I’m creating highlight videos of my kids’ hockey games, and I want to add a game clock the output.
I found the Timer Filter which works nicely for games like soccer where the game clock never stops. But in Hockey (as well as many other games), the referees can stop the clock any time and thus the time insert needs to stop counting as well.
But dealing with timeouts or other small pauses in the clock seems to be outside the scope of this filter. Creating a new time filter for each continuous flow of the games does not scale.
Apparently, I can use keyframes to change the location/size of the clock, but not its value.
For me, using keyframes would be the optimal solution: to replace (or add to) the “Start Delay”, “Duration” and “Offset” parameters the possibility to define via a keyframe “the clock should display xx:yy” at this point in the video. Or maybe a “pause”/“continue”. And add a parameter what the clock should do if it reaches a value that – according to a keyframe – should be reached only in a few seconds. (e.g. “stop it already”, “adjust the speed to make it match”, …
In the easiest use-case, select one of those timers and use OBS-Studio or other screen-recorder to record the session. Then add that video to your project in Shotcut.
The Time Remap filter is your friend. Make a video of a timer with a transparent background, and put it on the highest video track. Add the Time Remap filter. An upward diagonal keyframe line at 1.0x will advance the clock in real-time. Add keyframe points where the clock is paused, and make a straight horizontal line between those keyframes. This says “do not advance any frames during this time”. Then have the remap line resume a 1.0x upward rise when the play clock restarts.
HI @otmar - welcome to the forum!
Just another variation on @austin’s solution…
What I did - set up my timer with a blue background. Exported just the timer as an mp4.
Imported it back into SC - Hockey video on V1, timer video on V2.
Hid the timer video track. Split the Hockey video at the first stop point, then - show timer video, split at the same point, then exported as a frame. Then imported… (To make it easy and fast, I’ve set “E” as a keyboard shortcut for Export Frame. Then just double-click the “recents” pane and drag onto timeline to import the exported frame).
Placed the exported frames on V3 and shoved the timer video along.
Repeated for other split points.
Applied a crop filter (and SPR filter) to place the timer where I want.
Then copied/pasted the filters to each timer clip.
It was really quick - 5 minutes…
Here’s my SC timeline:
Add a transparent clip on the track above the one with the video clip.
Extend the transparent clip to make it as long as the clip under.
Add the Timer filter. You can make the timer bigger than needed. You will add a filter at the end to position, resize it, and if you want, another filter to adjust it’s opacity.
Split and edit each time there is a pause in the hockey game.
Nice tutorial, @musicalbox. I learned some things about the timer filter today! Like padding. Also setting the speed to zero. Cool. I also forgot that for ice hockey, the counter goes down, not up (like in football)… D’oh!
Glad you like it Jon. I learned about the Speed parameter just yesterday myself while I was trying to find a way to pause the timer.
By the way, here’s a demo of my timer where I added 3 Crop: Rectangle filters in an attempt to make it a little bit more fancy. I also change the color of the font to red when the timer is paused.
You’re welcome @otmar. It may seam at first that it involves a lot of steps, but when you get the hang of it, you can do all the pauses in the game pretty quickly.
Hi Austin, thanks for the hint. Yes, this really works well.
For the others who are trying this, I learned that:
I can’t just use my usual “transparent image + timer filter” thingy on a track as the input for the “Time Remap” filter. That one can only operate on a real video clip. I needed to pre-generate a video with just the timer (as Austin stated). I’m not sure there is a way to really have a transparent background on that video, so I used the Add composition.
It’s incredibly fickle to get the keyframes exactly at the tight height to get precisely 0.0 or 1.0 speeds with the mouse. I was starting to look at the code to see how to add a speed setting on the right-mouse button menu. There was already code in there for it, I just had not found the UI to trigger it. You need to click on the left or right angle brackets in the Filter setting UI (to the right of “Time”). So the only wish I have left is a shortcut button for 0.0 and 1.0, but this is just added convenience.
. I should have stuck with the default Verdana font…
