Finding high-quality video clips that you can use for free is a challenge. After all, "You get what you pay for" is a cliche for a reason. That said, within the Creative Commons world, there are some sites striving to provide awesome free content, even for use in commercial projects.
1. Stampede.it
Stampede.it has both video and audio assets that you can use for both personal and commercial projects for free, and they don't require attribution at all. The selection is somewhat small but is extremely high quality.
You can download video and audio reflecting all sorts of indoor and outdoor situations. This includes at a coffee shop, in an office setting, by the beach, in a forest, and many more. Some of the sets have bundled video and audio, while others are just video files that you can use with your own audio tracks.
2. Pexels
Pexels also has a decent collection of videos available under Creative Commons licenses that don't require attribution and can be used for personal or commercial projects. You can search for videos using keywords or browse the most popular videos.
Most clips range in length from 10 seconds to just over a minute. You'll find a lot of outdoor footage, whether in city streets or in nature. You'll also find indoor activities, including mixing cocktails, writing notes, and more.
3. YouTube
You can actually find Creative Commons video on the world's biggest video sharing site. To search for creative commons content, just perform a search of what you want to find, and on the search results page click Filters > Creative Commons. You're probably going to have to sift through a lot of content to find the good stuff, since this is not curated in any way.
We cannot emphasize enough that you need to ensure that the uploader truly does own the rights to the content since there is a lot of content wrongfully uploaded to YouTube under the Creative Commons license.
Also be sure to pay attention to the type of Creative Commons license listed on each video to ensure you can use the content in a commercial video.
You can also go to the YouTube Editor and search for Creative Commons videos, which you can then remix and adapt right there on YouTube. The robust online editing experience YouTube provides makes it easy to take those creative commons clips and make them your own.
4. Vimeo
Vimeo also has over 1 million Creative Commons videos that you can use in your personal projects. Vimeo makes it easy to download the videos directly from the website, but, as with YouTube, it's worth ensuring that the uploader does actually own the rights to the video.
We’ve linked to Vimeo’s Creative Commons offerings above, but you can also easily find this category from your own Vimeo profile.
Hover your cursor over Features on the banner menu across the top of the page and select License Stock Footage. With a basic account, you can browse free stock footage, but you can also upgrade your Vimeo subscription package to access more stock footage content.
5. Artgrid.io
Artgrid is another source for free-to-use stock footage. There is a basic free membership tier, as well as paid subscriptions with access to different types and qualities of video. Artgrid is a powerful service in itself, but the platform has a sister company, Artlist, that is specifically for music and sound effects.
While the subscription prices can add up, being members of both means you have access to a one-stop media shop.
Even without a membership to either site, you can access blogs and helpful resources to learn more about media licensing, sourcing, production, and attribution.
What Will You Create With This Royalty-Free Video?
There’s a lot to be said for using in-house footage for your projects. However, when you need to borrow some content to switch things up, it’s good to know where to find royalty-free stock footage that you can legally use. Hopefully this article has given you a few new ideas on where to look next.