Free B-Roll Footage That Isn't Stock or AI

You need ten seconds of a city at night under your voiceover. Or a rocket launch. Or a real bird, not a cartoon of one.

Search “free b roll” and page 1 sends you to Shutterstock and Getty, a Reddit thread, and a few “what is B-roll” explainers. The free stock sites are fine, but you get the same polished drone shot everyone else used. AI video makes up the place you’re talking about.

There’s a big free library almost nobody uses for B-roll: Wikimedia Commons. It has over 400,000 video files. Real places, real animals, NASA footage, old films from the 1900s. Every one is under a free license or in the public domain. I built a free Google Sheet that searches it, shows the clips as a gallery, and writes the credit line for each one.

TL;DR

Wikimedia Commons had 415,288 video files when I checked, and 151,711 of them are public domain or CC0.
Set Media type to Videos and Min width to 1920 to skip the small, old uploads.
Most clips are WebM or Ogg files, so convert to MP4 before your editor chokes on them.

Who this is for

YouTuber: real footage of the place, animal or event you’re talking about, without a stock subscription.
Short-form creator (Reels, TikTok, Shorts): quick cutaways that aren’t the same Pexels clip everyone else used.
Documentary or history channel: old public domain films and newsreels you can use with no credit at all.
Teacher or course creator: short real clips for lessons, with the credit line already written.
Social media manager: B-roll for client videos where you need to know the license, not guess it.

Where free B-roll usually comes from, and what’s missing

The usual free list is Pexels, Pixabay, Mixkit and Coverr. They’re good for generic shots: coffee pouring, hands typing, a beach. They’re weak on specific real things. Try finding a real 1906 street scene, a real Space Shuttle launch, or a specific city’s tram on a stock site.

That’s where Commons is strong. It’s the media library behind Wikipedia, so people upload what an encyclopedia needs: real places, real events, real species, history.

The catch is that Commons search is built for editors, not video makers. It’s hard to filter to videos, see the length and license at a glance, and grab a batch at once. That’s the part the sheet fixes.

How to find free B-roll in the sheet

Get Free Image Finder and make your copy.
Click 🖼️ Free Image Finder > Quick setup and allow access. It uses your email as the contact Wikimedia asks every script for.
On the Search tab, type what you need in the yellow Search cell. Start with something plain, like timelapse.
Set Media type to Videos.
Set Min width (px) to 1920 if you edit in 1080p. When I tried it, that cut “timelapse” videos from 4,688 to 2,379.
Look at the gallery. Each card shows a still, the title, the type (like Video (WEBM)), the license and the length.
Tick Save under the clips you want. They go to the Collection tab.

The Matches on Commons number on the right tells you how many files match before you scroll anything. If it says 40,000, add words. If it says 3, take some away.

Searches worth trying

timelapse with Min width 1920: sunsets, waterfalls, cities.
rocket launch: I got 1,779 videos, and 1,318 of them were public domain or CC0. A lot of it is NASA footage.
ocean waves: 434 videos when I checked.
"A Trip Down Market Street": a 1906 film of San Francisco shot from a cable car, 11 minutes 30 seconds, public domain.
A specific place: Tokyo street, Lisbon tram, Chicago skyline.

Use quotes for an exact phrase and a minus sign to drop a word, like lighthouse -drawing.

Want footage from one spot?

Switch Mode to Near a place and paste coordinates into the Search cell, like 48.8584, 2.2945 for the Eiffel Tower. Right click any place in Google Maps to copy its numbers. Set Radius (m) up to 10000. It finds files tagged with a location near that point, nearest first. The Media type, License and Min width filters only work in Search mode, so in this mode you get photos and videos mixed. Look for “Video” in the TYPE column on the Results tab. (Near a place takes coordinates, not addresses.)

Check the license before you cut it in

Every result shows its LICENSE and CREDIT NEEDED on the Results tab. Here’s what you’ll see most:

Public domain or CC0: no credit needed. Use it however you want.
CC BY: free to use, even in a monetized video, but you have to credit the author.
CC BY-SA: credit the author, and if you change the clip itself (edit it, remix it, color grade it into something new), that changed version has to be shared under the same license. If you’re not sure your use counts as a change, pick a public domain clip instead.

If you don’t want to think about credits at all, set License to Public domain & CC0. The CREDIT NEEDED column then says No on every row.

For the clips that do need credit, open the Export tab. The CREDIT LINES column has one ready line per file, made for video descriptions. Paste the lot into your YouTube description.

Download them all at once

Commons files are big. Check the MB column on Results before you grab a 900 MB file you only need 5 seconds of.

On the Export tab:

FILE URLS is one full-size file per line.
DOWNLOAD SCRIPT is a Mac or Linux script. Paste it into a plain text file called download.sh, open Terminal in that folder, and run bash download.sh. Every file lands in a folder called commons-downloads.
On Windows, paste the FILE URLS list into any bulk downloader.

I wrote up the download step in more detail in how to download images from a list of URLs. It works the same for video.

Convert WebM to MP4

Commons only takes open formats, so most videos are .webm or .ogv. Some editors open WebM fine. Others don’t, and phones often won’t preview it.

Two free fixes:

HandBrake: drag the file in, pick a 1080p preset, start.
ffmpeg in Terminal: ffmpeg -i clip.webm -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a aac clip.mp4

Common pitfalls

Grabbing small files: a lot of older uploads are under 720 pixels wide. Set Min width to 1280 or 1920 before you fall in love with a clip.
Assuming every clip is credit free: most Commons files need a credit. Check CREDIT NEEDED, or set License to Public domain & CC0.
Editing a CC BY-SA clip and forgetting share alike: your edited version has to carry the same license. Use public domain clips for anything you plan to change a lot.
Downloading a huge file for 5 seconds of use: check the MB and LENGTH columns first. Videos can be hundreds of MB.
Dropping WebM straight into your editor: convert to MP4 first if your editor or phone won’t play it.
Assuming nothing is AI: Commons does host some AI-generated files, usually labeled in the title or on the file page. Open the page if it matters.
Searching only one word: “city” returns 8,315 videos. “Lisbon tram” returns the one you actually want.

Learn the Google Sheets formulas in this post

IMAGE formula: how the sheet shows a still for every clip right in a cell.
FILTER formula: the Export tab uses FILTER to list only the files you saved.
How To Sort A Filter: sort your Collection by length or size before you download.

Better Sheets has hundreds more tutorials like these. If you want to get better at Google Sheets, join Better Sheets.

FAQ

Is Wikimedia Commons footage free for YouTube videos that make money?

Yes. Every file on Commons is under a free license or in the public domain, and none of those licenses ban commercial use. Most ask for a credit line, which the sheet writes for you.

Do I have to credit public domain clips?

No. Public domain and CC0 clips need no credit. A credit is still a nice thing to add, and it’s proof of where you got it.

What video format are the files?

Mostly WebM (.webm) or Ogg (.ogv). Convert to MP4 with HandBrake or ffmpeg if your editor won’t open them.

Can I find 4K footage?

Some. Set Min width to 3840 and you’ll only see files at least that wide. The pool gets much smaller, so keep your search words broad.

Is the sheet free?

Yes. Make a free Better Sheets account and copy it to your Google Drive. The Wikimedia Commons API needs no key and no sign-up.

Does it work on Windows?

The sheet works anywhere Google Sheets does. The download script is for Mac and Linux. On Windows, copy the FILE URLS column into a bulk downloader.

Get the sheet

Free Image Finder is free. Type timelapse, set Media type to Videos, and the gallery fills in. More on what’s inside on the tool page.