How to Search for Footage

How to Search:

Enter your search term in the search bar, this will generate every clip associated with this search term. If your search term is very specific, it may return a manageable amount of search results to preview. However, given the breadth of our library, less specific search terms may generate hundreds or even thousands of results. In these instances, you will want to refine your search results and there are multiple methods to do so, depending on your preference.

You can first enter your search term and then use filters on the search results to distill your search results into exactly what you are looking for.
Alternately, you may use the Advanced Search function by clicking the “Advanced” button in the search bar.

Using the Advanced Search Tool

After clicking the “Advanced” button on the search bar, in the drop down window you may implement specific parameters for your search based on Decades, the keyword phrase and color/b&w.

Under the Decades parameter, you can select the decades you are interested in to narrow your search to just those selected decades. (You may need to scroll down to see the full list of decades.)

There is no limit to the amount of decades you can select from this list. For instance, by selecting 1920s, 1940s, 1980s and 2000s from the Decades list you can search for your term in all four of those decades simultaneously.

In addition to selecting specific decades to search, you can apply one of three phrase options in the Range section:

“All Words” is the default phrase option.
“Exact Phrase” only returns clips that match the exact words and word order of your search phrase.
“Exclude” allows you to filter out clips associated with terms you are not interested in. For instance, if you are interested in footage of Vietnam but do not want footage of the Vietnam War, using Advanced Search you would include “Vietnam” as your search term and “War” as your exclude term.

Using the Filters

In order to refine search results, use the Filter Search Results column on the left side of the screen.

To refine the search results by the decade depicted in the clip, click the Decades bar on the Advanced Search Filter. A list of decades depicted will drop down. Select the decade you are interested in by clicking the box next to the year.
To refine the search results by the period depicted in the clip, click the Period bar on the Advanced Search Filter. A list of years depicted will drop down. Select the year you are interested in by clicking the box next to the year.
To refine the search results by color or black & white, click the Color bar on the Advanced Search Filter. Select either b&w or color, depending on preference.

Clip Tools Menu

On the Search Results page, you can access the Clip Tools menu at any time by clicking the downward arrow next to “Clip Tools” to reveal the menu with the following options:

Select All: This function selects and highlights all clips in the bin.
Deselect All: This function deselects any highlighted clips in the bin.
Add to active clip bin: This function adds all selected clips to the open clip bin. In order to save your bin, you must register and/or log in.
Add to new or existing clip bin: This function allows you to either create a new bin and add the selected clips to it, or to add the selected clips to one of your preexisting bins which you can select from the drop down menu. NOTE: you must be registered and logged in to use this feature.
Download selected: This function downloads all select clips in the bin to your computer in a watermarked, lo-res format.

Using the Sort By Menu

On the Search Results page, you can access the Sort By menu at any time by clicking the downward arrow next to “Sort By” to reveal the menu with the following options:

Relevance: Selecting this option will sort all search results based on how closely they match the search terms used.
Most recent: Selecting this option will sort all search results based on how recently the clips were added to the website. The clips added most recently will be presented first.
Oldest first: Selecting this option will sort all search results based on how recently the clips were added to the website. The clips added least recently will be presented first.