The rise of video-based social media means that more people are producing video content than at any other time in recorded human history. So, naturally, companies providing royalty-free video clips for use in broadcast video is also popular. Royalty free means you don’t have to pay a royalty every time you use a clip in a production, which is the case for most commercial stock footage. In this increasingly litigious world, it provides welcome peace of mind to know that if you intend to monetize or broadcast your videos, that the footage you include has been pre-cleared for any use you might put it to. The latest offering from Videvo is a surprising hybrid of the usual services, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
Taking Stock
Videvo is a stock-footage video-clip service which provides high-quality clips, in both full HD and 4K, for royalty-free use in video productions. A high proportion of the clips are free, but a subscription is required to access the premium clips. The quality of the clips is very high, and the interface through which you access the clips is very well-designed and clean.
Although the clips are royalty free, meaning you don’t have to pay a royalty every time you use them, most require attribution if you’re a free user. Attribution means you have to credit either Videvo in general or the creator specifically, depending on the license for the individual clip. However, premium users have the need for attribution waived and only see the clip as “royalty free” and not in need of attribution.
Adding Creative Spice
Creators of YouTube channels need clips, even if the videos they make are just blogs with them talking to the camera. Sometimes you need cut-aways, intro sequences, or “outro” footage to have under the end cards. Basically, most people who make video need more content than they personally can generate. And for a gloss of professionalism, nothing quite cuts the mustard like a well-chosen piece of pro stock footage. For less professional applications, even if you only make films for your own enjoyment, stock footage can add spice to your creative work.
In professional filmmaking, stock footage saves time and money. Do you think those established shots of Paris were shot specially for the movie? Nope. Unless the budget is huge, they just shot the “Parisian” office in a studio in Burbank and paid a bundle for a quality stock shot of a Parisian street.
Pros and Cons
Videvo is a hybrid service, unlike almost every other we can think of, in that it has both free and premium clips on offer. You can browse the site and look at and download a bunch of free clips and use them in your videos. Obviously, you have to obey the terms of use and attribute the credit to the creator when you use them, but use is usually free. But they also have a higher tier of clips, those which are available only to subscribers, and these tend to be the higher-quality clips, or presumably the clips that the creators wished to get paid for.
The only downsides to the service we can see is that at the moment there are a limited amount of clips on the site. There are a LOT of clips, over 20,000, so don’t get me wrong, but for some niche search subjects there might only be one to five pages of choices. Some of the bigger premium sites have many more clips. But as downsides go, that’s not a terrible one, as it will take you a LONG time to run out of clips, and the site is adding new clips and creators all the time. It will only get better.
Conclusion
Videvo is on the base level available for free to anyone without signing up. If, however, you want access to the more than 20,000 premium videos on the site, an upgrade to Videvo Plus is just $14.99 per month. For that you get Royalty-Free Licensing for use of the clips in your videos, no adverts, and you can cancel at any time. There is an upper level called Videvo Pro, where for $24.99 per month you get all of the above plus access to more than 100,000 premium audio clips as well, for that extra production gloss. For more details follow the link above, and as usual, if you have any questions and comments about Videvo, or stock footage in general, please leave a message in the comments below.
