For librarians, archivists and research-guide editors
Stockfilm as a research source
One page with what you need to decide whether Stockfilm belongs in a film, media, history or documentary research guide, and text you can paste if it does. Everything here is verified against the live catalog; the counts below are the same ones the site publishes elsewhere.
At a glance
| What it is | A commercial archive of digitized amateur home movies, scanned in-house from physical 8mm and Super 8 reels the company owns. Home movies only: no newsreel, government, studio or broadcast film. |
|---|---|
| Size | 162,000+ searchable clips from 217,000+ restored masters and 1,600+ physical reels. About 299 hours. |
| Coverage | 1930s-1980s. 121 countries and 900+ cities, weighted toward North America. |
| Access | Free search, hover previews and shareable boards, no account required. Human research help through a production brief. |
| Metadata quality | Each clip page states the confidence level of its date and place and marks estimates as estimates. Errors can be reported through the metadata correction form. See Archive Integrity for the standards. |
| Licensing | Flat US$149 per restored 4K master, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, non-exclusive. Excludes AI training. Full terms in the licensing guide. The complete catalog is also on Pond5 for institutions that buy there. |
| Research data | The Visual Memory Index: versioned report, six CSV downloads, CC BY 4.0, BibTeX, public changelog. |
| Publisher | Stockfilm, 2823 Callan Ct, Broomfield, Colorado 80023, USA. Privately owned, founded 2015. Contact phil@stockfilm.com. |
Paste-ready research-guide entry
Short form, for a list of stock and archival footage sources. Edit freely; the counts were verified against the database on 2026-07-27.
Stockfilm (stockfilm.com). Commercial archive of 162,000+ digitized 8mm and Super 8 home movies, 1930s to 1980s, from 121 countries. Free to search and preview; clips are dated and placed where the source allows and each clip page states the confidence of its date and place. Restored 4K masters license direct for a flat US$149 (royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual; excludes AI training). Publishes the Visual Memory Index, an open-data (CC BY 4.0) report on what survives in amateur film and what researchers search for.
Long form, for a source description box or a course guide.
Stockfilm https://stockfilm.com Scope: 162,000+ searchable clips drawn from 217,000+ restored masters scanned from 1,600+ physical standard 8mm and Super 8 reels the company owns. Amateur home movies only (no newsreel, no government or studio film): family life, travel, street scenes, work, holidays and events, 1930s to 1980s, 121 countries and 900+ cities. Roughly 299 hours of runtime. Access: free search, hover previews and project boards without an account. Search by keyword, decade, year, country and city. A production brief form gets a human-run search when keyword search is not enough. Metadata: dates and places are labelled with a confidence level on every clip page, and estimates are marked as estimates. A public correction form accepts reports from researchers and families. Licensing: direct license of the restored 4K master, flat US$149 per clip, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, non-exclusive. Production licenses exclude machine learning; dataset access for research groups is a separate written agreement, with evaluation-only samples available. Research: the Stockfilm Visual Memory Index (https://stockfilm.com/research/visual-memory-index) is a versioned, citeable report with downloadable aggregate data on archive composition, search demand, coverage gaps and licensing outcomes. Data, figures and text are CC BY 4.0. A public changelog records every version and correction. Publisher: Stockfilm, 2823 Callan Ct, Broomfield, Colorado 80023, USA. Founded 2015.
Which guides it fits
- Documentary and film production guides. Alongside Pond5, Getty, Periscope Film and Footage.net as a paid source, with the distinction that it is a single home-movie collection rather than an aggregator.
- Public domain and archival footage guides. As a complement to the Prelinger and Internet Archive home-movie collections: the footage is not public domain, but it is dated, placed and searchable by year and city.
- Twentieth-century social history, material culture and everyday life. Street scenes, storefronts, domestic interiors, dress, cars and holidays as filmed by the people who lived them.
- Data and digital scholarship guides. The Visual Memory Index as an open dataset on archive composition and search demand, and evaluation samples for film-restoration and dating research through the dataset page.
Citing the research
Stockfilm Research (2026). The Stockfilm Visual Memory Index 2026, version 1.0 (stockfilm-vmi-2026-v1.0). Stockfilm. https://stockfilm.com/research/visual-memory-index/2026
BibTeX
@techreport{stockfilm_vmi_2026_v1_0,
title = {The Stockfilm Visual Memory Index 2026: What Survives in Home Movies, What Storytellers Search For, and What Gets Licensed},
author = {{Stockfilm Research}},
institution = {Stockfilm},
year = {2026},
month = {7},
type = {Research report},
number = {stockfilm-vmi-2026-v1.0},
version = {1.0},
url = {https://stockfilm.com/research/visual-memory-index/2026},
note = {Aggregate data released under CC BY 4.0. Demand window 2026-02-27 to 2026-07-14.}
}Aggregate data, figures and text: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Footage, frames and catalog metadata records are licensed separately.
Questions librarians ask
Is it free to use for research?
Searching, previewing and building boards is free and needs no account. Licensing a restored master costs a flat fee. The Visual Memory Index and its data are free and open.
Can students use the footage in coursework?
Watermarked previews and rough cuts can be used freely for review and study. A finished film that will be screened, published or submitted needs a license for each clip used.
Does the site sell or share user data?
No. Search is anonymous; the research publications use aggregate counts only, with small cells suppressed. See the privacy policy.
Will the links stay stable?
Clip pages keep their URLs, research editions have permanent links, and the archive has published a 100-year commitment.
Something on this page is wrong or out of date.
Email phil@stockfilm.com with the line and the correction. Counts are re-verified against the database and the verification date is published.