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Generate Frame Counters

Frame Counter renders the burned-in reference video that VFX vendors use to confirm exactly which frame they're looking at. It's standalone — it doesn't read your timeline or your Clip Inventory spreadsheet — so you can run it any time, independently of where you are in the rest of the pipeline.

Before you start

Decide what frame rate you'll be counting against. This needs to match the timeline (and the spreadsheet metadata) you'll eventually use this video with — see Add Metadata to a Timeline, which is the next step for most people.

Steps

  1. Open Workspace → Scripts → Edit → 02 Frame Counter. No timeline needs to be open.
  2. Set Video Size — the default 200×80 burn-in box works well as a composited overlay; size up if you need it more readable or full-frame.
  3. Set Frame Range — Start and End frame numbers. Pick a range comfortably wider than you currently expect; re-running later with a wider range is cheap, but matching an existing video's frame numbering after the fact is not.
  4. Set Frame Rate to match your timeline.
  5. Leave Font on the bundled default unless you have a reason to change it.
  6. Set Output Directory, or leave the default ~/Downloads/frame-counters.
  7. Click Go. The log shows two passes: rendering the per-frame images and encoding them, then re-wrapping the result to embed the starting timecode.

What you get

A single file named frame_counter_<fps>fps.mov (for example frame_counter_24fps.mov) in your output directory, with the frame range and rate you chose, and the correct timecode embedded starting at your chosen Start frame.

Next: place it on the timeline

Hand this file to Add Metadata as the Frame Counter File — see Add Metadata to a Timeline to place individually-named copies of it on your timeline, one per shot, ready for Shot List to read later.