What To Remember When Sourcing Stock Footage?

By Author: Erik Jonason
Total Articles: 34
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When you intend to use your footage for commercial purposes, make sure your clip is accompanied by a Model Release, a document signed by a person recognized in that clip to give the buyer right of usage. Read on to know more.

Do you know that stock footage can save your time during video production and better still, enable you to produce a high quality video? When purchasing a stock footage, you can choose your device according to the right video content you want to produce.

You may consider purchasing the royalty free stock footage for your usage so that you are not restricted to the project number you can produce and the release location for a one-time licensing fee. On the delivery format, you may choose between standard definition such as NTSC or PAL, High Definition such as HD 1080P or HD 720P and finally on the multimedia choose either 320 by 240 or 640 by 480. You choose these formats depending on the type of destination or the resolution package you will want. You are advised to go for high definition progressive format (HD 1080P or HD 720P) if you are not sure on the playback format to choose for quality ...
... video.

You should make sure that you purchase a video stock footage form a higher resolution source so that you produce good video. Don't go for the NTSC clip that is converted to PAL and vice versa because you will not get the quality you want. As for the compression, choose the format that will employ good compression techniques to ensure that your video files are of manageable size. You are advised to go for the Quicktime Photo JPEG compression codec because it is fast and has become a standard for delivering digitals. It can compress your file from 75% to 90% hence give your video best quality without losses and keep your file to the manageable size.

Some other factors you will have to consider when buying your stock footage are The Alpha Matte and The Model Release. Alpha matte is a black and white image used in isolating sections of your video frame in the composition software to replace its background. This consideration is good when purchasing a clip for the elements in the foreground only. This technique is available in 3D animated footages and Chroma Key Video. When you intend to use your clip for commercial purposes, make sure your clip is accompanied by a Model Release, a document signed by a person recognized in that clip to give the buyer right of usage.

You must also consider Property Release, when you are producing a clip for commercial purposes with a stock footage that has recognisable property. Your clip should be accompanied by the property release from the property owner. You are also advised to consider your File Size and Broadband when purchasing stock footage. You should have an extra bandwidth to download the footage and a broadband internet connection to download. The size of your footage should be checked against the internet speed you have. High definition footage needs hundreds of megabytes to download but you can buy them online and be shipped to you by the provider though at an extra cost.

At the top of it, make sure you get royalty free HD footage from a reputable library.

Author of this article is currently associated with MrFootage that offers a humongous collection of stock footage on subjects such as sports, nature and landscape, history, war and disaster, bloopers, celebrities, space and technology and many more.