How Long Should a Year in Review Video Be?
The honest answer is shorter than you want it to be. The maths is simple, length per day multiplied by days filmed, but the useful question is not how long you can make it. It is how long people will still be watching.
The arithmetic
Assume a well-documented year with footage on around 300 days, which is typical for someone who films regularly without trying. At one second per day that is five minutes. At two seconds, ten. At three, fifteen. At five seconds a day, the same year runs to twenty-five minutes.
If you filmed on 150 days, halve all of those. The number of days with footage matters as much as the length you choose, and it is the number people consistently misjudge.
What people actually sit through
Around six minutes is the practical ceiling for a film watched with other people in a room. That corresponds to one second per day across a well-documented year, which is not a coincidence. The one-second convention exists because it produces a watchable runtime.
Past ten minutes, attention reliably goes, even among people who appear in the film. Past twenty, it becomes something you watch alone in sections, which is a legitimate thing to make but a different thing.
When longer is right
Longer clips suit compilations where individual moments need time to read. A baby’s first year benefits from two seconds because infants do things slowly. A wedding week or a fitness block reads better at three, because a full rep or a full toast needs the room.
The rule of thumb: the shorter the total period, the longer each clip can afford to be. A fortnight at three seconds is under a minute. A year at three seconds is a commitment.
Make two
The pragmatic answer is to stop agonising and export twice. A short version at one second per day to share, and a longer one at three to keep. The source clips are untouched by exporting, so the second version costs only the render.
Rough guide
- 300 days at 1 second. About 5 minutes. Watchable in a room.
- 300 days at 2 seconds. About 10 minutes. Borderline.
- 300 days at 3 seconds. About 15 minutes. Watch it alone.
- Short periods can afford longer clips; long ones cannot.
FAQ
- What is the most common choice?
- One second per day for a full year, two or three for anything shorter than a couple of months.
- Does a longer film feel more complete?
- Rarely. Beyond about ten minutes the extra length tends to dilute rather than add, because the pace stops reading as a passage of time.
- Can I change my mind after building it?
- Yes. The per-day length is a setting on the compilation, so you can change it and export a different version from the same clips.