Three Good Places to Find Public Domain Video Clips

Last week I answered an email from a reader who was trying to help one of her colleagues with a classroom video project. They wanted to know if it was possible to download YouTube videos or to make a screencast of a YouTube video to then use in another video. My response was to point out that the first option, downloading from YouTube with a 3rd party service is a violation of YouTube’s terms of service (section 5) unless there is a download link provided by YouTube. Making a screencast of a YouTube video is also a violation of the terms of service as well as being a likely copyright infringement.

So rather than breaking YouTube’s TOS or getting frustrated by the lack of public domain video on YouTube, try one of the following three places to find public domain video clips to use in your classroom projects.

The Internet Archive’s Moving Image Archive is an index of more than 1.7 million video clips. Most of what you will find in the Moving Image Archive can be downloaded in a variety of file formats. You can search the archive by keyword or browse through the many categories and thematic collections in the archive. One important thing to note about the Internet Archive is that depending upon the age of your students, you won’t want them to search it without supervision. In fact, I recommend just creating a folder of footage from the Internet Archive that you then share with students. (Update 3/12/2018 – Watch this video for an explanation of creating a footage folder from the Internet Archive).

The Public Domain Review is a website that features collections of images, books, essays, audio recordings, and films that are in the public domain. Choose any of the collections to search for materials according to date, style, genre, and rights. Directions for downloading and saving media is included along with each collection of media.

Flickr is known for hosting images, but it also hosts video clips. Use the advanced search functions in Flickr to find video clips that have been released into the public domain and to find videos that have a Creative Commons license attached to them. Watch the following video to see how to find public domain videos on Flickr.

If you’re interested in learning more about making videos in your classroom, join me on Thursday for a live webinar titled 5 Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom.

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7. Three Places to Find Public Domain Video Clips

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