Here's my latest pet peeve and it goes back to my earlier ones...
1. Photo sizes. Bandwidth isn't as expensive as it used to be and sites obviously have ZIP files and such for photosets, so let's get some better quality images, shall we? A lot of sites tend to put out overly compressed or small images despite using DSLRs, which can produce fantastic RAW files to use for later image refinement. Point in case, TeenFidelity/PornFidelity uses pretty good DSLRs to shoot their pictures and occasionally, they use point and shoot cameras as well. These cameras will produce fairly high-resolution photos but with minimal compression and even more so when shooting RAW instead of JPEG. They take those images, reduce them to 1/4th or 1/5th the resolution (just throwing out a number here based on the full resolution and file size of a typical DSLR) and then put them up for download. On paper, it's a great way to save space but for your customers, it's a bit of slap in the face, particularly when they have large monitors with high-resolution or a high-res tablet screen, as many do these days. The ideal workflow is something like this: Shoot RAW, tweak image and add watermark/logo, then save to JPEG with proper JPEG compression settings. Using the proper software and settings, it's easy to make a 20 MB JPEG file into a 1 MB file or a 4MB JPEG into a 560kb one with no loss in visual quality or reduction in resolution, yet nobody is doing this in the adult entertainment industry, despite it being standard practice in website design outside of the adult entertainment industry. There are various programs one can use, ranging from commercial software to free open-source programs. So OCSMs, take a look at your sites and ask yourself "Can I give my customers more by doing this?". If any of you want to know more about this, feel free to ask me, and I will point you in the right direction for your particular setup. After all, helping you helps me and in today's world, we all should try to help one another. Or some shit like that. Yeah.
2. Ultra HD/4K Videos. I've said it on other threads. If you're going to shoot these high-rez vids, please do it properly. It seems like all the sites are shooting on the new Sony 4K cameras and they are doing it wrong. These cameras shoot two high resolutions: 4K DCI (Digital Cinema) and QFHD/UltraHD. The difference between those two is simply a matter of pixels and aspect ratio. UltraHD (3840 x 2160) is 16:9, which is the standard aspect ratio for TVs, PC monitors, and laptop screens. 4K DCI (4096 x 2160) is 21:9 and is not used in electronics apart from a handful of monitors that are used in business applications and a very small number of ultra-high-end TVs which are not what your customers will be using, so it is not to be used for shooting site content unless you need room to crop/pan & scan. So if you are going to be shooting 4K, please set the camera to shoot QFHD (3840 x 2160) at 60FPS, because that is the format that your customers require. To call out TeenFidelty/PornFidelty again, they are not doing it right and the downsized 1080p-ish vids they are putting out are not supported by media players and graphics cards. Brazzers and it's sites are also doing the same. So is Tiny4K.
