For most video makers, pro or amateur, having access to stock footage elements can do much to liven up an otherwise generic cast-in-the-mold project. An interview shot in a cramped studio or unevenly lit location seems that much more professional when bookended by a beautifully lit cityscape or nature shot under the credits. A wedding video becomes that much easier to edit when there are cutaways between scenes of champagne corks popping and flutes clinking in super slow motion, and the sun setting under the closing titles.

Digital Juice is a Florida-based firm that has been offering video, audio, and still image elements for video and multimedia pros since 1992. Perhaps best known these days for the digital animations they produce to be used as video backgrounds on broadcast and Web-based TV productions, one of their latest products is aimed at the live-action video stock footage marketplace.

Digital Juice’s Videotraxx HD is a collection of 25 DVD-ROMs containing over 700 clips of royalty free stock footage, all of which has been newly shot for this package. The footage on the discs consists of a wide variety of clips, as you can see by checking out the page at Digital Juice. There are clips of happy shiny people in business and domestic situations. There are Koyaanisqatsi-esque time-lapse images of traffic whizzing by at night and clouds passing over skyscrapers. And there’s studio footage of light bulbs, whiskey bottles, and Christmas ornaments, all being dropped and shattered in ultra slow-motion. There are also plenty of nature and sports sequences.

Videotraxx HD’s indoor footage in particular appears to have been very carefully lit, ranging from simulations of natural lighting, to more dramatic and stylized lighting effects. Vision Research’s Phantom HD camera, and Red One from RED Digital Cinema, both high-end video cameras, were used to capture the images in the collection.

Putting The Footage To Use

Studio-bound interview shows and one-man video blogs (say, like this one) will find plenty of backgrounds composited perfectly to anchor text, for both title sequences and B-roll montages. As this Digital Juice how-to video for an earlier iteration of their stock footage line illustrates, those shooting commercials, whether for the Web or broadcast TV will have a field day using the footage to open up their projects, hide interview edits, and even produce commercials featuring little or no new footage.

Article Author: Ed Driscoll

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