All this text without showing us the video? How are we supposed to judge the situation?

Thanks, yeah it looks perfectly stable, so I would assume it's an auto rejection because it gets so dark. I would make it a lot brighter if the RAW material allows for it.

Reviewers do all sorts of mistakes all the time. If you resubmit it it will probably get accepted
With reviewers it is pretty much like flipping a coin, although Fotolia rarely refuses clips for technical reasons, they generally do it for copyright infringement and they are quite good at that.
I like your clip, but it gets indeed very dark, I suppose you did not do any ramping.
From the P5 preview I cannot tell if there is noise in the shadows, but it is likely

I like your clip, but it gets indeed very dark, I suppose you did not do any ramping.
From the P5 preview I cannot tell if there is noise in the shadows, but it is likely

Thanks. Though yea I do admit it gets dark pretty quickly. I doubt there would be much in the way of noise in the shadows because I didn't bump up the brightness in post. I basically left it as is.

And there is your problem...

There is no problem. I deliberately maintained a fixed exposure setting during shooting so that the sunset would transition to darkness, simulating a natural fade out. That's how I film all my time lapse sunsets.

but it does look a little weird to me, and not really useful either.

I think we'll let the buyers decide that.

The thing is that the camera cannot capture a "natural fade out", as we see it. Not without changing the exposure settings. Our eyes and brain adjust for the light, which means that an exposure adjustment as it gets darker will look more natural.

A natural fade out can be accomplished easily by setting the camera to a fixed exposure setting for sunsets. And Ive done just that very thing on previous time lapse sunsets. Obviously, this is not a complete fade out with this particular clip because I didn't allow the camera to shoot long enough for that. Yes, our eyes and brains adjust for light in real world scenarios but with photography, our exposure settings determine how dark or how light a captured scene will look which can be very different to what we saw with our own eyes initially. With the example of a sunset, the light intensity will gradually decrease over time. Hence the 'correct' exposure settings for a sunset at say 6.30pm will result in a darker image when taken several minutes later. And several minutes after that, the next exposed image will be even darker. Eventually, after more time has passed, we'll get a photo that is essentially black if the exposure settings remain unchanged.

However, on a scene like this, where there's a city with lights, it would look really nice WITH ramping, and would probably sell a whole lot more. Any buyer can fade to black if they want to, but they can't raise the exposure much on a compressed h264 file.

Ah the so called 'holy grail' of time lapse shots. I admit those day to night city TL clips look really amazing. Though with this particular clip, rather than a city, what we see is a few lights from a far away little town. And it's not really prominent within the frame. So it wasn't really my intention to do ramping here. My main focus was capturing the natural landscape - eg the silhouette of the headland on the left.

Looks like we discussing two different objectives here!

A camera cannot capture big "natural" light changes with a fixed exposure.

Correct. And it wasn't my intention to do so.

it's also important to consider that a fixed exposure on an environment that changes a lot in terms of light does NOT produce a natural result. It just shows the limitation of a camera. That's why a post-production exposure ramp can produce a more natural result.

In my case, I'm not replicating or reproducing what our eyes would normally see in real life. And it wasn't my intention to do so. I'm intentionally using that camera limitation you spoke of to my advantage - to let the sky go darker. As the underexposure gradually increases, the colour saturation in sunsets really intensifies which is what I really enjoy about this particular approach. Ramping is all good and well but that would produce a completely different result to what I set out to do here.

To sum up: A fixed exposure on a sunset or sunrise does not produce natural results - it will get too dark or light to look natural.

But the whole point of a fade out is to let the scene darken which is what is happening here. Though once again, I admit it's not a complete fade out (I didn't let the camera run long enough.)

That is not how a human present on that location would experience the scene, which is what I would define as "natural".

Yes, a person present at that location would indeed see a very different 'interpretation' of that sunset. Though remember, I'm not replicating what our eyes see. I'm effectively performing a fade out with the help of nature. One way of looking at this is that it's nature that is executing the fade out (aided by the limited dynamic range of the camera.) All I need to do to achieve this is a fixed exposure setting on the camera and nature will take care of the rest.

You can "shoot for yourself" or "shoot for the market."

It can work both ways. There have been videos that Ive shot for myself that have sold on SS. There was also a video that I shot specifically for stock that sold through SS.

You say "we will let the buyer decide" but no you won't -- the reviewer decides what the buyer will see.

And thanks to the reviewers, this video is currently available on two stock agencies (and is also being reviewed on a third.) Actually, it used to be on three stock agencies - when AS previously had the copy with the non-genuine prores codec (which I already stated in my first post.)

Though to be honest, it's not a video that I'm 100% happy with. I'm not bragging about the artistry or integrity of this clip or anything like that. Yea it has it's faults. If a customer finds a use for it and buys it, good for them. If it doesn't sell, I'm not fussed.

Who says I'm not a buyer? Besides, you're the one who's puzzled by the rejection and opened a thread about it.

Ah yes, you could be a buyer. Maybe you are. Different buyers have different needs. What may be suitable for one buyer may be unsuitable for another.

And yes I did open this thread in regards to my puzzlement over this video's rejection (first time it was rejected by an agency.) Also the first time I had a video rejection on AS. To sum up - this particular video has been accepted three times by agencies and rejected one time.

Nothing in the least unusual about that.  I have many hundreds of photos that were rejected on SS that are being sold on other sites.  And others that were accepted by SS but rejected by other sites.

Exactly. That's been my experience too with photos agencies in general - with regards to photos.

It happens.  Just move on to the next media and don't waste time on it.

Agreed.

However, if you do post the video here and ask for feedback on why it was rejected, don't get all defensive about it. 

I don't recall me being defensive. Some have passed judgement on my clip and they are free to express their opinion. I can see their point. I openly admitted previously that there are some flaws with this clip and once again, I'll say that I'm not 100% happy with it. Though there are also some aspects of the video that I like. There's a lot of subjectivity involved. 

If you can't take honest criticism of your work, then you shouldn't post it

If some poor soul couldn't, yea I would agree. Though for me, I have no problem with the criticism. Though I notice some people seem to get upset when I use logic.

As is, you are getting awfully close to being blocked, as I really don't want to waste my time trying to help someone who has no interest in actually listening.

I think this is where some confusion got thrown into the mix. Initially, you suggested the use of post production software when I was discussing a shooting technique that has worked well for me in previous time lapse sunsets. In other words, what I did during shooting was deliberate to obtain a particular effect and post production software wasn't really necessary to alter the effect. After all, it's all done in camera. Though I'm sure that LR Time Lapse is great software regardless and would be a powerful and versatile tool to have. I do admit though that the effect I was going for (the fade out) wasn't overly effective in this particular clip. I'm happy with the beginning but it gets dark way too quickly and it's not a complete fade out also. Woops!

However, there was another sunset time lapse I did a few years ago in which I used the same technique and I showed it to another individual and she really liked it. And she commented that she liked the darkening at the end. To her, it was like it was day turning to night. Though with that video, it remained decently well exposed for a longer time before the darkening / fade out.

For me stock, both still and moving iarea bit like retail one never knows what will get approved and what will get accepted.
Perhaps AS uses software to check images and not a human being.

As I was told a longtime ago, don't worry about an individual image, if your images are being accpted other places. "JUST keep shooting and uploading".

The more we shoot the more we learn about our craft, just a shame the people that have control of our images are not as passionate as us.

David May