What pisses me off about content producers and providers... <rant>
 

I deal with an ass load of content every week. Each week it piles onto the previous week, and at the end of the month, we have an unbelievable portfolio of content to manage here. In dealing with different producers and providers, and doing all I can to make it a little easier to deal with and move the content into a "live" state, I have collected a little list of peves that just get me all fired up...

Why do I care? Because for every extra little thing I have to do once I recieve the content, it takes time away from me doing what I do well. Exclusive providers I think should put more detail into the products to make them "delivable" in a usable state as recieved (IMHO).

This list may not apply to many of you, but for those of you wanting to get more business, this may help you keep people like me happy and return for more business.

1. Please, PLEASE, rotate the damn pictures before you drop them on a DVD or FTP them somewhere. There is nothing worse than having to download, re-orient, then re-upload content before we can dump it into a CMS because half the pics are sideways. If you can't afford a camera with the auto-rotate option, at least take the 5 minutes to check the pictures to make sure they are all in an upright position.

2. Please use some common naming conventions when saving the pictures as a copy! I just recieved a batch of content, 20 sets of pics, that all had to be renamed, and almost every set of pics had to be done using a custom inclusion/exclusion line. Geez, spaces, "&" signs, "()" symbols, CMS's do not like those kinds of things and those of us who process this stuff have to take more time to try to figure out just exactly what you were thinking when you named it something so goofy. If it makes sense to you for your own storage cool, but when sending it to a client, please just use simple file names.

3. Lower case letters, everywhere, if possible. I don't know how many pictures I have seen lately that have .JPG or the first name of the model is capitol. Most of the time all that shit has to be corrected before the content can be used. Many CMS's prefer lowercase file names, especially custom ones.

4. Review the content you actually send to your clients to make sure you don't have 30 of the same basic pose/outfit. About 5 sets I hammered on tonight had around 100 pics each in them. In those 100 pics there were sometimes 20+ pictures of the SAME pose/style/outfit step. I would rather not have a full hundred pictures in the set if I have to waste time and space going in and deleting half the damn pictures...

I could go on, but no one will read down this far anyway I presume. :Oh crap

</rant> - for now anyway...

Speaking of #1... all of the webmaster content for Stroke Jobs 101 is sideways, at least it was last week. You should have somebody rotate it, was kind of annoying rotating and adjusting bad colors.

i feel your pain brother, sometimes things are difficult. How it pans out

Thanks for letting me know, I will get that fixed tonight. We moved servers a few weeks ago and a few things got messed up a little in the mix. i will have it all fixed up by the morning. :)

He likes me, he really really likes me :thumbsup

No doubt man. I wouldn't normally let it compel me to make a thread about it, but I see this stuff over and over and over. Tonight's simple content update took an additional couple of hours just to fix all these little things. I can't tell you how many hours have been wasted over the course of the last few weeks dealing with the same issues...

If just one or two producers/providers reads this and helps the client out a little by considering these things, I will have done my good deed for the day. :thumbsup

I suggest you deal with better content providers. Most of these mistakes are the signs of newbies.

With #1, it could be that if you're getting RAW images they give them straight of the chip. As for buying a better quality camera, they could have one but some prefer the images all the same way.

With #4, this shows you need better shooters. I can shoot a solo girl set of 200 images with no repeat poses. It's easy.

I won't mention names, but some of the shooters are well known and very vocal around here. It's not my place, nor my intention, to out people with this thread, just some general observations that can be taken by producers/providers to help improve service and product in the future.

here is another one

STOP PUTTING FOLDERS IN A ZIP FILE

I like it when I download a zip file and it contains images and that is it...period...maybe a 2257 txt file, but keep everything in the root of the zip file with NO FOLDERS

what's content ?

a lot of the time it means you are dealing with a random employee at some big company that they just assigned that job to, or it is a side job for him...or maybe a different employee every time does it

regardless, the positions in big porn companies change so much that even if you tell 1 person what works well, the next person takes his job the next week and fucks it all up again

Being a big name on GFY does not mean you can shoot content. :winkwink:

I was learned to shoot content working for magazines. People like Crescent insisted on 200 different slides in a set, if you submitted sets with repeat pictures you got your work refused.

But I was recently asked on YNOT radio about shooting custom content and I said one of the biggest problems shooting custom content is getting it done for the price.

Some prices are so tight it requires the shooter to produce 10 sets in a day to meet the price of $1,500 to $2,000. Posing a model for 120 different shots in a set is tiring on her/him and the shooter. So as the set goes on the models and shooters lose interest to produce something special. And the client ends up with work less than perfect.

We refuse this kind of custom work.

Name me a big company shooting custom content. The biggest custom shooters are 1-3 man bands.

Paul, you are constantly just one big fucking ad for yourself aren't you?

when I said content, I was just referring to anyone providing content, not just exclusive content providers...sorry if the common sense angle isn't up your alley

I believe my content is fulfilling your needs ^-^

The thread was about custom shooters, or that's how I read it. Even the non exclusive content providers are mainly small companies.

But then if you deal with people who change employees as often as you make out, then obviously you need to change who you deal with.

But thanks for the compliment about me being an advert for myself.

We can make that #5, I totally forgot about that one. Nothing like a ton of extra clicks in the morning to move shit around after un-zipping it.....lol