How to make a stopwatch that can be controlled

Adobe After Effects

How to make a stopwatch that can be controlled

Posted by Dave Martin on October 11, 2015 at 3:23 pm

Hi there,

Part 1.

I need to make an on-screen timer that I can start & stop by key-framing a null
– E.G. When the null is at x=0 the time is stopped but, if x>1 the timers runs.

However, Once stopped again I want the timer to stay at that time and then continue counting up when the null is moved again.

Part 2 (Not essential but would be nice)

I would like to be able to read the timer value and subtract that from another value.
I.E. The length of the comp

Thinking caps on guys, I have no idea where to start 🙂

Cheers

Walter Soyka replied 10 years, 9 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
3 Replies

Tudor “ted” jelescu
October 12, 2015 at 7:29 am

Create a continuous animation of the timer and any other elements that need to be connected with it, precomp and enable Time Remap on the layer. Now you can create keyframes where needed to “stop and start” the timer and stretch that one frame for however long you need the timer stopped.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist
Dave Martin
October 12, 2015 at 6:37 pm

“Old skool” Like it. If there’s no other way of doing it, I guess I have to!

Thanks.
Walter Soyka
October 13, 2015 at 9:18 am

The old-school approach is nice here, because expressions live in the moment. Expressions are evaluated for a given point in time, and have no “memory” of what’s happened earlier on the timeline.

This gets tricky to code, and slow to evaluate. In order to create a running stopwatch like this, the expression would have to include code to evaluate all frames before the current point in time.

In other words, frame 10 must include a loop that starts at frame 1, evaluates every frame through frame 9, then evaluates frame 10. Frame 11 must include a loop that starts at frame 1, evaluates every frame through frame 10, then evaluates frame 11. Frame 1000 must include a loop that starts at frame 1, evaluates every frame through frame 999, then evaluates frame 1000.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn]

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