12 Top Video Footage Sites for E-learning Designers

Videos add great value to learning, reducing the load of reading and helping the learner retain information for a longer period. Video footage can be added in a course for a “wow” effect (e.g. the footage used to illustrate a technique). Videos help the learners to connect with your course and complete it. Adding videos to your online course boosts learner engagement that keeps your learner hooked, helping you create a memorable, enjoyable and exciting e-learning experience.

But, how easy or how difficult is it for you as an e-learning designer to create videos for online courses?

In this post, I would like to share a comprehensive list of websites that offer quality video footage that e-learning designers can add to their bookmarks. These websites go a long way in making the lives of e-learning designers easy and help them produce better online courses, faster.

1. Videvo: This website offers 100% free HD stock footage and motion graphics, which can be downloaded and used in any project. You can find video clips arranged in a number of categories. You can also upload your own clips to the Videvo library. 
2. Videezy: This is a community where videographers from around the world share HD quality video footage. You can find free HD stock videos, b-rolls, and backgrounds here. Remember that each clip has its own licensing terms.
3. Shutterstock: You can find more than 5,270,298 of the best royalty-free stock videos here. It’s important to note that the price depends on the resolution. 
4. Getty Images: You can download premium stock footage, from archival films to contemporary 4K and HD footage from this site. You can also find editorial videos, as well as standard videos and music.
5. iStock: It is a branch of Getty Images where you can find HD video clips, B-rolls and stock footage from their collection of curated video clips. 
6. VideoBlocks: This website is a members-only site that offers royalty-free stock footage, motion backgrounds, after effects templates, and more.
7. Pond5: This website has the world’s largest collection of royalty-free stock video footage. Here, you can find more than 5 million clips, whatever you need for your project. 
8. Vidsplay: This website adds new video footage on a weekly basis. You can find stock footage that can be used for both personal and commercial projects for free! But, it’s important to note that you do need to credit the source with a link. 
9. Pexels: This website offers completely free videos and all their videos are provided under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, which means that you can edit or change the video. All the videos you find here are free to be used for any purpose including commercial purpose. Videos are arranged into a wide range of categories such as food, people, industry, nature, time-lapse footage and more. 
10. Distill: This website offers a collection of numerous curated HD videos free that can be used for both personal and commercial purpose. The site posts about 10 HD videos every 10 days and the best thing is that you can subscribe to get them right into your inbox and at no cost. You can find videos arranged in categories such as videos of nature, city, food, people, architecture, technology and more. 
11. Mazwai: You can find a wide collection of HD footages and clips here that can be used for free in your commercial projects with a condition that you attribute according to the creative commons license (CC 3.0). You can do everything with the video – transform, adapt, cut, or share – as long as you DO NOT forget to credit the original author in some way. There is no subscription and NO download limitation. 
12. Free HD Footage: Here, you can search for unique HD video footage and use for free. This website’s popular categories includes transportation, nature, cities and urban, buildings, and more. 

As you’ve seen, you don’t have to be a videographer to create first-rate e-learning videos for a wow factor in your courses, these tools do it all.