What is B-roll? Examples, and how to add it to your video

What does B-roll mean?

B-roll means any footage that supports the main story rather than telling it. The A-roll carries the words: the interview, the presenter, the hosts at their microphones. The B-roll is what you see while those words play: the workshop the speaker describes, the street she walks down, the chart he mentions. The names come from film and tape days, when the supporting shots sat on a second reel so the two could be mixed together.

	A-roll	B-roll
What it is	The main footage, usually a person speaking	Supporting shots laid over the main sound
What you hear	Its own sound, the voice	Usually the A-roll's voice, with its own sound low or off
What it does	Carries the story and the argument	Shows, explains, covers cuts, sets the place
Without it	No story	A video that feels like a lecture

Two words you will hear beside it. A cutaway is a B-roll shot of something other than the speaker, such as the room or the listener. An insert is a close-up of a detail in the main scene, such as the hands on the keyboard while the speaker types.

What are examples of B-roll?

Examples of B-roll are close-ups of hands at work, wide shots of a place, a product turning in light, a screen recording of the app being explained, archive footage, and photographs moved across slowly. What fits depends on the kind of video:

YouTube talking head: the thing being talked about, screenshots, a walk through the space, a reaction.
Tutorial: the screen, the hands on the tools, the finished result.
Interview or documentary: the subject at work, their town, old photographs, the objects in their story.
Travel and vlog: streets, food, transport, people passing, the view from the window.
Product video: details of the product, the product in use, packaging, the workshop it comes from.
News and explainers: archive clips, maps, charts and the places named.

What is B-roll in a podcast?

In a video podcast, B-roll is any picture that is not the hosts at their microphones: the thing being discussed, a screenshot of an article, an archive clip or a photograph of the guest's work. A second camera angle of the hosts is not B-roll; it is another view of the A-roll. Even a little B-roll helps a long podcast clip, because it gives the eye something new while the conversation carries on.

Where does B-roll go in an edit?

Over the words that need showing. If the speaker says "the old mill by the river", that is where the mill goes. Good B-roll does a job: it shows what words cannot, covers a jump cut where words were taken out, or compresses time. To add B-roll well:

List the lines that need a picture. Read the transcript and mark every place where a viewer would want to see the thing named.
Find or shoot it. Your own close-ups match best; licensed footage fills the gaps.
Lay it on the track above, over the words, so the voice carries on underneath.
Cut it to the phrase. Start the shot as the thing is named and end it when the sentence moves on, usually a few seconds. Cutting while something moves hides the cut.
Match its colour to the talking head so the two look like one film.
Credit it in the description when its licence asks.

Keep the face on screen when the face is the point: the punchline, the emotional line, the moment the speaker looks into the lens.

A woman being interviewed on a stool in her workshop while a second camera operator films a close-up of her hands holding a tool. — The interview is the A-roll; the close-up of her hands at work, filmed at the same time, is the B-roll laid over it.

Where can I get B-roll footage for free?

You can get free B-roll footage from stock libraries whose licences allow use in your videos, and from public archives. Read each licence before you publish:

Pexels: free to use and modify, credit optional. Its licence forbids showing identifiable people in a bad light, implying endorsement, and selling unaltered copies.
Pixabay: free to use and modify, credit optional. Content showing recognisable trademarks or logos may not be used commercially for goods or services.
Mixkit: videos under its Free License can be used in commercial projects with no attribution required; videos under its Restricted License are for personal projects only.
Wikimedia Commons: every file has its own licence, listed on its page, and many ask you to credit the creator.
NASA's Image and Video Library: NASA material is generally not copyrighted in the United States, NASA asks to be acknowledged as the source, and it may not be used to suggest NASA endorses anything.

And the best free B-roll is often your own: two minutes with a phone filming close-ups of hands, objects and the place, right after you record.

How does Sharpy find and add B-roll?

The left panel holds shelves for music, sound effects and B-roll, and every item on a shelf carries its credit line, written into the edit's record when you place it. Ask the agent for footage and it searches the shelves on your Mac first, then every source that may be fetched one item at a time, with find_assets. Each result carries its licence, the credit wording and what to know before posting, and nothing downloads until you fetch one with get_asset.

Sharpy reads the licence on each item as it fetches it, never from the listing, and keeps out anything risky. Sources that demand an on-screen credit are not used, Mixkit clips under its Restricted License are refused, Wikimedia Commons files under share-alike, non-commercial or no-derivatives licences are refused, NASA pages that note a copyright are refused, and from museum collections such as The Met, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art it takes only public domain or CC0 works. Sharpy also finds B-roll that matches what is said and places it in one step, from sources that need no key, among them Openverse, the US National Archives, the Smithsonian and the Prelinger Archives.

Stock clips arrive at the size of your piece: Sharpy fetches the smallest version at least as wide and tall as your video, searching Pexels in your piece's orientation, so B-roll is never an upscaled second-best file. For a vertical 1080 by 1920 piece it took a 3840 by 2160 version where the old choice would have enlarged a 1280 by 720 one 2.7 times.

Once placed, B-roll stays on its words: delete words in the words view and only the speech moves. The credits go into a file written beside every render, for you to paste into the description, never onto the picture. Pexels photographers, Pixabay contributors and NASA get a courtesy credit even where none is required.

How do you make B-roll match the talking head?

Match its colour, because stock footage almost never looks like your room. On a test reel, three stock cutaways sat far from the two takes they were cut between. Ask the agent to match a clip to a shot of your recording (adjust_clip) and it solves the clip's brightness, spread, saturation and colour balance so it sits with that shot as a viewer sees each, and says how much of each gap it closed. A landscape keyboard shot matched to the talking-head take went from a colour difference of 34.2 to 2.1 in its middle tones, where about 1 is the least a person can tell apart, in 18.4 seconds. You can also match a shot to a still you choose and compare the two with a wipe. How to colour match video clips covers matching in depth.

Frequently asked questions

Is B-roll the same as stock footage?

No. Stock footage is one source of B-roll. B-roll is any supporting footage, and the shots you film yourself usually match best.

How long should a B-roll shot be?

Usually a few seconds: long enough to read what it shows, cut to the phrase it illustrates.

Do I need to credit free B-roll?

It depends on the licence. Pexels, Pixabay and Mixkit's Free License need no credit, Wikimedia Commons files often do, and NASA asks to be acknowledged. Sharpy writes the credits for you, for the description.

Can I use clips from YouTube or films as B-roll?

Not without the rights holder's permission. Sharpy treats a video fetched from the web as a study copy and refuses to render or hand on an edit that uses it.

Should B-roll have sound?

Usually its own sound sits low under the voice, or is muted, so the A-roll's words stay clear. A burst of natural sound between sentences can bring a scene to life.

Sources

Checked on 18 October 2026.