When you declare a video that is accepted and successfully sold 100% by all other agencies “do not meet your high standards” - this is pretty ridiculous.
When other agencies do not have time for inspection, they hire curators, speed up and simplify the processes, and so on.
Here you decide to remove the authors! Rejecting videos that you have not even seen! The absurd decisions are justified by other absurdities.

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I also got an email this morning to advise me that I can’t upload stock footage for 6 months, and then I will need to submit a portfolio for review. My last upload for stock footage was in February (6 months ago). I hadn’t bothered uploading here since then because of the 2 months waiting times, while other agencies approve items within a couple of days.

I’d have thought that hiring more reviewers would be the best choice in dealing with a large volume of submissions, but apparently it was easier to just stop people from submitting.

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I think they just want to save space and traffic.

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I haven’t recieve any e-mail and now I’m able to upload stoch footage. Does it mean that everything is ok or moderators have not yet reviewed my portfolio and I could be restricted in fututre?

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My 2 videos have already started to sell you. I uploaded another 170 interesting videos 2 months ago, and you just rejected me without even watching the video. And video to you to load heavier than in other agencies. You don’t appreciate authors and their work. You should be ashamed.

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What about new authors?

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Hello Envato Team

I am a little confused after the e-mail what i get. as it seems i am now on Standby for the next months for Uploading motion Graphics and Stock Footage…? In the past i was always looking a little on what items are there , for make a good quality of Content. I sent here in the past a lot of files, most of them were rejected and i was trying to compare to existing files here. I could not recognize a clear pattern and with the 3 variation rule which i was trying to handle i could not familize too, because i saw many content on the site which are same, with just a simple detail in change (in my opinion against the 3 variation rule). I will try to prepare as good content as possible for beeing ready when i have the permission again to send something or to go through the portfolio review process for categories. How i have to prepare the files for this process? i hawas already trying to find out how it is working, but what you mean with sending a link…? a link to where? i can send a link to my portfolio from another Agency, where i have over 3500 items there which were accepted in the past. I hope to can send in future again Footage and Motion Graphic,

Best Regards
RegenerationX

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Hi there

Thank you for the update.

How will this impact smaller authors? Will the large authors be getting preference over the little guys?

I, for one, have very few clips online and only ever upload new items when I feel it is outstanding and would add a lot to the market place. I have an approval rating of at least 85% to 90% and every single one of my clips has a sale to its name (except for four of my clips). One of my clips has 209 sales to its name.

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Group 4 authors (new authors) will also be restricted from uploading Stock Footage and Motion Graphics items until they pass a portfolio review.

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WTF Envato, you reviewed one upload from me years ago and it took you 6 months to answer!!!

I guess I’ll sell my stuff somewhere else where the artists are more respected.

Serge Breton
Mister_Serge

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I’m confused

I only uploaded a video clip which was rejected, that was 4 years ago, a month ago I uploaded a graphic for printing on graphicriver that was also rejected.

I wonder if that is enough to not allow me to upload more items

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Thanks for the comment and apologies for any confusion. If you haven’t uploaded anything in the past and have no plans to do so in the future, this change should have minimal impact to you.

We are not disabling any accounts or deleting any items that are currently for sale. We are asking authors who would like to continue uploading and who have a track record that is more rejections than approvals, to show us a portfolio that demonstrates they can meet our requirements. By doing this we are hoping to keep the queues from growing out of control while also ensure that the best content is reviewed and available for sale as quickly as possible.

We are exploring other ways we might approach review in the future and this includes some of the suggestions you have made.

It’s not a one size fits all type of solution. The growth of stock footage as a category has far outpaced our ability to hire. We think that authors can and should take more responsibility for what they upload, ensuring it meets our requirements first, rather than waiting for our reviewers to tell them.

This is one of the reasons we’ve put in batch sampling, upload controls and in the future perhaps auto-approvals.

You should have now received an email telling you that you are able to upload.

I hear you and I understand your frustration. The primary indicator for the decisions we made was not about the quality of items you have for sale but in how you got there. As an example, if you have five items approved and 100 items that were not approved this would mean that we are reviewing 100 rejected items before reviewing 100 other items with a higher potential to be accepted. This has an impact on all other authors.

We are not saying that you cannot produce items that will be approved but we are asking you to send us a portfolio that demonstrates you can produce these types of items.

If you have been asked to wait until our capacity grows, your existing items are still in the queue and you are not required to submit a portfolio before regaining access. We are slowly enabling authors as our capacity grows to ensure we do not negatively impact wait times.

The size of your portfolio can have an impact as individual items will be more heavily weighted in a smaller portfolio. That said, if you upload exceptional items and have a very high approval ratio, the number of items in your portfolio won’t determine upload permissions.

Sorry for any confusion. Uploading to other marketplaces is not impacted by these changes to the VideoHive upload process.

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Great news! Still no email, though.

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You made me laugh. I was not going to upload anything. I do not need it.

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Right choice.

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There’s a lot of talk about authors who need to meet Envato’s requirements to be able to upload here.
What about Envato meeting our requirements?

Review process is a two-way street. I’ve had numerous rejections which were actually reviewers’ mistakes, both here and on other agencies. Here any rejection is a smack on the author’s head and a penalty which can lead to suspending ability to submit; on other agencies you just resubmit (and explain) and another reviewer takes a second look.

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No email informing about my status. Dont know what to believe. Ive made about 8600 sales for me&Envato across years and have a port of 1368 items, mostly stock. So? what`s new for me? Anybody to clarify? thanks…

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Since I started putting videos on sale here that the conditions imposed on the authors are getting worse. There is no respect. Envato imposes the rules and how the authors need to make money are subject to the requirements. Anyone who does not want to accept can leave. They are not worried. More authors appear.

I make sales every day. An average of 200 sales per month. I work every day to increase the quality of my items and increase my sales. I send about 500 items per month (4k and Full HD) with a success rate over 90%.

At this moment I have several items queued for more than 3 months (90 days), when the average revision time is 32 days.

Now I receive an email saying that I am prevented from uploading indefinitely and that it may take months before I can upload new videos.
I’m just here because I need the money for my family, if I had not already left.
It’s a shame to be part of this team.

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