Countdown Timer in Video

Bongorific

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Jul 16, 2005
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Balboa Towers
I'm looking for a way to display a countdown timer for a video clip. The clip is about 30 seconds long, so I want a timer to start at 30 seconds and countdown until the end of the clip. Ideally, the timer will display to the hundredth of a second. When I open the clip in windows media player, it obviously counts up and only in whole seconds. I'm unsure if there's an option in WMP, or some other media player, that will allow me to do this. Or some external stopwatch app that can sync with a video. Or an option to edit the video in a software program to add a countdown timer. Any easy way to do this?
 

phrenile

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Aug 4, 2005
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Do you need it to be part of the video or just somewhere in the player window?

If you open the video in VLC and click on the time code, it'll toggle between counting up from zero and counting down from the total duration.
 

Bongorific

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Jul 16, 2005
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In can be part of video or just part of player. I'm assuming having some sort of countdown time stamp would be much more difficult as Bigpupp alludes. Good tip on VLC and I can at least get that counting in the desired direction. Preferably, there would be a way to do that and display the time in tenths or hundredths of seconds.
 

ifmanis5

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Sep 29, 2007
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Rotten Apple
Most NLEs allow you to do on screen alpha-numerics (they also have timer functions of some sort if you dig deep enough). If you just changed the number down manually changing it every second you might find that to be the easiest way instead of trying to time something up. There are a bunch of countdowns on YouTube you could download and then superimpose. You could also do it in Photoshop which has the advantages of Alpha channels.
 

Bongorific

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SoSH Member
Jul 16, 2005
8,433
Balboa Towers
Most NLEs allow you to do on screen alpha-numerics (they also have timer functions of some sort if you dig deep enough). If you just changed the number down manually changing it every second you might find that to be the easiest way instead of trying to time something up. There are a bunch of countdowns on YouTube you could download and then superimpose. You could also do it in Photoshop which has the advantages of Alpha channels.
Some of this is over my head, but I downloaded a free trial of the Adobe products and found some YouTube tutorials for Adding a timer to a video in Premiere. I may give this a shot if I can't find a player or easier way to do this.