AI training data
The footage.cool library can be licensed as training data for machine-learning and generative models. Every clip is real camera or drone footage that Phil Maher filmed himself between 2014 and 2024, so the chain of title runs to one person and none of it is AI-generated. The per-clip licenses sold on the rest of the site don't cover training. This page describes the separate dataset license and how to buy it, by email or through an AI agent.
What's in it
- Scenes: drone and aerial coastlines, open ocean, underwater reefs and marine wildlife (whales, dolphins, rays, reef fish), beaches, desert, roads, towns, resorts, Rocky Mountain landscapes, and some street and people footage.
- Places: about three quarters from Baja California Sur, Mexico (Cabo Pulmo, the East Cape, Los Cabos, La Paz, Todos Santos), roughly 12,500 clips from Colorado, and about 1,600 from the California coast.
- Media: every order includes 256x144 H.264 analysis proxies. Commercial orders can add the clean masters, which are 4K UHD on nearly every clip.
- Metadata per clip: title, description, tags, scene category, city, region, country, shot year, duration, a people-visible flag, and the master's verified resolution, codec, and frame rate where it has been probed. Delivered as JSONL and CSV.
No model or property releases exist. The people-visible flag marks clips where people are a subject. Distant or incidental figures can still appear in unflagged clips, so use the flag as a filter, not a guarantee.
Tiers and prices
| Tier | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Evaluation sample | Free | Up to 100 clips with full metadata and watermarked proxies, matched to your filters. Organizational email required. Reviewed by Phil before delivery. Non-commercial evaluation only. |
| Research license | $25,000 flat | Up to 25,000 clips, proxies and metadata. Accredited academic institutions only, with an institutional email. Non-commercial training, evaluation, and publication. Paid by invoice. |
| Commercial training license | $3.00 per clip with proxies, $10.00 per clip with clean masters | $10,000 minimum, up to 50,000 clips per self-serve order. Proxy orders up to $10,000 can pay by card; masters and larger orders are paid by bank wire. |
Prices are fixed and the license is always non-exclusive. Full-library deals and custom terms are negotiated by email at licensing@footage.cool.
Key terms
The Dataset License Agreement governs every order. In plain language:
- You get a non-exclusive license to train, fine-tune, evaluate, and validate models with the dataset. You own your models and what they generate.
- The footage, frames, and metadata stay inside your organization and its contractors. You can't share, publish, resell, or upload them, or anything derived from them that could recreate the footage.
- No facial recognition, biometric identification, surveillance, re-identification of people, or deepfakes of real people.
- No competing footage library or dataset product, and no training a model to reproduce the clips.
- Evaluation samples are for 90 days of internal evaluation. Research licenses are for accredited academic institutions and non-commercial work.
- Every delivery carries hidden identifiers tied to your order. A copy found outside your organization is presumed to come from it.
- Releasing the footage without permission costs the greater of three times the fees or $79 per clip released, on top of injunctions and legal fees.
- Fees aren't refundable after delivery, and a chargeback suspends the license.
- Colorado law applies, and disputes go to arbitration in Denver.
The buyer gets the accepted text by email the moment it's accepted, and again in the delivered LICENSE.txt.
How an order works
- Scope. Filter by year, scene category, country, place, keywords, clip length, people, and verified 4K masters. Scoping is free and returns clip counts, hours, and an estimated price.
- Quote. The quote freezes a clip selection for your order and prices it. It needs a work email at your organization's own domain (Gmail, Outlook, and similar mailboxes are refused) and a short description of the intended use. Quotes last 72 hours.
- Accept. You accept the Dataset License Agreement. An agent accepting for you sends back the agreement's SHA-256 hash, which proves it presented the current version.
- Pay. Small proxy orders pay on Stripe's hosted checkout. Masters, research, and orders above $10,000 receive an invoice and pay by bank wire.
- Review. Phil reviews every order by hand after payment clears, usually within one business day. A declined order is refunded in full.
- Delivery. You receive a private manifest with the metadata files, the signed license, and per-clip media links. The links stay valid for 30 days.
Each delivery is unique to its order. Proxies carry an invisible order-specific watermark, metadata records name the licensee, and the clip selection differs between orders. A chargeback or refund revokes the download links immediately.
Buying through an AI agent
An agent connected to the footage.cool MCP server at
https://www.footage.cool/mcp can run the whole order with seven tools:
describe_training_dataset, get_dataset_agreement, scope_training_dataset,
quote_training_dataset, accept_dataset_agreement, create_dataset_checkout,
and get_dataset_order. It needs your approval before it accepts the agreement, and card
details never pass through the agent. Agents without MCP can call the same steps over plain HTTPS:
GET https://www.footage.cool/api/datasets/catalog
GET https://www.footage.cool/api/datasets/agreement.txt
POST https://www.footage.cool/api/datasets/scope {"tier":"commercial","filters":{"query":"whale","exclude_people":true}}
POST https://www.footage.cool/api/datasets/quotes {"tier":"evaluation","customer_email":"you@yourlab.com","customer_org":"Your Lab","intended_use":"..."}
POST https://www.footage.cool/api/datasets/accept {"order_token":"...","agreement_sha256":"...","legal_name":"...","signer_name":"...","confirmed":true}
POST https://www.footage.cool/api/datasets/checkout {"order_token":"..."}
GET https://www.footage.cool/api/datasets/orders/{order_token}
The catalog document lists every filter, price, and rule in machine-readable form.
Questions
Email licensing@footage.cool with the scope, corpus size, model type, and whether outputs are commercial. It reaches Phil Maher, who shot the footage.
Last updated October 26, 2026.