What Is a Timecode Timer?
Video timecode counts time as HH:MM:SS:FF — hours, minutes, seconds, and frames. The last pair is the frame number within the current second, so it depends on your project's frame rate. At 30 fps the frames run 00–29; at 24 fps they run 00–23. This timer counts up in real time and shows the exact frame you are on, which is handy for rough syncing, timing edits, or reading off a duration in frames.
Frame Rates
- 23.976 / 24 fps — film and cinematic footage
- 25 fps — PAL broadcast (Europe)
- 29.97 / 30 fps — NTSC broadcast and most online video
- 50 / 59.94 / 60 fps — high-frame-rate and slow-motion capture
This timer uses non-drop-frame counting, so the frame count is a straight seconds × fps. Drop-frame timecode (used to keep 29.97 fps in sync with clock time) skips frame numbers rather than frames, so it is a labelling difference on long timelines.
Timestamps & Unix Time
The cards above also show the current local time and the live Unix timestamp (seconds and milliseconds since 1 January 1970 UTC) — useful for logs, filenames, and syncing. To convert a specific Unix timestamp to a date, or a date to a timestamp, use our Unix / Epoch Converter.
Related Tools
- Online Stopwatch — count up in plain HH:MM:SS
- Epoch Converter — Unix timestamp to date and back
- Digital Clock — the current time, large