Hey guys,
I am surprised when I googled this I didn't find anything for kdenlive. Many times when you watch a benchmarking video on youtube people will have a stopwatch overlay to count the amount of time it took for a benchmark to run. Does kdenlive have anything like this? A point on the video i say "Go" or "Starting Now" and then i'd like a stopwatch overlay to come on screen using the composite or affine transition and it would be an actual running stopwatch or timer. It would have to be in seconds, even if milliseconds was in it that would be awesome. Any help would be appreciated. I wish I wouldve posted this question already so I'd have something for my current iPhone 4S vs 5S video I am editing up right now. Hopefully someone will respond by the time I do another youtube video requiring the timer.
Thanks,
Ubu

i ended up finding a solution right after I posted the question. Someone created timer videos, i didn't even think that they were merely movie files. He created the files for 3 different frame rates, 25 (PAL), 29.97 Drop frame (NTSC) and 30 FPS, Non-drop-frame . They can be found here: http://www.mediacollege.com/downloads/video/timecode/
Then to get the image of when the video in the background stops doing what you were timing, i just extracted a frame from kdenlive, opened the image in GIMP, cut out the section of the timer only, pasted that into a screen resolution which matched my original footage (this was 720x480 video) and i saved that as a png and then inserted the image on a track above, applied the affine and moved it where it should go so it all appears like the timer is running and then stops matching when the video in the background stopped and that way I can leave the ending time on the screen for a little bit as well. Once i get it rendered i'll link everyone to it so you can see how it turned out.

Here's how it turned out, I thought pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNpdJ9CrkQc

Nicely done! I needed a timer for a video once, and ended up finding a javascript stopwatch online. I screen-captured the timer and used it; worked quite well.

Another option, in retrospect, would have been to open Qtractor or Ardour and hit Play. They both have SMPTE timers that one could screen capture and use.

Either way, nice solution and the video looks good.

thanks for the feedback, the only real pain is when I need to show the end timer. i was using the "extract frame" to save off the whole image, then opening that in gimp, cutting out only the black rectangle with the time, the pasting that into a transparent background image 1280x720, then saving that to import into the kdenlive project and then use composite or affine transition.

In the future, you can use a combination of Effects > Rotate and set an offset x and offset y to position the text of the timer where you want it
and then use Effect > Alpha Manipulation > MaskOMate to crop off the parts of the image you don't need.

That should save you the trouble of a GIMP roundtrip, if I understand you correctly.

Not necessarily, as I understood the example given to freeze the timer at then end and to show it for some seconds so that the audience can read the final timer outcome. But I may also misunderstood.

I re-read it, yes I see why GIMP was being used.

I think that can still be done within Kdenlive with Add Effect > Motion > Freeze:
1. position the mouse cursor over the desired frame-to-be-frozen
2. cut to create a new clip
3. Add Effect > Motion > Freeze ; the new clip will now consist only of that single frame.
4. Move Freeze effect to TOP of effect stack so that the clip freezes and then is processed through the Crop or Mask or whatever you are using for the picture-in-picture effect.

ok, awesome. sounds like that Freeze effect should do what I need it to do. that would save me a ton of time next time I have to use an on screen stopwatch. so when I use the freeze effect can I still drag the clip to any desired length and yet it remains that 1 frozen frame? that would save me so much time instead of having to extract frame and use gimp and what not. THANKS