The questions
that keep coming.

Every frame is San Diego County, shot by Spearhead Media and its contributors. There are 112 neighborhoods and landmarks in the library, from La Jolla Cove and Torrey Pines to Barrio Logan and Rancho Santa Fe. Nothing is licensed in from elsewhere.

Continuously. New shoots are added as they are finished, and the library is sorted newest-first by default, so what you see at the top of a search is the most recent work.

Both. Aerials are flown on a Mavic 3 Cine and ground work is shot on cinema bodies. Every clip page lists what it was shot on and at what time of day.

Video downloads are the full-resolution master where one exists: commonly 5.1K ProRes from the Mavic 3 Cine, otherwise 4K. Photographs download at full sensor resolution.

Yes. Custom shoots are the other half of the business. If a neighborhood or angle is missing, ask. Often it exists and simply hasn’t been published yet.

Search by neighborhood name first. That is how the library is organized, and the sidebar lists every one with a count. Free text also searches titles and tags, so “sunset drone” or “surfers” works.

Aerial footage is recorded without usable audio, so it ships silent. Ground clips keep their production sound where it is worth having.

Yes, and you can filter to them. The library is shot deliberately in both orientations rather than cropping horizontal footage down.

Most run between eight and thirty seconds: long enough to cut from, short enough to download quickly. The length is on every thumbnail.

Some, going back to 2019. Older work sits in the same library and is searchable the same way; the capture date is on each clip page.

A monthly credit allowance: 500 video and 500 photo credits a month, and 500 stock pack credits a year. They pay for Single Use and Extended licenses at the same credit prices as every plan. The Unlimited license, which adds unlimited finished pieces with no time limit, broadcast and out-of-home, is not paid in credits on 1 Year Pro: you buy it by card at half price, $299.50 against $599 for everyone else. A fair-use ceiling of thirty downloads a day applies.

Credits climb the whole license ladder at the same ratio the money does: one credit for Single Use, four for Extended, nine for Unlimited, in the kind that matches the file: video credits for clips, photo credits for photographs. A pack credit claims a whole pack, and every clip in it arrives licensed Single Use. In the editor an edit costs one credit for the edit plus one credit for each clip you do not already hold, and those clips become your own Single Use licenses, keepable and usable outside that edit. Credits of one kind never pay for the other, and anything you have licensed stays yours whatever happens to the credits.

Yes, while your membership continues. Unspent credits carry from month to month and into a renewed term. If a term ends and is not renewed, unspent credits end with it, but if you rejoin the same plan within 30 days they come back on top of your new credits. Licenses you have already taken are yours for good either way.

Your license never expires and keeps covering what you made with it. Downloading the file again needs an active membership, and rejoining unlocks every file you have licensed. Two exceptions: the first download of a license always goes through, and a license bought outright by card can be downloaded again for 30 days.

1 Year includes 4 stock pack credits a year, one every 3 months. 6 Month includes 2 stock pack credits over 6 months, one every 3 months. Pack credits are for the whole term, not each month. 1 Month and 3 Month buy packs one at a time.

It keeps the library fast and stops bulk scraping. Thirty full-resolution files a day is well beyond what any single project needs; if you have a genuine reason to exceed it, ask and it can be raised on your account.

Yes. Each plan has its own price for an extra credit, from $24 a credit on the shortest term down to $14 on the longest. 1 Year Pro tops up at $14 a credit too. Bigger bundles cost less a credit, up to 20% off, though on a plan shorter than a year never less than 1 Year pays. Your prices are on your account page, and credits are paid for by card, on their own, never in your cart.

Any time, from your account page. Changes take effect at the start of the next billing period. Canceling stops the renewal, not the term: you keep access and your monthly credits until the term you paid for ends, and every license you have taken stays yours.

The app ships with the six-month, one-year and one-year Pro plans. It carries the same library and the same projects as the website, so an edit started on a shoot continues at your desk.

The longer the term, the lower the monthly rate and the more credits it carries, so one year costs less per month than one month and gives three times the credits. The arithmetic is on the account page against whatever you are on now.

A membership is for one company and the people working in it. If several people need their own logins and their own credit balances, ask about a team account.

Nothing breaks. Wherever you run short, the site offers the missing credits at your plan’s price right there, then lets you finish what you were doing. You can also license anything outright at the single price, or wait for the month to turn over.

No trial, but the monthly plan is month to month and cancels from the account page, so a single month is the smallest commitment.

Email brady@spearheadmedia.com with a few links to your work. The library is San Diego shot by people who live here, so what matters is that you know the place and can shoot it, not the size of your reel.

A share of each single license, paid on the sale, at a rate agreed when you join. It varies by contributor and by the kind of work. On top of that, a portion of the month’s membership revenue is pooled and divided in proportion to what members actually licensed with their credits, so a clip licensed ten times earns ten shares of that pool.

Monthly. A period is attributed in the first days of the following month and closed into one payout per contributor. You can see what a period owes before it is closed.

Set out in the contributor agreement when you join: what is exclusive, what is not, and how long it runs. Ask before you shoot anything specifically for this and it will be spelled out first.

Not at first. New contributors are reviewed before anything is published: titles, tagging and whether the shot is genuinely usable. Once you have a track record that review step is dropped.

Neighborhoods rather than landmarks. There are a hundred clips of the Coronado bridge and none of a Tuesday morning in Normal Heights. Ordinary places, shot properly, are what people search for and cannot find.

Shot in a flat or log profile where the camera offers one, properly exposed, and stable. Nothing upscaled, nothing shot at a frame rate you cannot cut with. Aerials must be flown legally.

To shoot the San Diego library, effectively yes. The point is people who know the place. Elsewhere, ask about running the library in your own city.

Commercial use of the clip or photograph in your own project: a listing video, a campaign, a website, a broadcast spot. It is not exclusive, and it may not be resold or redistributed as stock.

Both clips and photographs climb the same three steps. Single Use covers one finished piece for as long as it exists. Extended covers unlimited pieces for one brand for two years and adds paid advertising and permanent website use: $279 for a clip, $279 for a photograph, or four credits. Unlimited drops the time limit and adds broadcast, out-of-home and national print: $599 and $599, or nine credits.

The library is editorial-and-commercial-safe for the way it is normally used: wide neighborhood and landscape work with no identifiable talent. Anything requiring a release is marked on the clip page.

Yes. That is what most members do. The license is held by whoever downloads it, so license under the account that will be named if the use is ever questioned.

No. Redistribution as stock, resale, or inclusion in a template or product for onward licensing is the one thing the license excludes.

Single Use never expires for the piece it was used in. Extended covers unlimited pieces for two years, and anything made inside those two years keeps its license for good; new work after that needs a new license. Unlimited has no end date at all.

Paid advertising and permanent website use start at the Extended step. Single Use covers one finished piece (a listing video, a post, a page), and broadcast, billboards and national print are what Unlimited is for.

Ask. Individual clips can be pulled from the library for a period at a price. It is not part of the standard license, but it is possible.

Not required. Appreciated, never demanded.

Yes. A single license is $69 for one-time use, clip or photograph. No membership needed.

A whole neighborhood or theme in one purchase, typically 35 to 55 files. North Park, Sunset Cliffs, San Diego Sunsets and thirty-odd others. Packs start at $249, against several thousand dollars if the same clips were licensed one at a time.

Card, Apple Pay and Link, through Stripe. Your card details go to Stripe directly and never touch our servers. Memberships renew automatically and you can cancel in one step from your account page.

Yes, from your account page, in one step, without contacting anyone. Canceling stops the next charge. You keep the term you have already paid for, right to the end of it, and your credits keep arriving each month until then. Terms are paid up front and are not refunded part-way through, so there is nothing owing either way.

Yes, if your plan carries pack credits. One pack credit takes a whole pack, whatever its list price.

For packs and annual memberships, yes. Ask and an invoice will come the same day.

A file that is genuinely unusable (corrupt, mislabeled, not what the page said) is replaced or refunded. Downloaded and used is not returnable, which is the nature of the thing.

The AI assistant inside your account. Tell it what you are making in a sentence and it searches the library, fills your saved list, plans a photo carousel or builds an edit and opens it in the editor. It also works inside Spearhead Studio and Spearhead Social, where it checks clips and writes captions.

All three come with 1 Year and 1 Year Pro, along with the editor. Shorter plans can move up at any time from the account page.

Never. It can find, save, plan and build, but licensing is always your step, with the cost shown before you confirm.

Up to 60 messages a day, which is plenty for real work. The count starts again at midnight Pacific.

It sees what you could see yourself: your saved lists, your plan and your credit balance. It never sees another member's account, and it cannot post anything anywhere.

Type a place, like surfers in La Jolla, and it cuts vertical reels from real footage of that place, in three versions to choose from. Watching them in HD is free. Downloading one costs a video credit for each clip you do not own yet, plus one for the edit, and those clips become yours.

Yes. Cut it again, have Spearhead Scout rewrite the caption, undo either one, or open the reel in the editor and finish it by hand.

Say who you are in one sentence and Spearhead Scout plans up to 8 weeks of reels and photo posts from the library, writes a caption for each, and puts them on a calendar. Once you approve, each post goes to Instagram at its time.

It is in testing now. Posting to Instagram waits on Meta approving our app, and it opens to members on the included plans as soon as that lands, at no extra cost.

Business and creator accounts, which is what Instagram allows apps to post to. Switching a personal account to a creator account is free and takes a minute in the Instagram app.

No. Every caption can be edited, and another version is a tap away. Nothing posts until you have approved it.

Cutting a rough edit straight from the library without leaving the site: trim clips, order them, drop in music and record a voiceover. It is meant for fast turnarounds, not for replacing a full NLE.

One year and one year Pro, along with Spearhead Scout, Spearhead Studio and Spearhead Social. Projects sync between the website and the iPhone app, which also comes with the six month plan.

Yes. Your own video, photographs and music sit alongside library clips in the same timeline. Uploads stay private to your account.

A rendered cut you can download, plus the underlying clips under your normal license, so a project can move into Premiere or Resolve whenever it needs to.

You pick the shape, frame rate and resolution when you start a project: 16:9, 9:16 or square, at 24 or 30 frames, in 1080p or 4K. The viewer takes that shape so what you see is what you get.

Yes. It counts you in, plays the cut while you talk so the take lines up with the pictures, and draws the level as it records.

The iPhone app is where phone editing lives, and it opens the same projects. The web editor expects a keyboard and a bit of screen.