Why is there extra blank footage on my digital files?

Excellent question!

It is very important to us that we capture every last second of your memories, so we record every tape from start to finish, from the very first second to the very last.

Some people record footage for the entire tape, and some for only the first little bit. However, we regularly see tapes where there is footage in the first portion of a tape, nothing in the middle, and then more footage at the end. 

Since we don't want to miss that, we record every tape straight through.