Video Creator’s 15 Best Free Online Essentials
If you’re a video content creator looking for ways to enhance and streamline your output processes, then you’re going to want to take a look at these fresh (a few classics), innovative, and free options. These online tools will go a long way in helping you to focus more on your creative content and vision rather than on the technical side of operations. Some of those resources listed here are similar in what they offer – I maintain that you will want to bookmark them all since it’s helpful to have plenty of options.
There are a lot of elements that go in to creating great video content. If you’ve got the idea, the personality to share what you’re passionate about, the knowledge, and the ability to work with the information and tools you need to compile and present structured material to the masses, then you’re still only halfway there.
You’re looking at capturing the idea on screen and editing the material. Perhaps you need to add in relevant and attention focusing components such as illustrations, annotations, animations, sound bites and background music, etc. And then there’s the marketing – getting seen, shared, and followed.
It’s as helpful as it is important to have access to the most modern, user-friendly, and time saving resources and applications available at any given time to assist with productivity and engagement. Creative expression can’t wait and neither can your followers. So, on that note, here are the best Free essentials available online right now to help streamline your video production tasks.
This can be a helpful tool for the engagement side of a creator’s social presence. With Vibby, you can create a highlight reel from any video without any technical knowledge or editing experience. The highlight reel can then be shared on social media or embedded into a blog or website. It’s a really straightforward and uncluttered concept that I think can be useful in a number of ways.
The Vibby project makes it easier for viewers to share portions of video without infringing on the creative rights of the original publisher by ensuring attribution within the shared piece.
“We give publishers and viewers what they have always wanted: Publishers get better distribution, engagement, analytics, and revenue, while viewers get a seamless way to share the best moments of video with friends and followers.”
Vibby works by way of a web platform. Just visit the site and create a free account. You can start creating highlight videos right away.
Hashcut is very similar to Vibby in that it allows you to clip highlights of videos for sharing and points clips back to the source video. This can be quite useful for generating more views and for encouraging fan engagement.
Hashcut provides some extra features such as the ability to create mash-ups of clips and to add stickers and annotations. With Hashcut you can clip, merge, and annotate your favorite video moments to share in one engaging piece. Hashcut works with YouTube and integrates with Discord, Twitter, and Facebook.
All you need is a free account and a browser to use Hashcut. They also provide a browser extension for Chrome. See their FAQ page for more info.
No Lick is an open source music site that provides tracks for creators to use in their projects for free. They offer five new royalty free / copyright free tracks every week. The tracks can be used in video projects or in creating new tracks.
Fugue, provided by Icons 8, is a site that offers free music for your video projects. You can search a number of categories, listen, and download mp3 music for your video creations. All you need to do is give them a link credit if you use downloads from their selection in your works. Icons8 also provides fresh, professional, generic/clean stock photos that are also free to use for a link share.
Bensound has a selection of royalty free music available for free download. These pieces can be used in any of your projects with credit attributed to Bensound.
SoundBible offers a wide variety of sound effect clips – all available for free download. These clips can be used in any project. License is per audio clip and will be either Royalty Free, Public Domain, or Attribution 3.0 (credit link required).
At MixKit you’ll find many high quality, professional video clips that you can use in your projects for free. Categories include business, tech, music, animation, lifestyle, and more.
The Mixkit License allows you to use any of these clips in your commercial and non-commercial works, for free. MixKit is a service provided by Envato.
Pexels video offers a collection of completely free stock videos for download and use in your projects. They have a wide selection of professional quality video clips. These clips can be used in commercial as well as personal projects. View their License info here. Of course, Pexels also offers free photography downloads. They even offer a free PhotoShop plugin to make creating targeted images for your projects even easier. Get the Pexels Photoshop plugin here.
We can’t overlook Pixabay. Not only do they offer free photos, illustrations, and vectors, but also videos. A large selection of high quality materials are available, copyright free.
Coverr offers great video clips that can be downloaded for a variety of purposes, including adding to your webpage. The clips are free to use either commercially or non-commercially with no attribution required.
Sometimes you might want to use charts to highlight pertinent data in your video. Charts Factory is a Free option that allows you to quickly create charts in a variety of styles and use them in your projects.
For Live-streaming video options, check out Lightstream. At this time they support live streaming ability for Mixer, Facebook Live, Twitch, YouTube, YouTube Gaming and Hitbox. See what you will need to use Lightstream here.
“Streaming with Lightstream is free and will always remain free, but premium features may arrive with a price point in the future.” – Learn More Here
This is a cloud based video streaming service that can integrate with Google Drive and Dropbox. With Onestream you can live stream pre-recorded videos to Facebook Live, YouTube Live, and Periscope. Simply choose a pre-recorded video, schedule when and where to stream, and they handle the rest.
Onestream offers several sign-up and usage plans and cost ranges anywhere from Free to $99/month. A complete pricing description for each plan is available via the link provided.
This is a part of the Internet Archive, which is a non-profit digital library offering millions of movies, books, software, music, and more, to browse, borrow, download, and share.
“This library contains digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download.”
A huge collection of archival films and video footage, each marked with one of various creative commons licenses. If you need something a little different, even historical, you just may find it here.
Offering audio and video tools that work in your browser – all for free. If you need to quickly and easily cut, convert, merge, or record audio or video clips, this website can help you get that done.