Some users have given feedback that they were having some expression errors in the file for non-English versions of After Effects. These errors went away when users switched their language preferences to English. This must be due to the fact that the expressions rely on some English language constructs in their syntax (built in After Effects commands)

The short answer is that you can make timers any amount of time, up to an hour (60 minutes). Please read on for a more detailed explanation.

Timers longer than 60 minutes

One customer needed a 70 minute timer, and I was able to modify the expression used to control the timer to support this requirement. Note – the current file in the download does not support this, I will be updating the file in the future, but for now you can use the expression below if your project requires times over 60 minutes.

The expression below will support up to 90 minutes (displayed as 90:00, counting down from 89:59…89:58…etc – NOT 1:30:59…1:30:58…):

• duplicate the 10 minute comp of whatever version you would like to use
• modify the comp setting time to 1:30:00
• make sure your layers all extend to the full length of the comp
• replace the expression under the counterTime layer > Source Text with the following expression:

rate = -1;
clockStart = thisComp.duration;

// pad seconds below 10 with leading zero
// ------------------------------------+
function padZero(n){
    if (n < 10) return "0" + n else return "" + n
}

// Get clock time and run conversion
// ------------------------------------+
clockTime = Math.max(clockStart + rate*(time - inPoint),0);

t = Math.floor(clockTime);
min = Math.floor((t%3600)/60);

// adjust for mins over 1 hour
// ------------------------------------+
if (t>3600) {
    min = min+60;
} 

sec = Math.floor(t%60);
min + ":" + padZero(sec);

Because of the conversion of minutes intto hours and seconds any further / longer time requirements would require more expression programming (any help with these conversions would be welcomed and greatly appreciated!)