What’s Cool: The premise for Countdown Creator by Nevan Hooker is really solid. It can take a still image or video clip and overlay a countdown clock on it. The countdown clock is configurable with a few parameters such as duration (length of countdown in minutes and seconds), text size, font, rotation, and color.
Countdown Creator also makes it easy to select a video or still image (and even an audio track) for the countdown. Additionally, using a still image as the background video track in Countdown Creator is easy because it will scale the still image to the correct dimensions and pad the margins with black bars (letterbox) to preserve the aspect ratio of the still image.
Countdown Creator is reasonably priced at $35, making it accessible to most church media teams looking for a simple tool to customize countdowns for their events.
What’s Not: Countdown Creator has a somewhat complicated install process. The application itself is not difficult to install, but if you want QuickTime support (and I suspect most will), you have to install QuickTime separately (or already have it installed) to make it work with Countdown Creator.
Countdown Creator can export countdowns in three formats: WMV (Windows Media Video 9), MOV (QuickTime MPEG-4), and MPEG-2 (suitable for burning to DVD). All countdowns exported from the program are 720×480, which is a standard definition resolution. You have little control over the export process other than choosing the video format. Although this may be a good thing for the targeted user, it definitely limits the flexibility of the countdowns you can create.
Although Countdown Creator does handle the scaling of still images as described above, it does not handle the scaling of video clips you select for the background video track of the countdown. If the video clip is not already 720×480 and/or not one of the supported formats (MPEG—it’s not clear if this is MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, AVI, MOV, or WMV), you are on your own to scale it to the correct resolution and convert it to the correct format.
Countdown Creator also limits the treatment options for the text of the countdown clock. One glaring omission is the inability to stroke the text with a contrasting outline that would enable the text to stand out against the background track. A drop shadow effect is provided, but with limited control over the effect options, you just can’t do much to modify the look and feel of your text.
The Bottom Line: Countdown Creator is a simple and easy to use application that should have broad appeal to church media teams with no experience producing motion graphics using software such as Adobe AfterEffects or Apple Motion. It is important to know that the simplicity of Countdown Creator in the current version limits control over the design and export process. This is a significant trade-off to all media teams except those with the most basic countdown creation needs. It will be interesting to see if the next version of Countdown Creator finds a way to address these limitations while retaining the simplicity of this unique application.
Rating: 3 Stars (out of 5)
Official Site: www.thecountdowncreator.com