Stock Footage - Feedback for hard rejected items

Recently we’ve been hearing discussions around the value of review feedback from stock footage authors. Many have mentioned the review feedback for hard rejected stock footage items is often not looked at or, if looked at, may not always be useful or actionable. Also, the time it takes our reviewers to give feedback on every item can sometimes cause delays in getting your content out to customers.

With this in mind, we’ll be implementing a 2 month trial in which our reviewers will not be providing feedback for hard rejected stock footage items. We will use this time to understand the value of this approach (for example in speeding up the time your items take to get published) and to explore alternate pathways to provide feedback to stock footage authors.

We’re currently working on creating helpful resources to provide more clarity around our content quality guidelines. As part of this announcement we’re excited to share with you some brand new videos that cover the following topics: Framing & Composition, Trademark & IP, Camera Movement & Stability and Lack of Movement. Click the links to see each one.

We’ll be around to answer your questions in batches over the next seven days. Please remember our Community Guidelines as you post.

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Just to piggyback off of the announcement here, we’re still very interested to hear what authors would like to see included in any/all feedback, and the preferred method to deliver that feedback. With that said, if you have any suggestions or requests, please feel free to reply here with your thoughts or ideas, or reach out to me directly.

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We are not in photos, but let me get this strait, authors are complaining about hard reject feedback and your solution is to remove it?

Somehow it transports me to the faulty progress bar days “we have a solution and it works, we are removing it”

:joy:

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I want to know why my item was rejected?? There should be some reason so I will know, but I just got nothing…?? Only 1 email that says its rejected, no reason and only thing I can do is to ask in forum?? Really? Where is your customer service??

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Would it be fair to tell me the exact reason why you have removed my item rather than just to say, ask forums…???

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I could see how the announcement could be slightly confusing. As it looks like we may be responding to complaints of unsatisfactory feedback, by just removing it entirely, but I can assure you that’s not the case.

I should start off by explaining how feedback for Stock Footage has worked up until now. If/when a Reviewer finds a Stock Footage submission to be far outside of our general quality standards, they issue a hard rejection without any additional feedback, and the system will send out a notification email to the author. This letter will only contain the standard rejection copy and no additional feedback. It’s been this way for many years. Only when an item is closer to our threshold, but still not quite acceptable will Reviewers also include some general notes detailing specific issues that are preventing the item from being accepted. It’s that level of feedback that we’re going to stop providing at an item by item level, as a trial.

Stock Footage is very different from other Video categories like After Effects Project Files, in that many of the issues identified cannot be easily fixed without going out and physically reshooting the entire clip. Project Files or Video Templates on the other hand, are easier to modify, or fix to improve issues we identify, without having to scrap the entire project and start over. Having a one-size-fits-all approach to rejection feedback across all Video categories is not ideal.

Because many Stock Footage authors do not look at our rejection feedback, we’re temporarily eliminating feedback on all hard rejections. If an issue is determined to be something that the author can easily fix in post, the item will still be soft rejected, with rejection feedback explaining what needs to be corrected. The change to hard rejections will eliminate a lengthy step in the review process, and allows us to process submissions much faster. So in turn, you will notice a shorter review window after submission.

We’re also in the process of making large changes to our guidelines and help center articles. By improving them to better explain our quality standards, authors will have a much clearer picture of the most common issues, to easily identify what could have caused their file to be rejected. These improvements will be rolling out soon.

And lastly, the general hope in all of this is to improve things for the better. So if there’s ever a situation where you have a submission that gets rejected, you want to know the reasoning, and the new guideline documents aren’t sufficient, we’re happy to provide feedback upon request through the support system.

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Hi @BetCaesar, welcome to the forums!! I’m very sorry to hear your item was not accepted. Unfortunately this thread is referencing Stock Footage submissions only and I’m unable to provide more context around the reasoning for the rejection of your recent CodeCanyon submission. If you would like to receive more feedback, please visit the Envato Help Center, where you can browse through our author guidelines. If you still need more assistance, you can open a support ticket and our support staff and review team will be happy to provide more details.

Hmmm, Envato definitely needs someone like you on tf :slight_smile: since that’s the far most comprehensive and sincere answer I saw in a while .

But still, you are removing that close to soft reject comment and I am sure authors did not wish that.
The main point of my comment is that you took action against authors wishes on the notion that you know better.

Now I cannot comment stock footage since it’s not my business but the pattern is pretty similar as on TF and there author relationship is spiralling in almost all sections downwards.

I totally understand your concerns, but we’re certainly not taking the position that we just know what’s best for Envato authors. This trial is being implemented after thoughtful consideration, data, and direct conversations with our Stock Footage authors. Stock Footage is much like Photos in that authors are very rarely exclusive, and will generally have larger libraries sold across many different marketplaces. Because of this, Stock Footage authors tend to be far less involved in the day to day communities of any one company, and simply do not have the resources or need to read through every rejection letter on each individual submission that doesn’t make it through. We realized that what we’re doing now does not work best for Footage authors, and instead just adds mostly unnecessary delays to review wait times. Instead we’re hoping to redesign our feedback loop to better meet the expectations of this author base.

Here’s a hypothetical scenario that we see pretty frequently. An author submits a library of 1,000 Footage items to 10 different marketplaces, including Envato. This library is likely comprised of different shoots, where most of the clips within any given shoot will be a similar theme or even just slight variations of the other clips from the same shoot. If a shoot contains 10 clips, we may accept 9 but find the camera work in 1 to be shaking or unstable throughout the entire duration. In the grand scheme of things, most of the submissions from that set are accepted and published to the library, and that one variation is not.

Now back across all 1,000 submissions to multiple different sites. Each marketplace has different quality standards, but you’re likely to receive a handful of rejections from that library across each site. Would you spend time reading 75 individual rejection letters from Envato, along with similar numbers of rejections from however many marketplaces you submitted the library to, for issues you can’t easily fix without reshooting? Or would it be a more effective use of your time to know that the other 925 clips were accepted, and go out and shoot more new content?

It’s important to realize that Envato’s ecosystem is comprised of many different content types, and each content type can have very different needs with regards to feedback. A single After Effects Project File could take weeks or months to develop. There isn’t going to be tens of variations on that one file being submitted along side it, and if something is wrong, you can always hop back into the project and make changes. Of course in these situations rejection feedback is much more necessary. This is why the feedback change we’re trialing now is only happening in the Stock Footage category. And I can’t stress enough that this is just a trial. If after the trial, we find that the majority of authors preferred the old method, that’s what we’ll stick with.

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Again a comprehensive explanation, kudos! Regarding talking to authors, there are many examples were Envato talked to authors but not listen. Either the selection process of the sample group to whom they talk is wrong or the talk is just a sand in the eyes.

Sadly all the parts we talked, we analyzed authors wishes etc. has very little to no trust from me and I bet from quite a few authors.

I won’t pretend I understand the process with footage even with your explanation but as I mentioned there are far to many fails and decisions that demolished authors incomes and raised envatos or what ever agenda there was.

Anyways good luck to authors in this niche and to Envato also.

Cheers

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