Royalty Free AV Data for Benchmarking?

Foredecker asks: "I'm developing some audio and video encoding benchmarks. (yes, they will be open source), and I need royalty free high quality audio and video. Unfortunately, I can't simply rip CD's and DVD's for distribution. I need to distribute the content with the benchmark to provide a consistent data set. I'd like both stereo and 5:1 audio and regular and high-def video. Anyone have any ideas where I can get such content?"

Comments

College student videos.

[OwnerOfWhinyCat]

All over the U.S. aspiring young "film people" make all kinds of cute little shorts. They would love the exposure; most would be glad to release under the GPL, or GDL, or whatever public license you want.

If you need some good cartoon footage I saw a link to a short with a little rodent scurrying about the house in a translucent ball around here somewhere....

Ask

[m0rph3us0]

Ask a filmmaker, musician or other copyright holder if you may use their work. There are alot of producers of music and film, eventually one will say yes.

CGTalk.com

[NanoGator]

Try going to the forums area of www.CGTalk.com and ask over there. It's a website dedicated to computer generated art and animation. There are lots of professionals there who work at tv/movie/game studios. I imagine you'd be able to find people willing to donate what you need. (or at least put you in touch with somebody who might)

It's worth a shot. ;)

ummm....

[Anonymous Coward]

the public domain? try educational type videos, etc

Fair use

[sydlexic]

doesn't this fall under 'fair use' since it's effectively research/education?

Re:Fair use

[Hungus]

No

Re:Fair use

[Tyrdium]

You can find info on fair use here... I've put a summary below...

Fair Use: Overview and Meaning for Higher Education

Copyright law begins with the premise that the copyright owner has exclusive rights to many uses of a protected work, notably rights to reproduce, distribute, make derivative works, and publicly display or perform the work. But the Copyright Act also sets forth several important exceptions to those rights. Key statutes make specific allowance for concerns such as distance learning, backup copies of software, and some reproductions made by libraries. The best known and most important exception to owners' rights is fair use.

The Fair-Use Statute

The following is the full text of the fair-use statute from the U.S. Copyright Act.

Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified in that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. (Emphasis added)

The Meaning of the Four Factors

While fair use is intended to apply to teaching, research, and other such activities, a crucial point is that an educational purpose alone does not make a use fair. The purpose of the use is, in fact, only one of four factors that users must analyze in order to conclude whether or not an activity is lawful.

Moreover, each of the factors is subject to interpretation as courts struggle to make sense of the law. Some interpretations, and their subsequent reconstruction by policy-makers and interest groups, have been especially problematic. For example, some copyright analysts have concluded that if a work being used is a commercial product, the "nature" factor weighs against fair use. By that measure, no clip from a feature film or copy from a trade book could survive that fair-use factor. Similarly, some commentators argue that if a license for the intended use is available from the copyright owner, the action will directly conflict with the market for licensing the original. Thus, the availability of a license will itself tip the "effect" factor against fair use. Neither of these simplistic constructions of fair use is a valid generalization, yet they are rooted in some truths under limited circumstances. Only one conclusion about the four factors is reliable: each situation must be evaluated in light of the specific facts presented.

The following are brief explanations of the four factors from the fair-use statute. All four factors which affect fair use must be taken into account before reaching a conclusion.

Purpose

Congress favored nonprofit educational uses over commercial uses. Copies used in education, but made or sold at monetary profit, may not be favored. Courts also favor uses that are "transformative" or that are not mere reproductions. Fair use is more likely when the copyrighted work is "transformed" into something new or of new utility, such as quotations incorporated into a paper, and perhaps pieces of a work mixed into a multimedia prod

Re:Fair use

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Slashdot;

Plz tell me where I can download "THE MATRIX RELOADED". K. THX.

PS - I'm writing open source video and want to use it to benchmark

internet archives...

[alph0ns3]

http://www.archive.org/movies/movies.php not that HQ (mpeg2), but still...

Archive..

[PFAK]

What about, Archive.org -- they seem to have a large selection of Public domain videos, who knows if they are any recent ones though..

Re:Archive..

[Bazman]

You'll just end up with a codec that reproduces all the scratches, jumps and hiss of 1940s 8mm cine film sound!

Yes I know there is some more modern stuff on archive.org... Its a fantastic resource.

Baz

HD-CAM

[andrewleung]

working in a video/image compression lab, we always ran into that problem of not finding GOOD source that hasn't been messed around with or other artifacts.

our solution to getting Hi-Def material? Sony's HD-CAM a little pricey, but damn, even george used it for a movie.

you just can't go wrong here.

Use with permission.

[fm6]

Consider approaching somebody who owns copyrighted content and asking for permission to use their stuff. Hollywood would probably blow you off, but smaller producers or documentarians would be happy for the exposure. Also check out local TV stations.

Try Ron Popeil

[Rick the Red]

Ron Popeil and others make "infomercials" of very high broadcast quality. I'm sure one of them wouldn't mind your customers seen demonstrations of their products.

By high quality...

[ChrisSontagsAnus]

You didn't say whether you meant technical quality or content quality. If you just need technical quality, you can hire a freelancer to shoot you some pretty stuff. It will cost something, but it may be a bargain compared to blowing a lot of time searching for free stuff.

Make your own

[squiggleslash]

A low-end DV camera (firewire output, MiniDV tape) will cost you about $500. It'll allow you to create a full DVD-resolution movie, and will last you years, be usable for more than just making home movies (most include digital still cameras, for example, and they can be used as webcams and all that fun stuff too. I personally use mine as a reliable way to dump video into my PC, turning old videotapes into lasts-a-lifetime VCDs, using the analog input feature that's common on them.) Even if you don't want to buy, they're so popular these days that you should be able to find someone you can borrow from. A firewire card from Yahoo, Amazon, or MacSales will cost about $20 and up, assuming your system doesn't already have such a thing built in (most modern Macs do, and they run iMovie too...)

If you're stuck for something to film, you can always shoot out of your car window or something similar. You don't need to hire actors.

This way, not only is there no ambiguity concerning copyrights, but you'll be able to get footage that matches exactly what you need out of the film. Want to benchmark scenes with different levels of motion and different types of motion? Just film that.

Re:Make your own

[jesup]

DV cameras compress (with MPEG-2). Since this person is doing compression research, source material with compression artifacts is not a good place to start. Also, even without the compression (not that you can turn it off I believe) that level of camera might not be the best for the source quality he's looking for.

Re:Make your own

[squiggleslash]

I wish they did compress with MPEG2, it'd make handling the files they spit out a whole lot easier.

I believe they use some sort of per-frame based compression, similar to MJPEG.

media.xiph.org

[rillian]

We've been collecting what freely-redistributable clips we can find at media.xiph.org. There's not much there, but it's still worth a look. Particularly interesting for your case are some public domain HD test clips made available by TU München LDV. Of course, they're quite short given the size of uncompressed HD frames.

Please let us know if you find anything else, that's exactly what the collection is for.

In general, the suggestions of contacting copyright holders for permission is the best one. There are various collections of test clips and movies online, but they're generally either small and without audio, or already compressed. Plus, the more content we get under free licenses, the better the world will be. :-)

The Internet Archive does have a collection of movies with contact information, so that might be an easy place to start.

Good luck!

Google to the rescue

[angle_slam]

How hard is it to type the words 'royalty free video' into Google?

the animatrix

[Anonymous Coward]

how about something like the animatrix its free on the internet already and it will be out on dvd soon so you can get a relitivly unencoded copy also i think fair use would alow you to use practicaly any movie you want so only as you only used say a 20 second clip perhaps you could use a montarge of clips from film trailers im sure the big companys wouldn't mind people seeing advertisments for there films hell the pay to have them put on tv you distributing them for them shouldn't be a problem

Correct

[Andy Dodd]

It is frame-based compression.

Otherwise it would be wholly unsuitable for video editing.

As anyone who has seen the obscene size of DV files can attest, the compression is minimal. There is no visible quality loss in DV video. (Otherwise, why would it be the de facto standard in video production and editing for anything up to the highest-end Hollywood productions?)

HDTV camcorders are a different story - They do use MPEG-2 compression. But DV is sufficient for DVDs. (720x480 resolution, same as DVDs. Getting a DV cam capable of anamorphic widescreen will set you back a lot more than $500 though - Expect $2000-3000 in that case.)

Re:Correct

[squiggleslash]

Now, I'm not going to suggest the quality of my little $500 MiniDV JVC is up to professional standards (not that I'd know, I don't exactly have a room full of lighting equipment, etc, but I assume little things like the lens it uses would rule it out) but I know it does do anamorphic widescreen (does letterboxing too, FWIW. Basically it has all three modes.)

Re:Correct

[Andy Dodd]

Not quite...

Unless you have extra CCD pixels (Chances are that unless you have a super-high-end camera you don't, most consumer DV camcorders are interpolating up to 720x480 from a lower res), your "anamorphic" widescreen is just ignoring part of the CCD and stretching the rest, reducing your effective resolution. FYI, I have a GR-DVL120U from the same manufacturer, same features. It's only the $2000+ cameras that offer true anamorphic recording where CCD resolution is equal to or greater than DV resolution in anamorphic mode.

And anyway - Progressive scan is a must for high-quality video, and that instantly puts you into the $900-1000+ price range.