The Top 5 for Variety and Depth
Need to add punch to your website? Need a video clip for an email campaign? Need it free? We’ve got the answer. Just do a little searching on these free stock video sites and you’re bound to find what you’re looking for. But be sure to check their Terms and Licensing – small print is still legally binding! Have fun surfing these:
WorldClips.TV
Claiming to be “The largest online video library on earth”, WorldClips.TV free video footage can be used in all types of productions including broadcast. The company was founded 11 years ago and continues to grow. Choose from 5000 broadcast quality QuickTime clips from 50 world locations. Use as much free stock video as you like, all the time. No subscriptions or fees ever.
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in their collections, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities.
Free Stock Footage
With Free Stock Footage, you can add stock footage to your video, website or your Powerpoint presentations. Low resolution versions of video on the site are free to use…however medium and hi-res footage requires payment. This stock footage is great for using in either Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Premier, Media 100, Avid or any non-linear editing system. The preview is a free, non-watermarked download (see terms). The video clips are available for immediate download in multiple resolutions: Streaming Quicktime, MPEG1, Sorenson Quicktime, or (selected) PAL Quicktime.
Movie Tools
Movie Tools number-one source for completely free animated 2D and 3D background animations, lower thirds and more: it’s a great resource for background and graphic video elements. From technical to fantasy, these backgrounds would be great for use under titles, to use in a VJ set or in video reports. Here you can find all the tools for making better online-videos. Just create a user account to download all their free video content – over 50,000 clips.
Wikimedia Videos
Similar to Archive.org, Wikimedia Commons is an online library of open source sounds, videos, photos and other media. Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language. Wikimedia Videos has a large selection of video clips covering a wide range of subject matter.
(Thanks to PremiumBeat.com for the source and inspiration. And to MyFreeDigitalPhotos.com for the photo.)
Do you have experience with free stock video sites to share?
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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:
Ms. Chapman’s new book, The WebPowered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide is now available at Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/MyaQmp and at Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/M5T0KO . Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. She helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com