Building a Clock Overlay For Your iMovie Videos

Thank you for a simple and clear video ! 
I have a request, how would the javascript change if I wanted a continuous running number sequence from 0 to 4118 and I want the resulting video file output to play for only 5 seconds ??? Your help would be most valuable for my NGO presentation of number groupings. Thanking you in advance !

Really decent video

In case no one has told you today, you're incredible. You're videos are so helpful! Thank you for taking the time to share your expertise with us. Much appreciated.

Omg this has been the best video. I have to make a countdown clock for my escape room (3600 1 second slides), so the scripting has been a MASSIVE time saver. Thank you for making this so easy to understand!

one more subscriber here

wow amazing job. thank you

this video is super great!!Well explained,does anyone know how to do the writing black with the background lighter??

Great video. I pasted the script from your website and it is duplicating the slides, but not inserting the numbers. I'm trying to make a 5 minute timer and I am getting the 300 slides automatically, but they all have the default text. The only thing I changed is 120 to 300. What am I doing wrong?

Well I don't know what went wrong but it does not work. It grabs the wrong slide and not the "statement".... perhaps it has something to do with the newer versions of keynote ? I got it to work but I had to start with a " Statement" slide

Awesome, thanks for the script! I'd also like a countdown time from 2 min to 0.....so, I changed the script, but the it added infinite number of sides until I stopped it. What am I missing? This is what I changed it to (only changed the var line): var i=121;i>=0;i++)

Thank you! This was immensely helpful

excellent video again I love all our videos. I am struggling with one thing. when I try to open script editor the same you did I takes me to the 'save document page'.

im using "command and then typing script" could you please help

god send

Hi, a couple of year ago I made a video using FCP, but I now want to remake the video with iMovie. Please have a look at @ from @. You see how mushrooms grow in 100 hours. You see the counter. The counter was easy in FCP, is there a possibility to have such a counter in iMovie? You reply please. Thank you!!!

Yet another great explanation. How do you change the script to fit also for the new version of Keynote that uses other variables? For instance, the "SlideMaster" is not valid anymore...

Very useful, great to build a timer from scratch like this and the script is a real bonus. I have been trying to add a disappearing circle to represent the countdown but Keynote doesn’t seem to offer it, the line build outs only last for up to 1 minute and the wipe for example only works in a straight line - it would wipe around the border of a circle shape - any suggestions welcome

Hello, thank you so much for this video! For some reason the timer background is showing up black rather than transparent in iMovie. I triple checked my export settings and they are the same as yours - Apple Prores 4444 and Export to a transparent background box is checked. Any suggestions on how to fix this? Thank you!

Thank you for this outstanding and very easy to follow tutorial. I used your instructions to create several countdown timer movies that I am then placing inside of keynote presentations that I use as a math teacher. Your instructions worked perfectly.

Your channel is extremely informative and I already have several other things I’m planning to learn with your videos. Thank you so much!!!!

SOOOO helpful! Thank you!

Apple updated keynote and the script doesn't work anymore. The slides are added but there no clock. I put "Title - Center" instead of "Statement".

Edit: I got it to work because I selected Body and not Title in the edit slide layout mode. I have a timelapse and but I want to see the time of day.

I can't begin to thank you for this! I have a problem tho I barely know any of the code and I'm trying to do a countdown for more than an hour long videos ( it's for study along videos ) and I can't seem to know how to fix the code where I can see Hours:Minutes:Seconds. Do you have any suggestions on what to change inside the loop as far a creating a new variable h and what to do with minutes and seconds and how to display all of them on the slides??

I found 2 fixes for this if you are using UK localisation

1. If you get the object error - your app script should say this in the 3rd line (or match master slide name)
var slideMaster = presentation.masterSlides["Title - Center"];

2. If you get blank slides it is because you need to ensure that the master slide layout has the apperance set to 'body' not 'text'

Hope this helps!

Great tutorial, although I'm having an issue. Every three seconds, there's a frame where the previous slide clips with the next, causing both numbers to overlap each other briefly. I've followed every step including "go to next slide after: 1 second". Any solutions?

Thank you SOOOOOOO much!

Great solution !

Everything works great, but when I try to export Keynote crashes and says it quit unexpectedly... any ideas? Thanks for the great videos!

Gary you are a genius!!!

Thanks a lot, this is a great explainer!

Genius thanks for this, loved the script that was new to me, but very powerful.

We love how you present your tutorial videos. Your timer works perfectly. Will sub and come back often. Thank you.

Thank you so much! This was extremely helpful. I am so glad I found your video and you gained a new subscriber. I would like to add if anyone is using the updated version of keynotes, when you go to edit the masterslide under>>View ...Masterslide is no longer an option. It is now changed to Slide Layout. It took me a while to figure that out.

Trying to build a 48 minute timer and I Keynote just seems to get stuck. Do you know if that's too large? Otherwise your video is awesome and your explanations are clear and concise.

Hey man, that was super helpful, I was dreading manually building an 8 minute timer, that made it super easy!

Hi! Thank you very much for sharing this tutorial!

Has anyone figured out a solution for Keynote "adding" time when you export the slides to video? When I tried this out months ago, it worked. But since then, there has been an update to Keynote, and now when I go to export a timer video, it adds about 16 seconds in total to the runtime of the video.

I have the settings similar to the video: (Self Playing, All slides exported, Go to next slide after 1 second, 1920 x 1080, Apple ProRes 4444, no fill in slides), and I have checked at the beginning and end of the video to see if it was extra time added there. It seems to be a slight delay in going through some slides in the video that when added up makes the 16 seconds.

Thanks for helping!

this was great! but how would you do it so it can show hours as well? i did one for an hour and 45 min but it just did the whole thing in minutes and seconds

A easier way to do this is to record a google timer/stopwatch. On iMac, press cmd shift and 5 to record. Then press on the select area.

Im using keynote 6.6.1.

I keep getting error -2700 saying cant find variable: newSlide.

Ive tried changing "newSlide" to "addSlide". It will still show error message "cant find variable".

What should i do?

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and making it so easy!

I'm not sure if my problem is that now it is the year 2023 and things have changed or what but I've typed the code (more than once) and it keeps giving me an error Error -2700: Script error. Syntax error: unexpected line at end of script. Any thoughts please? I'm trying to make custom timers for my classes. Thank you.

Wow thank you so much !! For French People : Pour les français, il faut remplacer dans le script "Statement" par "Déclaration" pour que ça fonctionne :)

I love you! ❤ Thanks for the incredible helpful video!

This is so good. I cannot thank you enough.

Okay... I'm not the "reaction kind of guy", but this makes an exception. THANKS A THOUSAND...

this was so incredibly helpful!! thank you so much for this!

This is amazing! Thank you so much! I've been wanting to do some pomodoro study with me videos and this helped A LOT!

great video, clear and crisp explanation.. thank you!