Do you want to add additional images, video clips, or sounds to your project?
I’ve created a quick guide about how to legally add other folks’ videos, music, and images to your Seminar 1 projects. If you’re using content someone else created, make sure the material is in the public domain (freely licensed) + marked for fair use/royalty free.
Here are some resources to help you get started:
- Wikimedia Commons: Free Media Resources
- Creative Commons (CC) — search engine
- Internet Moving Image Archive
- Public Domain Resources, Columbia University Libraries
- Public Domain Material, Ithaca College Library
Music
Most of the songs you probably like are copyrighted. In order to use them, you will need to obtain a license which is expensive/difficult to get for smaller projects, such as yours. You can use music in the public domain, but most songs here were published before 1922 — and maybe not what you’re looking for! Under fair use laws, you can use 30 seconds of a song, but 30-second blocks of songs may be prohibitive/not what you’re looking for.
Here are some places you can search for music:
- Wikipedia: free music + lots of great resources
- digccmixter – not all the music is free, but a lot is + the site includes a great resource on how to attribute
- YouTube Creator Studio: Free Music + Sound Effects; To find: go to your profile, click on ‘Creator’, then click on ‘Create’ on left-hand menu
- ccmixter
- shambles list – royalty free music
- Create your own music using Garageband
Images
The same rules apply for images — you cannot use just any image you find online in your project. It’s relatively easy to find images that are licensed for public use. As with music, you MUST give credit where credit is due — usually a photo credit goes beneath the image as a caption, but in your videos you may want to place all your credits at the end.
Here are some places you can search for images:
Videos
The same basic rules that apply to images and music apply to videos. See the‘ Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video’ for more info and watch this video. Pay special attention to the “Best Practices” section below the video which explains the different ways of using copyrighted video clips and what the general rules are. To be safe, use 30 seconds or less of any copyrighted material, and **always credit your sources!**
How to attribute!
**Always credit your sources,** even if you are ‘borrowing’ them from the public domain or if they have a Creative Commons (CC) license. A good way to cite sources is to add them to your ‘credits’ page at the end of your video. For example, to attribute a song, add the song’s title, album, artist, and year of release. Molly Kleinman’s blog includes a helpful post on how to attribute a CC-licensed work as does this page on digccmixter.com.
Have questions? I’m here to help.
Here’s the CC video we watched in class today:
