Most technical video rejections trace back to five things: a codec the agency does not accept, a frame rate outside its published list, conversion artefacts such as ghosting or combing, a file over the size ceiling for its resolution, or audio that should not be on the clip. The lists differ by agency, so one export can pass on Pond5 and fail on Adobe Stock without anything changing in the footage.
Containers are easy. Codecs are not
Containers are the one place everyone broadly agrees: Shutterstock takes QuickTime .mov or .mp4, Pond5 takes MOV or MP4 and asks you to convert anything else, Motion Array accepts .mov or .mp4 only, and Adobe Stock adds MPG to MOV and MP4. Beyond that the agreement ends.
Shutterstock publishes a list: PhotoJPEG at 75 percent or high quality, Apple ProRes 422, 422 HQ, 422 LT and 4444, H.264 at best quality, MPEG-4 Visual, Apple Animation, and PNG only for footage that needs an alpha channel. H.265 is accepted but explicitly not recommended, because of a known HDR compatibility issue. Adobe Stock takes a shorter line: ProRes or H.264 recommended, with MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Motion JPEG and PNG also accepted.
Pond5 inverts the priority. Its first preference is an unmodified camera-native codec — R3D, AVCHD, ProRes, DNxHD and DNxHR, M2TS, XDCam, MXF, HDV, DV, DVCProHD — then ProRes variants, then Avid-native DNxHD and DNxHR, then H.264 or H.265, then Photo JPEG. It also publishes a refusal list, which is rarer and more useful than an acceptance list: Motion JPEG, AVI and non-native MP4 are not accepted. Note the trap in that pair of sentences — Photo JPEG is in, Motion JPEG is out, and the names are one word apart.
Motion Array prefers ProRes 4444 and 422 for stock video and also accepts H.264, H.265 and Animation, with a requirement the others do not have: the compression has to match the option you selected in the submission drop-down. Choosing the wrong one makes a technically valid file inconsistent with its own declaration. Its metadata and field requirements sit alongside those technical rules.
Footage specs across four agencies
Container, size ceiling, duration, 48 fps support, H.265 status and alpha codec for Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Pond5 and Motion Array, taken from each platform's own contributor documentation. Shutterstock allows 10 GB and Adobe 3900 MB; Pond5 scales by resolution. Adobe does not list 48 fps, and Shutterstock accepts H.265 without recommending it.
Frame rate: the same clip passes and fails
Shutterstock accepts 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 48, 50, 59.94 and 60 fps. Pond5 accepts all of those plus 47.95 and 47.96. Adobe Stock's list is 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60 — no 48. If you shoot 48 and deliver the same master everywhere, that single omission is enough to fail one destination while the others accept it, and the rejection reads as technical rather than as a specification mismatch.
The more damaging frame rate problem is conversion. Shutterstock's quality standards name four specific failures: visible ghosting from an improper frame rate conversion, duplicate or skipped frames caused by conversion, noticeable frame blending, and combing from de-interlaced footage. Its own advice is the simplest fix available — shoot at an accepted frame rate, export at the rate you shot, and do not convert. Pond5 says the same thing from the other end: export at native resolution, aspect ratio and frame rate, then check the exported file before uploading.
Interlacing, combing and the artefacts reviewers name
Shutterstock accepts both interlaced and progressive footage, with one condition: interlacing cannot be distracting within the clip. In practice that means combing — the striped lines where separate fields show as one frame — is tolerated until motion makes it visible, and sideways motion makes it visible fastest. The rejection message is specific: video exhibits fast motion or combing. The other half of the problem comes from fixing it badly. Deinterlacing can leave moving subjects doubled or smeared, and that blurring is its own rejection. Shooting progressive where you can avoids the whole branch.
Shutterstock also names shutter speed as a separate cause: ghosting from too low a shutter speed, and jerky motion from an unsuitable one. No numeric guidance is published for it, which is honest — the right shutter speed depends on the subject, and the test is whether the motion reads as fluid.
Size and duration ceilings differ everywhere
Duration is the one near-constant: five to sixty seconds at Shutterstock, Adobe Stock and Pond5, with Pond5's 360 VR clips a deliberate exception at 45 to 119 seconds. File size is the opposite. Shutterstock allows 10 GB per clip, Adobe Stock caps at 3900 MB, and Pond5 scales the limit to resolution — 3 GB for HD or lower, 5 GB for 4K through 6K, 6 GB for 8K and for R3D packages, and 3 GB for vertical footage regardless of resolution. A single 4 GB master clears Shutterstock, clears Pond5 as 4K, and fails Adobe Stock.
Will this export clear the size ceilings?
Enter a clip's resolution and file size to see which published ceilings it clears. Shutterstock allows 10 GB per clip and Adobe Stock 3900 MB, while Pond5 scales by resolution: 3 GB for HD or lower and for vertical, 5 GB for 4K to 6K, 6 GB for 8K and R3D packages. Motion Array publishes a 1920x1080 minimum but no size ceiling for stock video.
Alpha channels have their own codec rules
Transparency narrows the accepted list sharply, and this is where a general-purpose export preset fails quietly. Shutterstock allows PNG only for footage that requires an alpha channel. Pond5 lists Animation, PNG or ProRes 4444. Motion Array is the strictest and the most explicit: for stock motion graphics, use ProRes 4444 with an embedded alpha channel, or Animation with alpha — and PNG QuickTime and JPG QuickTime are not accepted. If you deliver transparency work to more than one of them, ProRes 4444 is the only codec on all three lists.
Audio fails more clips than people expect
Shutterstock says clips should generally have no audio, accepting it only where it genuinely enhances the clip or the content is editorial. Motion Array does not allow audio on stock video or stock motion graphics at all. Pond5 is the most detailed: remove audio unless it is editorial or essential, keep it only if it is useful to buyers and contains no copyrighted material such as music, and understand that in-camera microphone audio will most likely be rejected because it needs to come from a good microphone at proper levels. Pond5 adds the consequence that catches people out — recognisable voices require a model release, so leaving audio on can turn a technical submission into a paperwork problem.
When to re-export and when to re-shoot
Re-export when the problem sits in the delivery file. A codec outside the accepted list, a container the platform does not take, a clip over the size ceiling, audio that should not be there, transparency in the wrong codec, a compression setting that does not match the declaration — all of these are fixed from the original footage with no new shoot. Go back to the camera master rather than re-encoding the rejected export, because a second encode of an already-compressed file adds artefacts of its own.
Re-shoot when the problem is in the frames. Ghosting from a low shutter speed, jerky motion, soft focus, unstable handheld movement, heavy compression artefacting baked in at capture — none of these come out in an export. A frame rate conversion is the honest middle case: sometimes a clean conform works, often it leaves the blending or duplicated frames that caused the rejection in the first place. If a conversion is what produced the artefact, converting again is not a fix. The platform-specific rejection reasons are worth reading alongside the technical specs, because the wording of a rejection usually tells you which of the two categories you are in.
Filenames and packaging still break batches
Two rules have nothing to do with the picture and stop batches anyway. Pond5 asks you to avoid special characters, accents, quotation marks, commas, spaces and dashes in filenames. Motion Array requires standard Western characters only, refusing Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, accented characters and special symbols in both files and filenames. A library named in your own language will fail on both counts, and the failure is per file, so it scales with the batch.
Packaging matters too. Motion Array takes one clip per submission and refuses packs, compilations and edited sequences; Pond5 likewise asks that clips contain no edits, with edited sequences split into individual clips. Pond5's R3D route is a genuine exception to the one-file rule: a ZIP containing the .r3d plus an identical MOV preview of at least 1920x1080, one clip per ZIP, with an optional .rmd file if the preview is colour graded.
None of this is hard individually. It is hard because four platforms hold four lists and you are delivering one master to all of them, which is also why choosing where to send footage is partly a question of how many spec sheets you are willing to track. Rastock AI writes titles, descriptions and keywords from the file itself and delivers to 10+ agencies over FTP and SFTP with each platform's own rules applied, plus rollback when a batch goes out wrong. You can see what it covers or start the 14-day free trial with no card. No revenue share, no ownership claim, IPTC and CSV export always available.
Frequently asked questions
Why was my video rejected for technical reasons when it plays fine?
Playback is not the test. Agencies check the codec against a published list, the frame rate against another, and the frames themselves for ghosting, duplicated frames, blending and combing. A file that plays smoothly can still carry conversion artefacts, sit outside the accepted frame rates, or exceed the size ceiling for its resolution.
Which codecs do stock agencies accept for footage?
Shutterstock accepts PhotoJPEG at high quality, Apple ProRes 422, 422 HQ, 422 LT and 4444, H.264 at best quality, MPEG-4 Visual, Apple Animation, and PNG for alpha; H.265 is accepted but not recommended. Adobe Stock recommends ProRes or H.264 and also accepts MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MJPEG and PNG. Pond5 prefers camera-native codecs and refuses Motion JPEG, AVI and non-native MP4.
What frame rates are accepted for stock video?
Shutterstock lists 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 48, 50, 59.94 and 60 fps. Pond5 adds 47.95, 47.96 and 48. Adobe Stock lists 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60, with no 48. That gap matters: a 48 fps clip accepted on two of those platforms is outside Adobe's published list.
What is the maximum file size for stock footage?
It varies widely. Shutterstock allows up to 10 GB per clip. Adobe Stock caps submissions at 3900 MB. Pond5 scales the limit to resolution: 3 GB for HD or lower and for vertical, 5 GB for 4K, 5K and 6K, and 6 GB for 8K and for R3D packages. One master export can therefore clear one ceiling and breach another.
Is interlaced footage accepted?
Shutterstock accepts both interlaced and progressive footage, but interlacing cannot be distracting within the clip. Visible striped lines during fast motion produce the rejection message about fast motion or combing. Deinterlacing introduces its own risk, since the conversion can leave moving subjects doubled or smeared.
Should stock clips have audio?
Usually not. Shutterstock says clips should generally have no audio, accepting it only where it enhances the clip or the content is editorial. Pond5 asks you to remove audio unless it is editorial or essential, warns that in-camera microphone audio will most likely be rejected, and notes that recognisable voices require a model release. Motion Array does not allow audio on stock video at all.