Thanks!  Thought I was doing something "dense" in the dialogue box!

carlgmi:

 Not in front of the Avid today but from memory

1. * Add Avid FX plugin to timeline and open avid FX
2. * add text layer in AvidFX
3. * Select font and text size etc as per normal - I think you would add your character seperators too ie ":"
4. * Go to the layer window in FX and expand the text layer with the little arrow symbol next to it
5. * There will be a sub layer called "text" or similar - select this (sorry to be vague here)

Selecting this sub component of the text layer will give you a whole lot more tab options in the edit window and one will be annimate text.  From within this dialogue you'll be able to choose "type on" "reveal" and an option field for counter.  You select date time or counter settings from in here.  This is keyframeable so you want a "linear" FX and set the start time you want with the sliders (or are they field boxes - again a bit vague in my head), go to the end of the timeline and select its keyframe and give it an end time and "linear" and voila - timer.  Key thing to remember here is that the timer doesn't care if you give it a 60minute count on a 50minute clip - it just counts quicker, so for your 1 or 3 hour timer to be accurate, you'll need to have a timeline that matches it.

PS - I added dot points in this post and they dont come up - why?

It's under Text > 'Generate', but this is soooooooo cool.

Many many thanks.  It's appears to only be in NTSC DropFrame (rather than NDF or even better Pal), but it's exactly what we need and I think we can work with it.

Again, many thanks!

 Your welcome!

To correct myself, you can actually set it ti Pal / DF/ NDF and it's superb.

Still trying to find a away to make it count DOWN though.

Can't see a parameter for that.

Anyone any ideas?

 Looking at it now - start with a time of say 3600 on the start keyframe (linear) and on the last keyframe make it 0.  This counts down from 59:00 to 00:00.  Hope this helps!

 Make your first linear keyframe say 3600 (for 3600 seconds) then set the last keyframe linear to be 0.  This will give you a 59:59 to 00:00 countdown.  Hope this helps!

I actually find it very buggy.

Sometimes it does it, sometimes it just won't take a lower number as the last keyframe.  Also, sometimes it kind of flickers back and forth between numbers.  It seems that the fewer adjustments you make the better, and restart before you play, as it needs as much memory as it can get.

Still a buggy plugin is better than none!