PDClips.com – Public Domain and Royalty-Free Clips.

The Prelinger Archive

One of my favorite sites for retro film footage is the Prelinger archive. The Prelinger Archive is a subset of the Internet Archive. Prelinger Archives was founded in 1983 by Rick Prelinger in New York City. It is a collection of over 60,000 “ephemeral” (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. A portion of these are available online. The Prelinger archive has it’s own terms of use and all films are listed as “public domain” under the Creative Commons license. The site notes that while the films themselves are public domain, all elements of the films may not be.

There is a little of everything here and most of the films are from the 1920s through the 1960s. If you need atmosphere shots from this period of time this is the place to look because it is easy to find shots of people, streets, cars and trucks, trains and planes, representative of these years. There are lots of industrials and business films produced by the Jam Handy organization, educational films by Coronet, government films, newsreels, commercials and even a section of home movies.

The library is very well indexed and most of the films are available in a variety of download formats.

Every video producer should spend an afternoon browsing this library and making notes of potential footage that would be useful on upcoming projects and that would serve your client base.

https://archive.org/details/prelinger

Finding Clips on U.S. Government Sites

The U.S. Government is a huge resource for media clips of all types. Almost all materials produced by the federal government are in the public domain. The only major exception would be a small number of films produced for the government by outside producers. Also, be aware that any persons depicted in films or images probably have privacy rights and thus using those to promote products or services or in a derogatory way is likely prohibited. Also the logos of various agencies are protected by trademark and may not be used in a way that would imply endorsement or involvement of the agency in your production. Make sure you check these permissions on the website that has the clips you wish to use. Many agencies are trying to provide better access to online clips, and the locations often change. I compiled a list of links to media clips available online from the government several years ago and most of those links are no longer valid since many of the online archives are in a state of flux, so it is good … Continue reading →

NASA Sound Effects Clips

NASA has assembled a collection of sound effects clips from the space age that are suitable for production use or for ringtones on your cellphone. The .MP3 versions can be used in any audio or video editing software or as a ringtone in Android phones. The .M4R versions must be imported through iTunes and are for ringtones on your iPhone. The collection is available at http://www.nasa.gov/connect/sounds/index.html There are sounds, voice announcements and communications between the spacecraft and mission control. There are sounds from many historic missions, including Mercury, Apollo, the Shuttle and the space station. There are also the electronic sounds recorded in space from various scientific satellites, and the sounds of Sputnik, earth’s first artificial satellite.

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Read the License Agreement!

We link to a variety of sites. Some of them offer totally public domain media with no restrictions, but others have some restrictions that are spelled out in the License Agreement or Terms of Use on the site. It is your responsibility to read, understand and abide by these terms. If you don’t understand the terms, send an email or place a call to the contact provided on the site to make sure you will be in compliance. Before you use any media clip, make sure that you are able to comply with the terms of usage and provide the appropriate attribution that might be required. And as we have said before, even if the clip is in the public domain, make sure that all elements are free of copyright, such as music. Also be aware of any trademark issues and the privacy rights of people shown in the video or photo.

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Public Domain Media

Just what is Public Domain media? Public Domain media is video clips, photographs, music, sound effects, graphics and other media on which there are no copyright restrictions. This media is available to use, free of copyright restriction by anyone, for any purpose. But, please realize that restrictions on use may exist in the form of trademark protection and the privacy right of anyone pictured in the video and photographic clips. Also, remember that while a musical recording my be free of copyright restrictions, the words and music my still be protected by a separate copyright. Media can fall into the public domain in several ways. Almost all media published prior to 1923, is in the public domain, although trademark protection may apply in certain cases and privacy rights may be in effect if persons in the video or photograph are still living.

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