Top Picks of Free HD Video Backdrops: The Internet’s Most Reliable Sources (Updated )

Top 10 Best Sites to Download Free HD Video Backgrounds [2024]

Liza Brown

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

To attract and engage readers and viewers with a video background, you have to do it well. Otherwise, your visitors will close the video or website page within a second. And why should this happen yet you can download the best free video background that matches your content?

If you are looking for the best free stock HD video background sites this is the best place for you. Since the biggest challenge is selecting the most suitable video background, read carefully the do and don’ts to help you make a better choice.

You will Learn :

• What Is a Video Background?
• Why Use a Video Background on Website/Video
• Where To Use a Video Background?
• Top 10 Websites To Source Free Video Overlays and Backgrounds
• Do and Don’ts When Using Free Video Background
• How To Create a Video Background Overlay?

Also included in this article is a tutorial on how to add a video background to your videos. Before that, let’s look at what video backgrounds are and why they are important?

What Is a Video Background?

Video background refers to the motion video clips or animations playing behind foreground content or video. Video backgrounds fall under two categories:

• Real background

They are real people videos, product videos, office videos or a clip of real image videos of physical things like sky, water storm, and animals.

• Fake background

These are computer created animations in motion appearing behind texts on a website landing page or a video. The main used fake background is a green screen.

Advantages of Using a Video Background on Website/Video

There are many reasons you should use a video background on your website or video. Here are some of the reasons;

• You can use a video background to visually showcase your products
• After an adventure, the best way to share your experience is using your recorded video as a background on your landing page
• To make your website more appealing
• To engage and increase your contents conversion rate
• It’s human to be attracted to anything in motion. For this reason, website experts use motion backgrounds to grab the attention of the readers and hold them on the page for longer.

Where To Use a Video Background?

Simply because you can download as many free video backgrounds as you want, you cannot use them on every website or video.

For your video background to be of advantage, these are the places to use it:

• Wordpress websites- Wordpress has a video background plugin for website owners.
• PowerPoint- If you love creating PowerPoint presentations, the best option to make presentable is by using a video background.
• YouTube – If you own a YouTube channel, use the best free stock video clips to win more viewership.

To select the top free HD video backgrounds for download, here are the best sites to consider.

Top 10 Websites To Source Free Video Overlays and Backgrounds

The usage of free background videos and loop backgrounds has been on the rise. Equally, a number of sites to source free video looping clips and backgrounds have gone up significantly. To be inclusive, these sites are split into two parts:

Part I: Top Sites To Download Royalty Free HD Video Backgrounds

Part II: Where To Download Free HD Looping Video Backgrounds

Top Sites To Download Royalty Free HD Video Backgrounds

Royalty free (RF) means you don’t have to pay royalties to the selling agencies. This license allows you to pay a one-time fee to use the video background. After paying the fee, you use it as many times as you want without retaining its property or transferring copyright to yourself.

Here are the most preferred sites to buy high-quality royalty-free video background:

1. Pexels

Pexels is among the fastest-growing site with thousands of free video backgrounds for websites. All images and videos are free to use, edit or modify to suit your desired background. You can use them for commercial or personal use. However, you have no right to sell or post them to other stock free sites.

Founded in 2014, Pexels mission is to help website builders, writers, video creators, programmers, and designers to create sites with stunning website backgrounds. All videos here are in MP4 format and HD status.

2. Videezy

The separation between the premium videos and the royalty-free videos is quite clear so you never mistake when selecting. Every style of video background is well categorized at the top bar menu in bold. To choose only royalty-free background videos, select the standard option on the license type menu.

Whether you want free motion video background, loopable videos for your video background or motion stock free videos this is the best site. Every style of video is available here.

The videos are available in two formats: MP4 and MOV. Depending on your video resolution, these are the resolutions to choose Ultra HD, 4K, SD, HD-720, and HD- 1080.

3. X Stock Video

Are you looking for real video backgrounds for your website? If yes, XStockvideo is renowned for real videos that are free. The categories include real people videos, holiday videos, buildings, and landmark video backgrounds. X stock allows you to download free for either commercial promos or personal videos and backgrounds.

All videos have a web resolution of 960x540, 1280 x 720 and 1920 x 1080. Extended use of a single video can lead to charges. You can only upload HD videos with a MOV format from this site.

4. Clip Canvas

There are both paid and royalty-free stock HD video clips on this website. Hover over the video clip to read its details including the price details. Majority of filmmakers as well as TV programmers source free background videos from Clip Canvas.

Among the reasons Clip Canvas is preferred by different users is the wide range of video formats and codecs. The video resolutions are HD, SD, and 4K. The main disadvantage of using free clips is the watermark. However, you can download the paid clips to avoid watermarks.

Where To Download Free HD Looping Video Backgrounds

Using a looping video background relieves website designers and video creators the burden of setting background video in loops. The list below comprises of websites with free HD looping video backgrounds to download for website and videos.

5. Mazwai

Like most of the other free video backgrounds, Mazwai has a wide variety of both loopable videos and still images. In partnership with other free stock video sites, they have listed over a thousand HD video backgrounds in all formats.

Most of the videos are 720pixels and 1080 pixels. Two types of licenses apply on this site; Mazwai license which gives full free usage without any condition and Creative Commons license. To use a video clip under Creative License, you must credit the author.

6. Life of Vids

Our second best website to download free background video loops is Life Of Vids due to its user-friendly website. To find your preferred loops category, enter your keyword and the result will be amazing. You can also click the “Left Arrow” or “Right Arrow” to browse all the loops categories. All looping videos are available in Vimeo for download in MP4 or 4K formats.

There are neither copyright restrictions nor ownership license conditions. To use photos, animations and images for your video background tap the “Free Pix” at the top menu.

7. Free Loops

Free Loops is designed to provide a wide selection of video loops for all users. However, the free plan is limited to only 10 free loops every day, and they are 100% royalty-free. To download the video loops, you have to sign up for a free account.

This is the best website to either download free video loops or buy a video loops pack. The free pack loops are only available in MP4 formats. To download video loops in other formats, subscribe to the Pro plan for $19/month, Pro Plus plan for $30/month or Pro Gold for $55/month.

8. Videvo

Videvo is widely renowned due to its large collection of high-quality free video overlays and backgrounds. You don’t have to create an account or sign up to download the free nor the premium video background.

The free motion backgrounds for video editing are also available in both Video free plan and Videvo paid plans. Other features include sound effects and music. All videos, loops and motion graphics are HD, 4K or UHD resolution.

9. Pixabay

As of today, there over 260 free loopable video backgrounds available for download without any type of license condition. The sponsored loop videos marked as Shutterstock are high-quality premium videos also available for download.

Pixabay is a popular website with over 1+ million free stock HD/4K images, photos, and videos.

10. Ignitemotion

The major free HD video backgrounds for download include cloud, abstracts, sports, nature, science, people and cities. You can use them for commercial or personal purposes without any royalty fee.

If you want to download free Christmas video backgrounds, just tap “Holiday videos” at the top menu. Other holiday video background videos are Easter videos, Valentine’s videos, Halloween videos and New Year videos.

Do and Don’ts When Using Free Video Background

Any video background on your website can reduce website speed, destruct important texts and messages or cause a drop in conversion rate. It’s therefore important to learn where to draw the lines when using background videos.

Here are the best five tips to help use free video backgrounds the right way.

• Use short video of low bitrate

To avoid buffering of the video and affecting the speed of your website page negatively, consider using background videos that are 2MB or less. A three-second video is good enough to make a website homepage or video background stunning.

• Use loopable video background

Setting your website background video to play in loops is one way of ensuring the video is short. The other preferred option is setting the video background to play continuously. This tends to work better as it does not affect the CPU functionality.

• Use slow-motion videos

Fast-moving video backgrounds are destructive and in some cases reduce the content conversion rate. To avoid visitors sticking to the video background for long, reduce the movements.

• Use compressed background videos

A compressed video has a low bitrate and therefore plays smoothly without affecting the page load speed. It’s good to compress the video to 720 pixels. Even though high pixel videos are of the best quality, avoid them completely.

• Use an overlay

To hide poor quality videos or very bright background videos, use an overlay on top of the video. A semitransparent overlay makes the video more attractive, engaging and creates more interest to look at, as the details are not clearly visible.

How To Create a Video Background Overlay?

Filmora Video editor from Wondershare is the most used software for editing green screen backgrounds, blurring videos and creating video overlays. Use these steps to set a video background overlay.

Step 1: On your preferred browser, open Filmora.Wondershare.com and click “Free Download” below. After downloading, tap install.

Step 2: Download two video clips to the video timeline from your library

Step 3: Drag the first video down to the play timeline, the remove the video audio if any. Do the same to the second video clip but place it on the background.

Step 4: Double click on the second clip and use the “Composition” menu to set the videos blending mode.

Step 5: Adjust the Opacity % and save your video background overlay.

Here is the video tutorial to show you how to create your own video background overlay.

Conclusion

There are more websites to download royalty-free video backgrounds for a website than their demand. Where to download the video background is never a challenge: how to use them is the biggest hurdle to website owners. Use the tips highlighted to avoid losing your traffic.

Different websites have different video formats and resolutions. When selecting free video backgrounds for your website or video, consider these four key features; video length, resolution, contrast and motion speed.

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Liza Brown

Liza Brown is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Liza Brown

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