A countdown timer is a great add-on to your video especially if you are running an online course or even just a simple online presentation for office or school. The idea is that the user should have a visible visual indicator showing how much time is left until an action or task is started. A countdown timer helps you manage more than one user, clearly indicating how much time he has left for his next action.

Doodly is an easy-to-use whiteboard animation software that lets you create not just an engaging explainer video but even a countdown timer. Use them to create interest at the beginning of a video or add a sense of urgency for upcoming promotions and events. You can even use them to count down the number of minutes until an activity starts or anything else you can think of.

In today's blog we are going to walk you though on how to create:

A clock timer is best used on presentation when displaying time lapsed, or if there's a need for you to add a clock. Having a moving time makes your presentation more lively and engaging. To create a clock timer, we need multiple scenes that displays increasing time.

Here are the steps on how you can create your clock timer in Doodly:

Step 1 - Upload your image

Start by uploading your preferred clock image without the numbers displayed. You can find these images from websites that provides royalty-free images like pixabay.com, canva and many others.

Step 2 - Input the time

After importing the image in Doodly, add a text and type in your time display.

Step 3 - Disable the hand style

You can decide if you wish to reveal the time using a hand writing it or just simply have the numbers appear immediately on your scene. To disable the hand that is writing the time display, head over to Video Settings and select No Hand from the Hand Style menu.

Step 4 - Turn off the scene transition

Make sure you also set the scene transition to "X" to have a smooth transition between scenes.

Step 5 - Duplicate the first scene

Once you have set up your first scene, you can duplicate it to generate the second scene. To do that, head over to the timeline, right click the first scene and select Duplicate.

Ste 6 - Update the time

Change the number of seconds displayed on the duplicated scene. In our example, we replaced 15 with 16. To update the time, just double click 15 then type in 16. Do not delete the number and add a new text. We want a seamless scene transition so try to avoid even the tiniest movement of each asset in your scenes.

Step 7 - Check the animation duration

Make sure you only get the minutes animated on your second scene. In our example below, only "16" should be drawn. The rest of the assets should all be set to zero.

Step 8 - Duplicate the second scene

When you get your second scene's animation set, start duplicating it to as many scenes as you want. Note that for every duplicate, you only need to change the number of minutes. The rest of the settings remains the same.

Creating a countdown timer is usually seen on some movies before it plays. To recreate the same action in Doodly, we do the same process as the steps above except this time, we won't be duplicating scenes. Here are the steps:

Step 1:

As soon as your images have been uploaded, your next step is to arrange them in your preferred order. Since we are creating a countdown, you need to arrange the numbers in a decreasing order.

Step 2:

Next is to place them all on the same exact spot. To do that, take note of the X and Y position of scene 5 which is your first scene then apply the same to the rest of the images. The width and the height of each of your images should all be identical too.

Here's our final output:

Lastly, we will create a countdown timer that goes from five minutes down to zero. This is helpful when launching a webinar, either live or recorded. By having a timer before your actual video or meeting, your viewers are able to settle down and prepare for your session.

Similar to what we did with our clock timer, we have to adjust the first scene and duplicate until we get to zero. The only difference is, our intro timer is a little longer, it requires more duplicated scenes and we also added a background image. Now remember that how you personalize your Doodly video is totally up to you. You can decide which assets needs to be drawn, whether you will add a background or not, if you wish to add an audio track and so on.

Here's our basic settings:

You may also want to add a sound effect like a ticking clock or bell to add more animation to it. With our sample video below, after counting down the minutes, we also added a countdown from 10-0 seconds. To do that, you just have to replace the extra time at the end from 60 seconds to 1 second when you get to 10 - 1 second scenes.

Once done, you can use the video as it is or add it at the start of your presentation just like what we did below:

We hope that this article helps you create those countdown timers that you can use for your classes or online presentations. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to share those with us. Happy Doodling!