Artbeats

When I received the Artbeats presentation box, I thought it contained a DVD disc with a booklet ready to go and use. The box looked like it could go on a shelf in a computer store, nicely made with the logo “Artbeats” and “Footage you can Use” printed on it. The only thing inside however was a letter on a 8X10 piece of paper addressed to any Indy Media Artists Member. The member eventually turned out to be me.
In the letter, it gave instructions and congratulated me that I had won $500 worth of clips and collections of royalty-free stock footage. Because I received this package with a typed letter addressed to the Indy Media Artists, I do not know if my experience is one of a kind or the usual service given to all of its customers. So I will assume that the experiences I’ve had with this product is one that everyone gets as a customer.
I am sure the company Artbeats assumes all of its customer have internet abilities because what it offers can only be obtained by using its website. What Artbeats misses is that the large download files can be tricky to download if a fast internet connection is not available to the user. Because of this a DVD should automatically be sent to the user after the selected videos are purchased. If the user selects the download feature only and does not download until later they might have trouble with the download and would then have to have it sent anyway, resulting in time lost. In other words Artbeats should not give the user the option to download or send the CD/DVD. Just send the CD/DVD and give the user the added option to download.
I had never thought of using stock footage. Though, after looking at the types of clips available I found some that I didn’t even know I needed. The added fact that I could select up to $500 worth of video clips at no cost to myself made me think of a lot of uses. The video collections of lightning strikes making slo motion streaks in the night air to a woman giving birth to her baby had me spending literally hours looking for different types of video. But because the price of the videos ranged from to $99 to $299 apiece for the broadcast quality type, I had to chose wisely. A better deal Artbeats has is the marketing of collections which are groups of similar videos. Buying a collection allows you to get more video for your money.
I finally selected the videos I wanted and contacted a staff member at Artbeats via email and placed my order. The download site location was emailed back to me and in no time at all I was trying to download my selections. It took me several hours though to download the first four videos. A server time out error constantly made me restart my download manager to upload the videos.
Though not in their policy, Artbeats granted me authorization to download a free video (they are our sponsor). With Artbeats, any three videos ordered are entitled to an additional free one. But as an added bonus, Artbeats threw in yet another video. However, this video would not download properly. I use a download manager on my mac pro, so I had to constantly stop and restart the file to keep the file downloading at a pace that would not take me all night. Again, this is why a cd/dvd should be standard with each order.
I would also liked to have seen what the cd/dvd looked like that would have been sent when the customer orders a file on cd/dvd media. A class act would have the media printed with a company logo and the video file names on the disc at the very least. I couldn’t get them to send me a cd/dvd even though I requested it with the reason of having download issues. I was instead directed to the IT guy who basically asked me how I was downloading the file. The gist of the solution by the IT person was that the problem was on my end.
Navigation on the Artbeats website is easy. Pick a category and hover over a clip will get you a thumbnail view of the file you might want. Each clip in the Artbeats library has a duration of a few seconds to about a minute. Therefore the file size ranges from less than a hundred megabits to over 500 megabits. This makes for a long download time on a healthy internet connection. Without a download manager to pick where the file stopped means lots of headaches for internet users with common download connections. The Artbeats IT person says a “A 4 mb/s connection should be fast enough to download our clips but I'm not certain why that is not the speed you are getting.”
Comparing this company with others that have royalty free videos comes down to several factors. Among the top is the price and Artbeats ain’t cheap. In fact, I found a file similar to the one I had downloaded from Artbeats for just $30 on a competitors site. I must admit, though, Artbeats carries some interesting video files that are worth looking at. So shop around and remember sometimes it’s the quality of service that also counts.
My ratings for the company:

Marketing and Presentation: A
Service: C+
Price: C
Inventory: B