What 28 Portfolio Films Reveal About Video Length

The original video length statistics

All figures below are The Camera Guys’ calculations from the same 28-film sample. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place; runtime averages are rounded to the nearest second.

1. 28 films met the inclusion rules after screening 58 visible portfolio records.
2. 2:37 was the median runtime. The two central films were 2:33 and 2:41.
3. 3:26 was the mean runtime. That is total running time divided by 28.
4. 17.9% ran under one minute (5 films).
5. 14.3% ran from one minute to under two minutes (4 films).
6. 35.7% ran from two minutes to under three minutes (10 films), the largest band.
7. 25.0% ran from three minutes to under five minutes (7 films).
8. 7.1% ran for five minutes or longer (2 films).
9. 67.9% were under three minutes (19 films).
10. 92.9% were under five minutes (26 films).
11. 96 minutes 19 seconds was the sample’s combined running time.
12. The range was 12 seconds to 32 minutes 21 seconds. These were the Edd Callegari property film and Sophie Taylor radio interview respectively.
13. The longest film accounted for 33.6% of all runtime. One of 28 films supplied roughly a third of the recorded minutes.
14. Without that interview, the mean falls to 2:22 across the remaining 27 films: about 64 seconds shorter.
15. Without that interview, the median is 2:33, just four seconds below the full-sample median.

The five bands are mutually exclusive: exactly 60 seconds belongs in the second band, exactly 120 in the third, and exactly 180 in the fourth. The “under three” and “under five” figures are cumulative and should not be added to the bands.

Why the average is a fragile creative brief

The 32:21 Sophie Taylor interview is a legitimate portfolio film. Keeping it in the dataset is appropriate for the question we asked. It also pulls the mean upwards because the mean counts every second equally.

The median is the middle of the ordered sample, so that long recording has much less influence on it. Removing the interview is a sensitivity check, not a correction or a claim that the film should have been shorter. The full sample remains our headline result.

For someone commissioning a film, the useful lesson is to ask what a benchmark contains. Is it counting advertisements, interviews, explainers, event highlights or training sessions? Does it count every social cutdown as another film? A precise average can still be a poor match for the job you need done.

Three real films, three different time requirements

The SMART Tools product advert runs for 30 seconds. The Hampshire Business Show film runs for 2:17. The YLEM Terra Firma film runs for 6:22. Those are observed deliverable lengths, not evidence that one approach outperformed another.

A product action can be demonstrated economically. A project explanation may need contributors, context and a sequence of evidence. Event coverage has a different editorial job again. Our recommendation is to decide which information must survive the edit before setting a target duration.

For a corporate video production brief, write down the viewer’s question, the evidence needed to answer it and the next step. Then separate the main film from any trailers or cutdowns. That makes the proposed runtime something the production team can test against the material.

Methodology: what we counted

Audit version: 1.0, 16 September 2026. This is a snapshot of selected portfolio work, not a study of films produced during 2026.

We exported the 58 published project records flagged for inclusion in our main portfolio. For records with a mapped full-film Vimeo ID, we retrieved the public Vimeo oEmbed metadata and recorded its duration in seconds. We used the full-film mapping, not the short self-hosted autoplay previews used by the portfolio grid. We checked the returned titles against the project records.

We excluded 22 records without a mapped Vimeo ID. Seven further records were wedding, music or artist-performance work, outside this audit’s business, organisational and event-film scope. Two Sentry uploads had the same returned title and 38-second duration; we conservatively treated them as one film, retaining the record linked to the case study. That leaves 58 − 22 − 7 − 1 = 28 films.

The Sentry decision is based on matching metadata, not a frame-by-frame identity test. The sample includes two distinct Essex Sport films: the basketball promo and the overall promotional film. A project can have more deliverables than its mapped film; we did not assume a portfolio entry represented every version delivered.

Mean = 5,779 seconds ÷ 28 = 206.393 seconds. Median = (153 + 161) ÷ 2 = 157 seconds. The longest-film share is 1,941 ÷ 5,779 × 100 = 33.587%. Excluding that film, mean = 3,838 ÷ 27 = 142.148 seconds. Calculations use unrounded values.

What these numbers cannot tell you

This is a small, selected sample from one production company. Portfolio choices and the availability of mapped Vimeo IDs affect what enters it. Missing films may have different lengths. Several films come from related clients or projects, so the rows are not an independent random sample of businesses.

We did not collect watch time, completion, audience, distribution spend, conversions or production cost. We therefore make no claim that two to three minutes is the best-performing length, that the median represents the UK industry, or that longer films are more expensive. Changing the sample rules would change the results.

The complete film-by-film dataset

The table contains every included observation. Vimeo runtimes are the values retrieved on the audit date; films or hosted versions may change later. Runtime is shown as minutes:seconds. Source links make it possible to inspect the films rather than relying on our summary alone.

How to cite this research

If you use our analysis, please credit and link to The Camera Guys’ Portfolio Film Runtime Audit (2026). A suitable reference is: The Camera Guys (2026), What 28 Portfolio Films Reveal About Video Length, version 1.0, audited 16 September 2026.

In The Camera Guys’ audit of 28 eligible portfolio films, the median runtime was 2 minutes 37 seconds. The sample covers selected work from one production company and is not an industry-wide benchmark.

Please keep the sample description with the statistic. The analysis is ours; individual film links provide the underlying duration evidence. This article contains no borrowed market-survey statistics presented as our research.

For wider context, our video marketing statistics guide collects externally sourced research. For your own brief, use this audit to ask better questions about comparisons, then talk to us about what your film needs to communicate.