Beyond YouTube: Free Video Online

As the semester winds down, it seems like a good opportunity to take a look at some ways you can occupy yourself over break and locate interesting material for classes in the spring. Let's take a look at some sources for free, high quality video available online. Please note that in preparing this list I have avoided some of the more familiar sources that primarily provide brief clips of programs or only recent episodes of current programs online.

Today internet users can pick and choose from far more than synchronized Christmas light shows and surfing parrots when they watch video online, all while still watching material that is both legal and free. Most people know about Hulu, the online home of a backlog of "classic" television shows, 2nd and 3rd run movies, and episodes of some current season shows. But far fewer people are aware of the availability of the Internet Movie Archive, a treasure trove of silent and unusual feature films, government films, news reels, and documentaries.

A smaller trove of films, strictly documentaries, is accessible via SnagFilms. Snag links to such well known documentary producers as the National Film Board of Canada, Lionsgate, National Geographic, and New Media. Currently viewers can view such major films as the Buena Vista Social Club, Super Size Me, Run Granny Run, Hacking Democracy, and The Times of Harvey Milk on the site. However, it's important to realize that Snag does not necessarily provide access to all of the films available on a particular site it snags from. For example, although it pulls from PBS, it only scratches the surface of this rich source of educational and documentary video. Among the shows that can be viewed extensively online are those from the American Experience, Nova, Nature, and Art21.

Looking for something inspiring or challenging? Try TED Talks. The TED series (Technology, Entertainment and Design) seek out leading thinkers and artists and ask them to present 18 minutes (approximately) worth of their ideas or performance. The subject matter can be anything from astrophysics to zoos while the performances can be in any art form. What they are all guaranteed to be is interesting. Check out some of these particularly popular talks: Ken Robinson on how schools kill creativity, Julian Assange on why the world needs Wikileaks, Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of insight, and Conrad Wolfram on teaching kids real math with computers. Another source of rhetorical inspiration can be found on American Rhetoric, a website dedicated to public speaking. On this site you can watch videos of powerful speakers at their best -- both real life speakers and some of the best scenes of cinema speechifying (although be aware that these change on a rotational basis for copyright reasons).

Sites that provide high quality content connected to their own cable channels and organizations are good sites to be aware of as well. For example, the Smithsonian Channel provides access to a lot of clips and several full-length programs on its site, although content is likely to change over time. Similarly National Geographic offers a lot of its material available as full episodes online. For those interested specifically in science video, Sixty Symbols, a website sponsored by the University of Nottingham, offers short videos focusing on the symbols used in astronomy in physics. AcademicEarth provides access to a variety of online courses on video, but among these is a series of videos of human anatomical dissection.

In terms of videos related to history and politics, the pickings are diverse and interesting. HaveFunWithHistory.com provides access to a wide collection of videos, mostly documentary in nature, but some old newsreel footage of the type that can be tracked down in the Internet Movie Archive. The American Memory Project of the Library of Congress includes a motion picture collection, of which 16 collections have been digitized into streaming media files available online. For those interested in politics and current affairs, nothing is quite so rich as C-SPAN's Video Library, which includes not only the recordings of floor debates and testimony, but also noteworthy events like Ted Kennedy's funeral, Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally and White House correspondents' dinners. 

Vimeo is a site that focuses on user-created video, but the users who upload video to the site tend to be people  interested in getting certain kinds of high-quality information on video. So there are large collections of animation and amateur film, as well as well as videos about film making techniques and technology. It also includes music, comedy and art videos as well as science and nature videos, including whole sections on physics and chemistry. Vimeo also has several ongoing projects that users can participate in, such as "What I Like About You", "10 Second Question" and "Me Right Now".

Finally, if nothing here suits your needs, one tool that can help you find video resources on the web is OVGuide while you can also try searching using Google Video or just adding the term "video" to a regular search with a search engine. Also bear in mind that most government agencies produce and publish video to the web that may be of interest. Search the entirety of the U.S. government web via USA.gov.