Finding free videos online

We should always keep in mind that we can use Wikimedia Commons and the Internet Archive (for example, http://www.archive.org/details/moviesandfilms) for downloading and using videos in our video projects. Although these are very useful, they are not the only services available; we can find many others, with particular interest to teachers and trainers. TeacherTube (http://teachertube.com) and YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) are the most well-known, and have lots of useful stuff.

But, before we see reference websites where we can find interesting videos and embed them in our courses, let's first have a look at the basics of video formats.

The basics of video formats

With video, things start to get complicated concerning formats. Rates, bitrates, codecs, formats, sizes, frame rates, and on top of this, all of the audio varieties, can overwhelm us. You should know some of these formats:

• DV: The format usually used by digital cameras for high quality video, corresponding...