Public Domain Footage for YouTube: NASA, Met & More

History, science and space channels live on archive visuals. There's a huge amount of public-domain and CC0 material you can legally use, if you pick the right items and credit them properly. This guide covers the best free sources, the traps in each one, and how SceneGen now pulls from them automatically and writes the Credits section of your description for you.

General guidance, not legal advice. Always check an item's own license page.

Public domain, CC0 and CC BY in one minute

• Public domain: no copyright applies. In the US that includes most works made by federal agencies like NASA, and many old works whose copyright has expired.
• CC0: the rights holder waives their rights. You can use the work for anything, commercially too, with no attribution required. Crediting is still good practice.
• CC BY: free to use and adapt, with attribution: title, author, source and license.
• CC BY-SA: free to use, but adaptations must be shared under the same license. That's awkward for a monetized video, so SceneGen doesn't use it.

The best free sources

NASA Image and Video Library

Launches, planets, astronauts, Earth from orbit, in stills and video. NASA says its images and media are generally not subject to copyright in the United States. There are two traps. First, the library also holds third-party material, like footage shot by a launch company, which is credited to its owner. Second, the NASA insignia and logos are not public domain, and NASA material must never imply NASA's endorsement.

Wikimedia Commons

The strongest free source of video, plus millions of images. Licenses vary file by file: CC0, public domain, CC BY, CC BY-SA and GFDL are all there. Commons explains how to credit correctly in reusing content outside Wikimedia.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's Open Access program releases images of public-domain works under CC0: paintings, armour, artefacts and manuscripts. Ideal for history and art.

Art Institute of Chicago and Cleveland Museum of Art

Both release public-domain works under CC0. The Cleveland Museum of Art's Open Access page says CC0 images can be used for any purpose "without fees or restriction".

How SceneGen uses these sources

SceneGen searches these libraries for each scene alongside regular stock (Pexels, Pixabay and Openverse), with strict license filters:

• Wikimedia Commons: only CC0, public-domain and CC BY files. CC BY-SA and GFDL files are never used, and AI-generated uploads are skipped. Commons videos are transcoded to MP4.
• NASA: items credited to a third party, or whose description says "courtesy of", "credit:" or ©, are dropped. So are logo items, press conferences and briefings, which tend to show the insignia behind the speaker.
• The Met: only Open Access objects (the Met's public-domain flag) with an image.
• Art Institute of Chicago: only works marked public domain, which AIC releases under CC0.
• Cleveland Museum of Art: only works whose share license is CC0.

The sources are matched to the topic. History and art videos ask the museums first. Science and space videos ask NASA first. A query that's plainly about space or art, like "nebula" or "Renaissance fresco", picks those sources even inside a broader video. A cooking video doesn't query the Met.

Automatic credits in your description

Every finished video gets a Credits section, built from the assets the render actually used, deduplicated, one line per item in scene order. SceneGen appends it once to the SEO description you copy from the project page and to the YouTube upload description. The lines follow each source's own rules:

• NASA: "Source: NASA/(centre), images.nasa.gov/details/(id) (public domain; no NASA endorsement)"
• The Met: the title, the artist, "The Metropolitan Museum of Art", CC0 and the object's link
• Commons CC BY: title, author, link and license, marked "(modified)" because the video crops and animates it
• Stock libraries: their required notice, for example "Photos and videos provided by Pexels"

The section also notes AI narration, SceneGen-generated music and AI-generated visuals where used. YouTube descriptions are capped at 5,000 characters, so if both don't fit, the credits are trimmed with an "…and N more" line rather than cutting your own description.

How to build a public-domain video in SceneGen

1. Pick a topic where archives shine: a space mission, an ancient empire, a painter's life.
2. Create a video. Write the topic plainly ("the Apollo 11 landing" rather than "a space adventure"), so the matching routes to NASA or the museums.
3. Review the storyboard in the Studio and swap any scene visual you don't like. Hand-picked media counts as your own edit too.
4. Render, then copy the description with its Credits section, or let SceneGen upload to YouTube with it.
5. Keep the NASA rules in mind for your thumbnail: no NASA logo, and nothing that suggests endorsement. Thumbnail Studio can use a frame from the video instead.

Archive footage and originality

Public-domain footage is free to use, but it isn't original. Other channels can use the same clips. YouTube's monetization policies look for significant original value, so pair archive visuals with your own research, script and narration. SceneGen's monetization safety check flags when you've reused the same visuals across your own videos. For format ideas, read how to make a documentary with AI, or look up stock footage and b-roll in the glossary.

Make one

Start free with two complete videos, and every one of them ships with a credits section.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use NASA footage on YouTube and monetize it?

NASA media is generally not copyrighted in the US, so it's widely used on YouTube. Avoid third-party items in NASA's library, don't use NASA logos or insignia, and don't imply NASA endorsement. Monetization also depends on adding your own original value.

Do I have to credit CC0 or public-domain images?

CC0 and public domain don't legally require attribution, but crediting is good practice. CC BY does require it. SceneGen adds a Credits line for every item a video uses either way.

Why doesn't SceneGen use CC BY-SA files?

Share-alike licenses require adaptations to be shared under the same license, which doesn't fit a monetized video. SceneGen uses only CC0, public-domain and CC BY files from Commons.

Where does the Credits section appear?

At the end of the SEO description on the project page and in the description SceneGen sends when it uploads to YouTube.