hi, michael !
for a simple thing like a countdown, you could also try the gif objects that exist (all forks of ggee's [image]:
IEMGUI: [iem_image] GGEE: [image] TOF: [imagebang]
but i'm really not sure whether your preferred size 1920x1080 might be too much for the PI to carry. i myself tried GEM some time ago on a PI but quickly gave up on displaying images/movies. i guess there was no GL support whatsoever. but that was on a PI2 and i don't know about the openGL status on newer raspbian versions.
and yes, OFELIA could indeed be an interesting option.
did you try to create the countdown graphics just with PD's GUI elements ?
best
oliver