Stock footage and how to use it.

If you need footage for your videos and you are low on time or funds, you can use these things called stock footage. Stocks are free media that you can use for any project you are working on from videos to images. However a thing to note is that even though it’s free that doesn’t mean you can just do anything you want with it. What everyone should know about anything involving creative media is something called a creative commons licence.

What is a Creative Commons license?

I’ve talked about fair use in the past, but now we’re going to talk about it for when it comes to stock media. According to creativecommons.org The “CC” license forges a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” that the copyright laws create, but of course you should give credit to the original creators and provide details of any changes made.

Stock media sites

Lets talk about the sites you can find them on.

• Pexels.com is a site which can provide free images and footage. If you are familiar with the site unsplash.com, then it should seem familiar.
• Pixbay.com is another site that offers free footage and images, and it also offers free vectors.
• Mixit.co is yet another site you can use for stock footage and images.
• Dareful.com is another site that can provide “some” free 4K resolution stocks, but not all are free. You must also provide credit to the creator and a link to the license and also indicate if any changes were made to the creators footage.
• Videvo.net is one more site we will talk about. This site offers some free footage and it can also provide details on the kind of licenses that come with each footage.

Once again some stocks are free, but other footage must be either paid for or require a subscription. Sometimes you can even donate to some of these creators to show appreciation.

That’s most of what you should know for when it comes to using stock footage and how it’s really supposed to be used. It’s best to use your own footage of course, but if you need it these are few of the best places to get some. Now once again get out there and get to creating.