Virtual Meeting Timers

Image of meeting timer or presentation timer
Probably the most useful tools to help people keep their meetings or presentations to time are clocks or timers. This is especially true for virtual meetings if you intend to make them more participative. And yet there is a dearth of good integrated timers available for this purpose.
Example of slides with integrated timers as animations in PowerPointWhere you are sharing PowerPoint or a Whiteboard as part of your virtual meeting it is possible to set up animations and display panels to help (as explained here). But these have some drawbacks. To be frank, it would be much better to have an integrated clock or timer. One that is visible and prominent within Zoom, Teams or whatever conferencing software you are using.
However, while that is not yet part of the conferencing software itself, we have created a variety of alternative solutions. And it is now relatively quick and simple to set up countdown timers in your meetings.

1. Using GIF based countdown timers

GIFs are extremely versatile animated images. You can use them to translate a PowerPoint animation into a form that can be copied and pasted (or uploaded as a picture) into a wide variety of media:
45 second quadrant timerIn many cases the steps to doing these things is very intuitive, as you will be able to see by means of the example GIF on the right. Where the item is asterisked, pasting produces a static image, so we recommend that you save the GIF image to your computer and then upload it. More detailed guidance on this can be found by clicking the relevant links above.
We have created a library of useful GIF based countdown timers on our Timers page.

2. Installing Virtual Meeting Timers via Virtual WebCams

The virtual webcams link in the section above uses a free open-source software called OBS. OBS also enables us to include video based timers, which provide more flexibility to pause and adjust timings than GIF based solutions. To be fair, OBS is capable of far more than supporting timers. But even if we ignore its more sophisticated elements, it provides a really useful resource and is relatively easy to set up for what we want to do.
First we need to DOWNLOAD and unzip the timer components for OBS (called Culturistics_Overlays). Place the unzipped folder at the top level of your My Documents folder.  The location and naming are important to enable OBS to find them*.
Second we need to download and install the OBS software from the OBSPROJECT.com site and set it up running, and to load the clock into OBS. The most likely* steps are demonstrated in the video on the right.
*Not all computer file systems are the same. If you have problems following the video, simply save the unzipped folder somewhere more familiar to you. Make a note of where it is. And then follow the basic guidance on the video to import it to OBS from there.

3. Using Timers in your Virtual Background

This is a very straightforward option, but it is more limited than those above. It relies on using a video with a countdown clock as your virtual background. (This is, sadly, not yet an option in Microsoft Teams). We have created a number of such timers as backgrounds for you to download and use in this PUBLIC ACCESS FOLDER.
Your choice of background will depend on the time you wish to allow. The timers start immediately you select the appropriate timer as your virtual background. Its advantage is that it is very simple. But the consequence is that it is not very flexible – the time is set by the selected video and you cannot pause it.
For ease of use, install all of the videos as virtual backgrounds in advance. This will mean they are quick to access when you need them.

Creating your own Virtual Timer Backgrounds

Creating your own timer virtual backgrounds is a very easy thing to do. Simply follow these steps:
  1. Create a PowerPoint presentation with two blank slides. Feel free to add whatever image you would like for your background to both slides.
  2. Copy and paste the timer you want to use onto the first slide, and position it so it won’t be obscured by your head.
  3. Remain on the first slide, open the ‘Transitions’ ribbon, untick ‘On Mouse Click’ and tick ‘After’, then put in a time that is at least* 5 seconds longer than the timer (Note, the timer format is mm:ss.00)
  4. Go to the ‘File’ menu. Click ‘Save As’ and change the dropdown option from pptx to ‘MPEG-4 Video (*.mp4)’. Give it a name, and save it in an appropriate folder.
  5. From within Zoom, ‘Choose Virtual Background …’, click the small [+] button, and ‘Add Video’. Navigate to the video you saved, and click open. Then watch it run and check it is working okay.
  6. Create multiple videos to cover the range of timing options you might need.
*Note, videos in Zoom virtual backgrounds cycle, so you might want to add an extra minute or two.

4. Other Free Resources to Improve Your Meetings

 

 

 

 

Track your progress to ensure the efficacy of this strategy.