iStockphoto - Stock Video Training Manual

5.0 - Metadata

The success of your portfolio depends on you and your keywording skills. iStock uses the following standards in metadata inspection:

Title

10 words or less describing the clip's subject or theme.

a) Example of what to submit:
"Five Pencils"
Don't lead File Titles with: A1, A, AAA, 1A, etc.

b) Example of what NOT to submit:
"A Five Pencils" or "1 Five Red Pencils"

Manipulating your uploads to appear first in search results by starting every clip with "A Five Pencils" or "1 Five Red Pencils" is not allowed. Titles should accurately reflect the clip or subject. Periodic reviews of member accounts occur regularly.

Description

Please provide us with a good description of the clip — this information may help us decide if we can approve your clip. Provide a verbal description of the clip's subject, location, special circumstances, or any other interesting or valuable information regarding the clip. Description should not include models' names or ethnicity, trade names or copyrighted material/names.

Originating camera: Include in your description the name of the camera that produced the clip. If possible, include the camera settings, such as tape speed, recording format, aperture setting, shutter speed (normally 1/60). This information may be helpful in troubleshooting.

Keywords

How well you keyword a clip determines how often the search engine displays it while a client searches. The trick is to appear in relevant searches; getting in front of the buyer determines the success of a clip. But accuracy is essential - bloating up your keywords to squeeze into searches where you don't belong may irritate members who want to find something specific. With over 1,000,000 members searching every day, someone wants to find your clip. Here's how to help them:

What is it?: Describe the subject of your clip. You have 50 words to describe all the pertinent details, and the more specific you are, the more likely your clip is to be found by the right searches. What is it? Is it a forklift, in a warehouse, moving crates? Two red tulips, close up, beaded with water? A young, energetic, African-American woman, in a business suit, talking on a cell phone, against a white background? Then be sure to tell the search engine the correct information.

Describe Everything: Be Specific: Be very specific about the subject. For clips of people, include physical characteristics, ages, ethnicity, emotion, and mood. Is the woman grumpy? Is the police officer overweight, or even obese? Is the model effeminate?

Use a few of your keywords for everything happening in your clip; each of the primary subjects, the background and the action. Your clip is like a sentence; be sure to include each of the nouns (the people, places and things in the clip) and each of the verbs (what they're doing) as well as the situation. Imagine you are a newspaper journalist, asking questions about the scene, and answer, who, what, when, where and why.

The keywords for this clip are: adult attractive beautiful beauty black catchy chick emotion eye fashion fashionable fashioned female feminine gaze gentle girl gorgeous hair haircut hairstyle head hot isabel lady look lovely lusty model natural nice perfect piercing portrait pretty pure seductive sexy stare stunning style teen teenage teenager tempting thinking white woman women young

The keywords anticipate every angle that someone might describe this character from. We know exactly who she is and what she's doing. People with this scene in mind will find this clip, because of the keywords.

Of course, there is a law of diminishing returns. Relevancy is the key. Learn to avoid the unnecessary and you won't run into trouble with keyword clutter. Here's a good example of knowing what to include, and what to leave out:

The artist could have included keywords like cloud, insect, hand, foot... these things are in the clip, but none of them are key elements or as relevant as the subject and what he's doing. Sky, jumping, meadow, businessman, umbrella — those are the important ones. Avoid the temptation to run off at the mouth.

Be General: No one thinks alike, and no one visualizes in the same terms. Exact details are great, but without general terms, overly specific words can keep your clip away from less detailed searches. Someone may search for "fried eggs sunny side up", but are just as likely to search for "breakfast", or even "meal". Include them all. Start with your specific description, and then expand to something more general. And know when to stop.

Synonyms: There are no hard and fast rules for adding synonyms to your keywords. On one hand, you want to broaden the possible range of searches that will find your clip. On the other hand, you need to remain specific enough that the description is accurate. Padding out your 50 available words with every entry in the thesaurus may bring you more results, but increases your chances of being irrelevant to many of them.

Include a few synonyms for each of the most important parts of the clip. Be creative but realistic.
Try to imagine all the different words a person might use to describe the same thing. For example: bait, equipment, fishhook, fishing, hook, lure.

What does it mean?: Often people search for words that don't correspond to specific things. They want to illustrate a concept and need an clip that says it perfectly. Describe the emotion, feeling, or idea represented in an clip.

Keywords: escape, exotic, paradise, relaxation, sexy, thirst, tropical

Conceptual keywords are the most likely to stray from relevancy. Decide which theme or concept is best expressed in the clip, and pick the best words to describe it. The clips above all use just the right variety of words on a single theme. Too many can lose focus, too few will remain obscure. It's a fine art, but easy to master.

How Was It Done?: Moving pictures direct the motion of the eye. Because of this, members may want to filter the search for camera setups such as pan and zoom. Include these words if they apply:

WS (wide shot)
M.S. (medium shot)
CU (close up)
LR Pan (left to right pan)
RL Pan (you guessed it)
zoom (in or out)
dolly
locked down (no camera movement)
handheld
motion effect (slow or fast motion)
composite (more than one video source in the picture)

Be sure to use a few words to describe particular technical or compositional aspects of the clip. Members often use modifiers to find particular kinds of clips: close-ups, black and white, isolations. Include techniques (open arperture, cross-processed, high-key, 8mm) and style (lifestyle, panorama, crowd, candid, abstract).

Phrases: A search for "disco" returns 577 results. A search for "crazy disco leopard pimp" gets just 1. If your clip fits that description, but you stopped after just "disco", then you won't be found.