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University at Buffalo Libraries

Free Video Streaming Websites

A number of openly accessible Internet sites provide access to streaming videos. These sites may host content or merely point to content hosted elsewhere. Advertising supports some, others are the official site for a producer, distributor, series, or festival. Search functions vary widely, and content can change or be removed without notice.

Starting Places

Sites Curating Free Online Videos (embedding videos from around the web)

General Sites

  • Documentary Guide
  • Documentary-Log.com
  • Documentary.net
  • Documentary Storm
  • Documentary Tube
  • DocumentaryWIRE
  • Freedocumentaries.org
  • Full Documentaries
  • IndieMoviesOnline.com
  • Open Documentaries
  • SnagFilms

    rovides access to full-length documentary films from established distributors and first-time filmmakers. The Snag Films library includes more than 850 films. The SnagFilms website encourages donating to causes by linking each film to a specific charity.Brief commercials precede and are interspersed through the video playback.

  • Veoh

    Provides access to videos from major content publishers like CBS, ABC, WB, MTV Networks, ESPN, Sony/BMG and Lions Gate, other video sites like YouTube and Hulu, as well as independent filmmakers and content producers. Users can sort content by type using pull-down menus for Videos, TV Shows, or Movies, each with sub-menus including categories such as Documentary & Biography. Brief commercials precede video playback. Watching full-length videos via Veoh requires installation of the Veoh Web Player.

Educational and Specialized Sites

  • American Experience

    View complete episodes of select films from the acclaimed PBS documentary series.

  • American Indian Film Gallery

    Vintage motion pictures offering rich perspectives on the American Indian experience. The site organizes titles by tribes, linking to films for more than 100 tribes.  A text box to describe each film is nonfunctioning, providing only "lorum ipsum dolor" filler text as a place holder.  Apart from what displays in the film itself, no additional information (publication date, running time, etc.) is provided. These archival films are not perfect. Some were educational shorts used in American schools from the 1930s to the 1970s. Several have abbreviated titles or missing endings. Some are spliced or scratched; others have faded color.

  • The American Memory Collection

    A project of the Library of Congress providing access to several hundred early motion pictures, organized into 11 discrete collections.

  • American Rhetoric

    Features a growing collection of text, audio, and video versions of over 5,000 speeches.

  • Annenberg Media

    Part of the Annenberg Foundation, Annenberg Media provides access to many of the exceptional educational video programs developed with grant money as telecourses. This graphic marks programs available for online viewing Videos stream in Flash.

  • Archive of American Television

    Hosted by the TV Academy Foundation this archive provides access to hundreds of in-depth video interviews with TV's greatest legends and pioneers.

  • ARKive – Images of Life on Earth
  • AV Geeks

    Treasure trove of vintage instructional films 1940s-1970s. Working on digitizing public domain films to make them freely available online.

  • Bio-Alive

    Life sciences video share.

  • C-SPAN Video Library

    Contains all C-SPAN programs since 1987, indexed, abstracted, and cataloged by the C-SPAN Archives staff.

  • Civil Rights Digital Library

    Provides access to online films, texts, images, and audio recordings related to the Civil Rights movement in the United States in the 1950's and 1960's.

  • Folkstreams.net

    A National Preserve of Documentary Films about American Roots Cultures streamed with essays about the traditions and filmmaking. The site includes transcriptions, study and teaching guides, suggested readings, and links to related websites.

  • Internet Archive – Moving Image Archive

    The Moving Image Archive within the Internet Archive provides access to nearly a quarter million films, uploaded by Archive users, and ranging from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. The Archive also contains the Prelinger Archive, the most complete and varied collection of ephemeral films (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) in existence.

  • Internet Movie Database

    Provides access to full-length films and television episodes, many in the public domain.  The alphabetic listing of titles links to the IMDB page that describes the film and provides a link to stream the video.  The link may redirect or pull the stream from another site such as the Internet Archive, SnagFilms, or Hulu.

  • Media that Matters Film Festival

    Annual collection showcasing twelve short films on important topics of the day.  Seven years of films available on the site, organized alphabetically by title, by year.  A simple search interface facilitates finding films by keyword.

  • NBC Learn

    NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, is dedicated to making historic stories, images and primary source documents available on-demand to teachers, students, and parents. NBC Learn has already digitized more than 12,000 stories from the NBC News archives — one of the largest news archives in the world, dating back to the 1920s. In addition, collections are updated with current events every day, Monday through Friday, with stories from such celebrated programs as NBC Nightly News, the TODAY show, Meet the Press, Dateline NBC, as well as the networks of MSNBC, CNBC, and Telemundo.

  • National Film Board of Canada

    Wide variety of films free for individual use.

  • Newslook

    Provides direct access to visual news stories and analysis of the current issues, selected from the web by journalists and documentarians.

  • OpenVault – WGBH Library and Media Archive

    Provides online access to unique and historically important content produced by the public television and radio station WGBH. The ever-expanding site contains video, audio, images, searchable transcripts, and resource management tools, all of which are available for individual and classroom learning.

  • PBS LearningMedia

    Content contributed from publicly funded organizations, including the National Archives, the Library of Congress and NPR, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the US Department of Education, delivers thousands of resources for use in the classroom and with home-schoolers.

  • PBS Video

    Free videos from a wide variety of PBS programs—some full length, some shorter clips.

  • ScienceCinema

    Contains multimedia videos highlighting the U.S. Department of Energy's scientific research.  State-of-the-art audio indexing and speech recognition technology allows the user to search for specific words and phrases spoken by the presenter in these video files. Simply enter a term and the results list will point to the precise snippets of the video where the term was spoken.

  • Scripps Library and Multimedia Archive, University of Virginia

    The Scripps Library and Multimedia Archive serves as a research facility for scholars of U.S. public policy. The Library's collection is a specialized one focused on American politics and history with special attention paid to the American presidency.

  • Thanhouser Films Online

    More than 50 films provide a representative cross section of the output produced by the Thanhouser film enterprise based in New Rochelle, New York between 1910 and 1917.

  • UC Berkeley Online Media

    A collection online video and audio recordings of notable lectures, events, and readings held at University of California, Berkeley including  audio, video, and text files from the UC Berkeley Library Social Activism Sound Recording Project.  This collection includes information onf the Free Speech Movement, the Black Panther Party, Anti-Vietnam War Protests in the San Francisco Area and Beyond, and LGBT History.

Lectures and Open Courseware

  • Cosmo Learning

    Courses, docs and other video learning opportunities on a wide variety of subjects.

  • HippoCampus

    A project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE), HippoCampus provides high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students.

  • Khan Academy

    The mission of this website is to “let anyone learn almost anything for free.” Written and video guides on subjects ranging from basic algebra to calculus and history are available.

  • MIT Open Courseware and Open Yale Courses

    Two of the many premier universities offering free courses covering a wide range of subjects. Registration is usually not required.

  • TED Talks

    This nonprofit offers free lectures and conferences given by experts about a wide set of genres. Lectures are given in a casual tone and atmosphere.

  • YouTube Education

    Full length videotaped lectures from a wide variety of institutions of higher education. Subjects covered are varied. Registration with YouTube required.

Feature Films and Television

In addition to YouTube there are other free sites for feature films and television shows.

  • Hulu.com - A partnership between NBC and ABC (Disney), Hulu is predominantly a site for television content, although there are feature films and docs available. This site includes free and premium services.

     

  • Internet Archive – Feature Films

     

  • Crackle - Full-length movies and television shows are available for free and on demand.

     

  • EZtakes.com - Full-length movies are available for free and on demand. Older and harder to find titles available.

     

  • PopcornFlix.com