Question

No clue why this is happening. I must be missing something obvious.

I’m trying to make a counter print out something like SMPTE code (hours:minutes:seconds:frames (assuming 24fps)).

Code thus far:

import time


s_time = time.time()
def format_time():
    t = time.time() - s_time 
    if t < 1:
        print '00:00:00:%02d' % int(t/0.041666666666666664)
    elif t < 60:
        t = str(t).split('.')

        print '00:00:%02d:%02d' % (int(t[0]), int(int(t[1][:4])/0.041666666666666664) )

while True:
    format_time()

All seems well initially, until the duration surpasses 1 second and the elif branch is entered. Seconds print out fine, but the frames print out the full multi-digit result of the calculation. Given that the formatting operator is specifying %02d, just like it does in the first if branch (which behaves as expected), why is it not obeying in the second branch? I’m at a loss trying to figure out why it is still printing the full result rather than the truncated version.

Answer 1

You are trying to get the integer part and the fractional part of the float to print your result. It is a good practice to use operators and functions on numeric data directly instead of adding a heavy overhead by converting the float into str and back to number.

Use the math module modf function for that. It will also simplify your algorithm.

import time
import math

s_time = time.time()
def format_time():
    t = time.time() - s_time
    if t < 60:
        f,i = math.modf(t)
        print '00:00:%02d:%02d' % (i, f/0.041666666666666664)

while True:
    format_time()

PS: for your code error, in your elif block, you are passing t as an integer with a huge value instead of passing the 0.xxxxx value of it. This error wouldn’t occur if you keep using the math functions of floats.