Funeral slideshow guide
How many photos for a funeral slideshow?
Work from the time, not from a number. At an unhurried pace a slideshow shows about twenty photographs a minute, so a three-minute slideshow holds about sixty and a five-minute one about a hundred.
Start with the minutes you have been given
The slideshow is one part of a service that has a running order, and the time for it is usually decided before the photographs are. Ask your celebrant or funeral director how long it can run. Once you know that, the number of photographs is arithmetic.
Photographs for each length
Three seconds is long enough to recognise a face and short enough that the room keeps watching. Seven seconds is slow and suits a small collection. Two seconds is quick, and about as fast as a slideshow can go before it stops being looked at.
| Length | Slow, about 7 seconds each | Unhurried, about 3 seconds each | The most that fit, at 2 seconds each |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 minutes | 17 | 40 | 60 |
| 3 minutes | 25 | 60 | 90 |
| 5 minutes | 42 | 100 | 150 |
| 8 minutes | 68 | 160 | 240 |
| 10 minutes | 85 | 200 | 300 |
Photographs only. A video clip or a spoken message takes the place of several photographs, and the opening title and closing words take a little time of their own, so treat these as a guide and not a target.
Why the published advice disagrees
Australian funeral homes’ own guides suggest anything from twenty or thirty photographs to sixty or eighty. They are not arguing about pace. They are describing slideshows of different lengths: two or three minutes at one end, six to nine at the other. That is why the minutes come first.
If you have too many
Most families do, and choosing which to leave out is the hard part. Two things help. Play a shorter film in the service and a longer one at the gathering afterwards, where people can watch for as long as they like. And spread what you keep across the whole life, so that one holiday does not crowd out a decade.
In Videmory, when you set a film to a length and there is more than will fit, it shows you the memories it would leave out so that you can decide. Nothing is dropped without your seeing it. The long film can run for up to an hour.
If you have too few
A short slideshow is fine. Forty photographs shown well are better than forty stretched over ten minutes. Videmory never holds a photograph longer than seven seconds to fill a time; it tells you to add more or choose a shorter length. If relatives have photographs you do not, that is what the family’s link is for: how to collect photos from the family.
Short answers
Quick questions.
How many photos for a 3 minute funeral slideshow?
About sixty at an unhurried three seconds each. Anything from about 26, shown slowly, to about 90, shown quickly, will fill three minutes.
How many photos for a 5 minute funeral slideshow?
About a hundred at three seconds each, and somewhere between 43 and 150 depending on the pace.
How long should each photo stay on screen?
About three seconds is comfortable. When Videmory fits a film to a length it holds each photograph for between two and seven seconds, and no longer.
Is there a limit on how many photos we can add in Videmory?
There is no set number. Each file can be up to 500 MB and one tribute can hold up to 6 GB, which is room for many hundreds of photographs. You choose which of them go in the film.
Videmory Tribute
A funeral slideshow everyone who knew them helps make.
Send one private link. Family and friends add their photographs and video from their own phones, and Videmory puts a life in order and builds the film. AU$199 for the finished film, after you have watched it in full.
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