If you are doing online marketing, filmmaking, making YouTube, or simply making videos for study, entertainment … you may need stock footage (also called stock video, or stock video footage).
This article will define what stock footage is and suggest 8 free stock footage download websites for you so that you can edit videos freely without worrying about copyright.
What is stock footage?
Stock footage, often called stock video, is a video clip, shot, or animation, used directly, inserted or used as a background video for another video.
Stock footage is also called a stock video
Stock footage has many topics, from wildlife scenes to a certain routine of people. There are also videos of abstract style or a specific object such as brand, product … It can be said that videos in any field can use stock footage.
What are the benefits of stock footage?
Save time, money
Whether making films, making videos posted to YouTube or editing videos to promote businesses, to make video marketing, stock footage is guaranteed to be a useful resource in saving time and money.
Stock footage is often taken by filmmakers who do not have much time and money to develop special scenes such as majestic mountains, scenes of individual rare animals, historical footage or scenes of space, spacecraft, etc.
You do not need to spend hours shooting videos, brainstorming animations, motion graphics, spending money to travel to countries with beautiful landscapes or finding ways to turn back the time to create scenes in the past. For all the things mentioned above, you can replace it with stock footage.
In addition, stock footage is often as good as HD video, even with 4k. When you do not have the equipment to create such quality, this is indeed a significant savings.
You can create impressive finished product even though you are not professional
If you are not familiar with video editing, animation, filming … 99% of stock footage is for you. As mentioned, the resolution of stock footage is usually good. Not to mention, most of the people who make them have expertise in this area. This proves that the videos also ensure quality in terms of content, angle, color, layout.
Using those stock footage, even if you are an amateur can make impressive videos.
Available websites for downloading free stock footage
Like the 100% free, high-quality photo download websites that do not need to leave a source, you can use the stock footage downloads from the websites that featured in this article.
The stock footage introduced below has a CC0, or similar license. It means you are allowed to download, freely edit, for personal or commercial use at your sole discretion, without permission or leave the source and author’s name – for all videos.
Some websites will offer paid videos. However, those videos are easy to identify so that you do not pick them wrong. The rest are free videos, guaranteed to be free to use.
Pixabay – stock footage
Pixabay is a website that offers many popular free stock videos
Pixabay is one of the most popular websites for high quality free photo downloads. Besides images, Pixabay also download sharp high-quality stock videos.
Videos are posted by the Pixabay user community and most of them are less than 1 minute in length. When searching for videos, the first videos that appeared with a light red background behind were paid videos from Shutterstock. The video works similar to ads on Google, to help Pixabay have funds to maintain the website as well as provide an advanced choice for users. You should pay attention to this point to not download the wrong videos for free.
When downloading videos at Pixabay, you can choose to download them in MP4 format with various resolutions. The site provides 20 video categories for easy selection. If you need to use it on your phone, you can also find and download Pixabay’s phone apps on Google Play and Apple’s App Store.
Pexels
Pexels offers free stock footage full HD
Like Pixabay, Pexels is a high-quality photo and video download site that is used by many people. Pexels video search results also include paid videos from Shutterstock. But unlike other websites, they are placed at the bottom of the page so that users will not click wrong.
The video here is only MP4 Full HD format, no 4K. If your needs only stop at full HD, Pexels is a good choice for you.
Ignite Motion
Ignite Motion specializes in loading motion backgrounds
For downloading with 2 MOV formats (used in Quicktime) and MP4, Ignite Motion specializes in providing high quality motion / motion backgrounds / background videos.
The Ignite Motion website categorizes videos from specific things, such as objects, people, cities, to things that are hard to imagine and abstract such as energy, light, and speed. Here, you can also find basic After Effects tutorials in English videos in the Blog section of the site.
SplitShire – stock footage
SplitShire provides outdoor scene videos
This is also a site providing photos and videos. All videos on SplitShire were filmed by website designer Daniel Nanescu. The videos on this site are more unique than others because they are created by the same person.
The videos are mostly outdoor scenes. To download, you need to click on the title below each video to go to the video’s details page. There, you can click on a rectangular black border frame rounded 4 corners with the word “Download” inside to download.
The file downloaded from SplitShire has been compressed in ZIP format. You need to extract to get your desired MP4 video.
Life of Vids
Life of Vids does not have many stock footages. It is updated every week.
The stock footages at Life of Vids are not much, but they are in very good quality. You can use the videos here to edit, cut, combine but don’t repost the original video on other sites as the video owner.
The stock videos are updated weekly at Life of Vids. To download videos here, you need to click some Vimeo logos in the bottom right corner of each video. After clicking to open a new page, you will see a “Download” button at that page. Just click the button and you can download MP4 videos of any resolution, from 360p to 4K.
CuteStockFootage
CuteStockFootage for downloading stock footage, SFX, VFX
Not only videos, CuteStockFootage also provides SFX (Special Effect; Sound Effect).
The videos at CuteStockFootage website are clearly classified and easy to understand. Below the site there are videos in a gray background are all paid videos (cost to use). You need to be aware of this to avoid mistakenly browsing unwanted videos.
Videos downloaded from the web have also been compressed into Zip files like SplitShire. You need to decompress to use the internal video in MP4 format.
Coverr
Coverr specializes in providing background videos (video background)
Coverr is a website that mainly provides stock footage for background videos. Here, you cannot search but can only browse through the categories available. However, the site’s developer promises to have a search function later.
Every Monday, Coverr will have seven new videos posted. You can sign up to receive new videos by email so you do not miss out on these beautiful videos.
When downloading, you will receive a ZIP file. You need to extract to be able to use the videos. The videos here come in 3 formats: MP4, OGV and WEBM.
Distill – stock footage
Distill is in beta stage (experimental)
Every 10 days, Distill (still in beta – trial phase) will post up to 10 free HD videos. Like Coverr, you can sign up to receive videos via email.
The videos at Distill are user-uploaded. When you hover over a video, you can preview the video, click on the heart to “like” (like “like” on Facebook), quickly download or view the profile of the poster.
The videos here are quite few but there are many topics to choose from. All downloaded videos are in MP4 format.
Conclusion
No matter what field you are working in, for what purpose, stock video footage is useful for you. By using stock videos, you will not have to spend time shooting videos, creating your own animations, or leaving your home to find the right context. Using stock footage is a simple yet effective way to create engaging video clips, engaging presentations as well as impressive video footage.