Determining the length of your film and videos

Movie film length is determined by the diameter (distance across) of the film on the reel. Many of the films that come to the Leave A Legacy studios are 3 inches across and on blue plastic reels. These are 50 feet long when they are full. The attached chart shows the length of film on different sizes of reels.

Video length is determined with a video tape player. Use a VCR for VHS tapes and a video camera for the various types of smaller tapes. Put your video in the player and rewind it to the beginning. Eject the video tape and then push it back in (this resets the counter on the player to zero). Press play or fast forward and the digital number counter will display the amount of time the tape has recorded on it. When the player continues to fast forward or play, but the number on the display doesn’t change you can record that number as the amount of time on that video tape.

If you don’t want to be bothered with determining the length yourself – you can rest assured that the Leave A Legacy team will do it for you before we begin transfer.