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countdown clock on FCP
I’d like to add a countdown clock to a 1 minute video.
The entire video is 60 seconds long, so I’d like to have a clock on the lower corner counting down from 60 to 0.
I have FCP 7.
Can someone tell me how to do this? I’m a novice on FCP.
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3 Replies
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Create this in Motion….FCP doesn’t do this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70RoLSMM7-o
Shane
Little Frog Post
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This might be better:
https://alastairvance.com/2014/09/15/how-to-create-a-5-minute-countdown-video-with-apple-motion-5/Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
This is how you do it in Motion 5, using FX Factory’s time code plug-in:
Set the duration of the total time you want shown.
Add the FX Factory time code plug in. Adjust the font and colors to taste.The key is that the sliders controlling offset are keyframeable, so you turn on the keyframe recorder button and set the play head at the end of the clip, slide the start offset slider until the screen shows zero, go back to the start, slide the slider to the starting number you wanted, hit the little keyframe diamond, then >spacebar<, and you have a proper counting-down display, you can build this as an FCP generator and publish it to FCP ready to use any time, no tedious rendering and imports of space-wasting movies needed.
If you only have the plug-ins that came with Motion 5, go to library> generators to find the time code generator.
Set the Motion project duration first to, say, five minutes for your five-minute countdown.
Bring in the time code generator. Tab to the “Generator” sub-tab in the inspector window, to find the time offset controls. Turn off the check box labeled: “current timecode”. Now you can play with the offset sliders and see how you set the starting and end time there. Be sure to make your first setting the “zero” setting, by putting your play head at the end of the motion timeline, turning on the red button for the keyframe recorder, and clicking the amber diamond in the offset sliders to set zero time as the last frame. Turn off the red keyframe recorder button, take the playhead to the first frame, turn the recorder back on, slide your offset slider to five minutes, zero seconds. Turn off the recorder. Hit the play button or spacebar to see that indeed, you just made a time code counter that counts downwards. Publish it as a FCP Generator, and you can call this up, pre-made and able to be altered, in FCPx. It comes with alpha channel, so you can lay it right over video in it’s own track, lumakey it, or chromakey it, whatever you want. Rendering it in chroma green letters on black is another way to layer it and make the keyed version any color you need…
The point of the exercise is to make it a generator which takes up zero space instead of having to render a movie of whatever length, which takes up drive space. In some training broadcasts, you may need to create a live countdown an hour long. This is a more economical way to do it versus building an hour long movie.
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