Working with audio and video on the web, you’ll often need test material in various formats and quality. This collection consists of various permissively licenced works you can use in your test. As a bonus, they’re fun to watch and listen to, so you don’t get out of your mind when you’re looking at it for the umpteenth time during your work.
Note that file sizes, compression and quality vary wildly. This is due to using different parameters when encoding, and the codecs themselves evolving over time. For codec comparison, take one high quality source (such as Sintel or Big Buck Bunny 4K renders, or the Sintel trailer PNG+FLAC source), and transcode using target codecs with controled parameters.
Audio tracks
- SNDR & Joey Shigrow - Memories (4:20)
- MP3 - 9.9MB
- Twiterium - Trance2 (0:51)
- Dmitry Rassolodin - Dreaming (02:22)
Licences: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY)
Caminandes 3: Llamigos (2016)
It’s winter in Patagonia, food is getting scarce. Koro the Llama engages with Oti the pesky penguin in an epic fight over that last tasty berry.
Full movie (runtime 02:30.13):
- 1080p
- 720p
- 480p
- MP4 (24fps, H.264+AAC, 854x480) - 18MB
Source: Caminandes
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY)
Sintel (2010)
The film follows a girl named Sintel who is searching for a baby dragon she befriended.
Trailer (runtime 52.21):
- 1080p
- 720p
- 480p
- Lossless original
DivX versions include subtitles: en, fr
Full movie (runtime 14:48.03):
- 4K
- 1080p
- 720p - MKV (24fps, H.264+AC3, 1280x544) - 650MB
Full movie includes subtitles: en, fr, de, es, it, nl, pl, pt, ru, vn
Images: poster, portrait, still, still, still
Source: Sintel - Blender open movie project
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY)
Big Buck Bunny (2008)
Big Buck Bunny tells the story of a giant rabbit with a heart bigger than himself.
Trailer (runtime 33.00):
- 1080p - MOV (25fps, H.264+AAC, 1920x1080) - 29MB
- 720p - MOV (25fps, H.264+AAC, 1280x720) - 17MB
- 480p
Full movie (runtime 9:56.46):
- 4K (Sunflower render)
- 1080p
- 720p
Images: poster, poster, poster, still, still, still, still, still, still
Source: Big Buck Bunny - Blender open movie project 4K and 60fps versions were re-rendered from Blender sources as part of the Sunflower project at renderfarming.net.
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY)
Xiph.org Test Media
The Xiph.Org Foundation maintain a set of test media in lossless versions of original renders and audio. This is a great resource if you need to test codec quality or need the originals for any reason.
Jellyfish Video Bitrate Test Files
The Jellyfish Video Bitrate Test Files page has a number of H.264 and H.265/HEVC encoded MKV video clips that can be used for testing the network streaming and playback performance of media streamers & HTPCs.
Kodi Test Samples
The Kodi video player project wiki has a Kodi Test Samples page linking to various video and audio test clips (some of the linked media may be subject to copyright or inaccessible).
Test Video-on-Demand streams
Ben Garney maintains a list of public test streams for HLS and DASH.
