Research Guides: Streaming Media: FREE Streaming Media not from UCI Libraries

Open Access Streaming Media

The streaming/video resources on this page are not subscribed to by UCI Libraries but are freely available and distributed online without subscription barriers. These sites may host content themselves or point to content hosted elsewhere. In some cases, advertising supports some of these sites. Others are more official sites from a producer, so interfaces on these sites vary widely.

Orange County Public Libraries

OC Public Libraries offers FREE access to several different streaming media resources not available through UCI Libraries. To access any of these resources, you must first obtain a "elibrary" card. These elibrary cards are free to obtain and are fully applied for and processed online.

1. Register for your elibrary card

2. Explore the online resources available through OC Public Libraries

Hoopla is particularly strong for streaming videos
Mango is a great resource to learn another language

Open Access Streaming Media Resources

American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Discover historic programs of publicly funded radio and television across America. Watch and listen. Contains thousands of original PBS and NPR broadcasts from the mid-20th century to the present.
Critical Commons
Critical Commons is a public media archive and fair use advocacy network that supports the transformative reuse of media in scholarly and creative contexts. Please note that Critical Commons is not affiliated in any way with Creative Commons.
Full Length & Short Films Online
The Moving Image Source Research Guide provides gateway to various online film, television, and digital media resources.
Folkstreams
Folkstreams is a non-profit dedicated to finding, preserving, contextualizing, and showcasing documentary films on American traditional cultures.
Internet Movie Archive
Free library of free movies, films, and videos. This library contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. It is a little difficult to navigate, but it is absolutely loaded with usable content.
Moving Image Resource Center (Library of Congress)
Several hundred early motion pictures are viewable on the Library's Digital Collections web page.
National Film Board of Canada
NFB's online Screening Room features over 3,000 productions which can be streamed free of charge, or downloaded for your personal use for a small fee. Includes documentaries, animations, experimental films, fiction and interactive works. Films take a stand on issues of global importance—stories about the environment, human rights, international conflict, the arts and more.
Netflix via YouTube
Netflix has made a selection of documentary features and series openly available on the Netflix U.S. YouTube channel.
Newsreels from the UCLA Film & Television Archive
Access to nearly 15,000 newsreel stories from the Hearst Metrotone News Collection owned by the University of California. From the early teens through the late 1960s, newsreels were an integral part of motion picture exhibition in America. Although the reels were fashioned, for the most part, to be entertaining, they uniquely document the domestic and international events of their time.
Prelinger Archives (via Archive.org)
A collection of over 2000 films including stock footage, old commercials, and other materials. They are freely available for download and reuse under the Creative Commons license.
Snag Films
SnagFilms.com is a website where you can watch full-length documentary films for free. It is also a platform that lets you “snag” a film and put it anywhere on the web.
UbuWeb
Streams art clips and films. A good resource for avant-garde artists' videos.
UC Berkeley Media Resources Center Archive
The Media Resources Center (MRC) at UC Berkeley includes some online/streamed video resources for research and educational purposes. .