Hi everyone, this is my first message in this forum, however i’ve been visiting you since LB was created. I will try to explain my problem as well as i can as i am spanish and my english may lead to confusion.
after reading jay article on his onboard video system i decided to get a similar system myself after destroying a friends camera when i crashed in Cheste (spain). i bought a sony dv camera and a bullet cam to record my sessions. the outcome is great but i would like to take it a bit further and edit the footage.
my question is: i would like to include a chronometer (like a lap timer) in the screen so that whilst in a lap i can see the times i am doing. the idea is to start the chronometer each time i past the white line and at the end of the lap to show the lap time whilst the chrono starts from cero again.
i have some knowledge on how to use pinnacle and sony vegas, but have not been able to display a small chrono in a corner.
so is this possible to be done??? i’ve asked in other forums and i received no useful answer, hope here someone knows how to do this.
Ola Sergio,
Welcome to LB, … just so long as you dont post too many pictures of sunny dry Spanish roads during our cold wet london autumn/winter
"my question is: i would like to include a chronometer (like a lap timer) in the screen so that whilst in a lap i can see the times i am doing. the idea is to start the chronometer each time i past the white line and at the end of the lap to show the lap time whilst the chrono starts from cero again.
i have some knowledge on how to use pinnacle and sony vegas, but have not been able to display a small chrono in a corner. "
Do you have a separate video of the lap timer, or are you hoping video editing software will be able to pick up the white line and base a timer window on that ?
Video editing software does many things, but I am pretty sure it wont be able to read the passing line. It may sound stupid, not why not cheat and just time the laps while watching the video using a stopwatch or the video editor, then either just overlay “1.45.04” etc. as a title whenever you pass the white line, or record/find a video of a stopwatch, edit it to show the correct 0- “1.45.04” “1.44.63” “1.44.12” and put that in the corner ?
Good luck, and please post the results up here for us to see, Cheste [Valencia] is a fantastic circuit, I was there last year for MotoGP, what a mental party, atmosphere etc.
I’m Brazilian living in London but soon moving to Spain, Rojales near Alicante in the sunny Costa Blanca. Cartagena and Almeria are not far away and I hope to be riding my bike over there as soon as I can.
I edit my onboard videos on pinnacle but can’t help you on that, sorry! That’s a great idea if you find how to do that , please post it here for us…
Hello Sergio, welcome! Unfortunately, I don’t know how you could do what you want, other than having the video-editing software overlay a timer, that you start & stop yourself each lap. I would have thought something like Adobe Premier could do this, but I’m not sure.
Hi bike2travel, i live in valencia, very near to alicante. be sure to give me a call when you travel to valencia onced you move to spain. we could go riding one sunday.
kao5, thanks 4 your welcome, will try not to be too cruel with good weather pics . no way i am trying to make the editing software recognise the white line. as for the cheste circuit this was the first time in there and i really liked the circuit design, however it has low grip in my opinion, much lower than albacete (a non gp circuit, near valencia). about the mental party no doubt that we like a lot parting over here
as to the editing question i am hoping that in some video forum they could help me out. for now what i’ve been doing is splitting the full video in clips each time i cross the white line, then going to properties i can see the clip length which is the lap time. what i wanted is to make it a bit more proffesional and include a running timer as in motogp if i find out how to do this be sure i will post it here.
jay thanks for your welcome also, i would like to congrat you on your web site www.jayadair.com and this new project you are in which is great. very good work. hope to be posting my trackdays in the spanish circuits so you can watch them and to learn new things from this forum.
my question is: I would like to include a chronometer (like a lap timer) in the screen so that whilst in a lap I can see the times I am doing. the idea is to start the chronometer each time I past the white line and at the end of the lap to show the lap time whilst the chrono starts from cero again.
Hey Sergio,
OK there is three ways you can do this… One involves Adobe Premier Pro and one involves a data logger and both involve a **** load of work ( trust me this is why timers aren’t on the time lapse videos I have done )… However look at option 3 for a half way house.
Option 1 : In Adobe Premier Pro (APP), you can “burn in” a time code to your film, the only problem is it’s in frames per seconds, so the counter will 24th’s till it hits 1 second, so if you lap at 01:30:12 you’ve really done a lap in one minutes 30.5 seconds ( hope that makes sense ) . You can play around with it, but it really is a pig…
Option 2 : The data logger option isn’t the way to go unless you buy the software and the harness and hook it in to the CPU… then again it’s sexy, very very sex… You see rev overlays and g-forces too … Hmmmmmm toys
Option 3 : Create a flash movie counter ( can download many of these ), make it run for say 4 minutes and export it as an AVI file. Then in APP overlay it over your track footage, in the bottom right hand corner and scale it to your desired size… It may not be transparent but at least you’ll have a time box on your video’s.
Which Event FX tab did you use? The one on the clip itself or the one next to the ‘monitor’?
To zero it each time, simply cut the avi file at the point you want to start the counter. The easiet way to do it is place the cursor on the point in the timeline where you cross the line and hit S. Then add the timecode to that clip
Hi Veggie Dave, i think i have it now !!! thanks a lot for your help. the problem was i was applying “media fx” over the whole file. well i think that was the problem cause now i did what u said of splitting the video into clips and instead of going to “media fx” i went to “video event fx”, this applied the effect just to each individual clip.
now i am playing around trying to do a picture-in-picture effect…
hope to finish soon and if someone wants to see the result i will try to post it.
. no way i am trying to make the editing software recognise the white line. as for the cheste circuit this was the first time in there and i really liked the circuit design, however it has low grip in my opinion, much lower than albacete (a non gp circuit, near valencia). about the mental party no doubt that we like a lot parting over here 
if i find out how to do this be sure i will post it here.