[00:02] best stock footage sites to find the right one for you, and it's not what I Shuttertock to Art List, Motion Array, and Invato, I have found the best site in terms of video quality, download formats, user experience, and licensing,
[00:17] confusing, too. So, you'll want to stick around for that. Now, I know all of these sites offer more than just stock footage, but today we don't care about that. I'm just concerned about video. Also, I have discount and affiliate
[00:30] these sites. So, I don't care which one you pick. I've got no horse in this best for you. And the first criteria we're interested in is how many videos does each site have and are they any good? As far as quantity goes, Art List
[00:44] has over 1 million stock video clip. Motion Ray is also around a million. Invado quadruples that at 4 million. And they all get dwarfed by Shuttertock with an insane 45 million video library. These numbers are impressive, but try
[00:59] practically they mean different things. In my experience, Art List is the most heavily curated. So almost all 1 million videos are of high quality. Ocean Ray is a little less curated, followed by Invado, and then of course Shuttertock.
[01:14] And this makes sense. There's no way that you could have 45 million assets and have each one of them be topnotch. However, that doesn't mean that everything on Shuttertock is low quality. Let me show you some search
[01:26] volcano because these are kind of hard and expensive to get. Plus, they look freaking cool. With the exact same search in each site, I found Shuttertock and Artless to have the highest quality videos. On both sites, there's smooth
[01:38] aerial shots and some really nice close-ups of flowing lava. Next best is stuff and shares a number of their videos with their parent company, Art List. And then in last place, we've got Envado. Not just because there aren't
[01:53] good videos to be found here. There are, but mostly it's just kind of hard to find them because they're surrounded by a bunch of lower quality assets. This is decided to test these results with a number of other searches. Each time,
[02:07] Invado and Motion Array were kind of tied in terms of quality, but my findings with Art List and Shutter Stock were interesting. When looking at Glacier Clips, Shutter Stock outperformed Art List by a lot. I was
[02:19] only able to find two shots of a glacier breaking off into the water on Art List, Shuttertock. You would think that this would be par for the course when you're would be par for the course when you're talking about a 45 million asset service
[02:31] versus a 1 million asset service. But I was surprised to find that when I searched for something industrial, a steel factory, Art List had many more Shuttertock. Shuttertock seemed to completely lose the plot at like page
[02:45] two and it ran out of good footage. This just goes to show that depending on your niche or the type of project that you're working on, you might want to use one site over the other one. So, it's a good thing that we can browse all of their
[02:57] let's say you find a video that you like. What formats does each site give you for download? Surprisingly, Art List has the most professional options. They have assets that go all the way up to 8K in resolution, and you can download many
[03:10] of them in log or raw formats if you need that for your project. Shuttertock only has videos up to 4K. They also don't have log or raw footage options available, at least not natively. You can find log clips if you search for it
[03:23] by keyword, but they're just visible as uncolor corrected downloads. You can't view a normal clip and then just download it in log like you can with art list. Motion Array and Invato just have simple codecs with no log or raw either,
[03:36] but Invato is limited to 4K downloads, while Motion Array has some clips that are 8K. Now, that about covers the actual assets, but we want to enjoy using a site like this, right? We want things to be easy. Art list is the most
[03:48] visually appealing in my opinion, followed by motion array. The dark really make the video clips stand out [music] and highlights the colors in each one. That said, Shutter Stock wins practically. I like that I can see each
[04:01] clip's resolution and duration straight from the browse screen. And they offer browse filters that Art List doesn't, like frame rate, aspect ratio, and excluded keywords. The keyword thing is helpful because if say I'm searching for
[04:13] a glacier shot, but for some reason I don't want to include any glaciers in Iceland, I can just add Iceland to the excluded keywords and then it'll update the browse for me. The one big downside to Shuttertock's UI though is that for
[04:26] some reason their video previews are really low quality. I'm sure this is probably intentional to protect the assets so that people don't like screen cap them or something, but it makes it really hard to tell the real quality of
[04:38] the footage that you're buying. Invato's UI is my least favorite, though. It's not as visually appealing as the others, and it's missing filters for things like shot type, people, and video theme. As I mentioned before, I also find that
[04:52] highquality assets get buried on Invato, which is unusual because that doesn't happen with Shuttertock. And you'd think that it would because they have 40 million more assets. Now, all of that is fine and good, but what really matters
[05:04] is whether you have the rights to actually use these videos in your project. Licensing can be extremely complicated. So, I spent an entire day just mulling over the fine print to break it down simply for you. Let's
[05:17] project you can dream of is covered, even feature films, and there's no need to create individual licenses for each asset you download. That said, some of their stock videos are labeled for editorial use only if they contain
[05:30] people, locations, or trademarks that haven't signed a commercial release searching, though. Inato is a little bit more complicated. Stock videos seem to be cleared for use for personal or client projects, but not broadcast usage
[05:44] or on demand streaming and theatrical releases. [music] That means you're fine uploading to social media like YouTube, but if you want to use a clip for a Netflix documentary, you need to contact them for a special license. But here's
[05:56] the weird thing. None of this is explicitly stated in their terms of use. I'm just kind of inferring it in relation to the restrictions for music and similar assets. Their documents are just kind of confusing. You also have to
[06:08] relic each asset every time you use it in a different end project. So, if you were to use a clip as like a a series or a video opener, you would have to create a new registration for the clip for each video that uses it in the intro.
[06:23] Overall, I'm just not a fan of how vague and complicated Invado's license system is. Shuttertock isn't this bad, but it's got some technicality to it as well. Like Motion Ray, they have some assets that are for editorial use only. The
[06:35] rest of their videos are available under two different licenses. A standard video license gives you the right to use the videos in social media like YouTube as long as the audience doesn't exceed 500,000. And under this standard
[06:47] license, you're not permitted to use any of the videos for streaming, broadcast, or theatrical release. In other words, the standard license kind of sucks. Who knows if your YouTube documentary using stock footage is going to get over
[07:00] 500,000 views. you'd be much better off going for an enhanced video license which covers unlimited audience size as well as streaming and theatrical releases. Artless, on the other hand, is super simple. You get a license to
[07:12] download and use unlimited stock footage in practically every medium, including films, series, and commercials, no matter the audience size. Finally, let's look at the most important remaining factor, pricing. Artlist, Invato, and
[07:24] Motion Ray operate on simple the yearly subscription models, but Shuttertock is very different and much more expensive. To get footage with Art List, you need a recording this is 20% off for the holidays and costs $32 per month. Now,
[07:39] footage in that subscription, the price increases to $48 per month. Motion Ray comes in a good deal cheaper than that at $25 per month, while Invato is the least expensive option at $17 per month. Out of these three options, I would go
[07:54] with Art List Max if you want the best quality footage with the simplest license and best user experience or Invado if you want the most budget friendly option with the highest quantity of assets available and don't
[08:07] mind the vague and complicated licensing. Motion Ray is a nice sweet spot between the two as well. If you want similar quality to Invato, but a simple licensing system like Art List, the black sheep of the bunch is Shutter
[08:20] Stock. Now, hold on to your pants cuz Shuttertock does have unlimited video subscriptions that cost $69 per month. However, only a limited selection of their video clips are actually available with this and you can only receive a
[08:34] standard license for these clips, which remember we don't want. Forgetting the standard license because it's too expensive. The only way to get extended license videos from Shuttertock is by single clip licensing or by buying
[08:46] multiple clip packages. Single clips with an enhanced license cost $229 each for just an HD download. Alternatively, you can buy packs of download credits. Five for $729, 10 for $1,39, or 25 for $1,949.
[09:05] 10 for $1,39, or 25 for $1,949. But again, this is just HD 1080p video. If you want 4K, be prepared to spend hundreds more. Clearly, this is priced as a serious professional upgrade over any of the other services that we
[09:18] covered. But is it worth it for some productions? Maybe. I mean, if $30 some dollars is just a drop in the bucket for your production budget, Shuttertock will give you the best shots and the most options. But for most people, I'd
[09:32] recommend Art List or Invato instead, especially since you get a ton more video generation. If you're interested in that, you should watch this video right up over