Have you ever, in your weakest moments, found yourself grabbing your monitor, shaking it violently, and screaming, “WHY DON'T YOU HAVE THIS BASIC FEATURE, YOU PIECE OF &#^*?!”
I recently had one of these moments while I was assembling my slides for the workshop I led at WistiaFest. (It was SO AWESOME.)
Now, the thing about a workshop is that it's not just me talking; it's supposed to be interactive. I need to give the audience plenty of time to talk. But I don't want the conversation to drag on for so long that we run out of time halfway through.
Suddenly, a burst of insight: I used to work council meetings! They used a timer to keep the nuttier speakers from just carrying on all night (thank goodness). Why can't I do the same?
After ten minutes of Googling, I realized that Keynote doesn't have this feature. Is there some special add-on you can get from Apple? Nope. Your only option is to import a video file that contains a countdown, and use that. All the options I could find online were not only not free, but they were WAY too fancy and cheesy for Wistia's fresh-and-simple style. So I just rolled my own.
And I also made some for you!
They're as simple as it gets. A plain text timer counts down from ten minutes (and Keynote lets you trim video files to the start point you want, which saves you from having to fire up Premiere to make a tiny change). Use 'em in your video projects too!
Download them here, in numerous exciting colors (right-click to download)...
By the way, now that you have the song stuck in your head anyway, you might as well celebrate by listening to all fifteen minutes of it. You're welcome.