Ok, I think I sort of understand, but let me show you how I have it set up and maybe you can clear up why it didn't work as originally intended:
First, I have my pause macro which switches to my black scene, then pauses the video:
The unpause macro just reverses the above.
After that I have my channel logo macro, which is based on when the recording starts:
And then another that changes to Hide after 10 seconds of recording.
And finally the widget display, which originally had the same settings as my logo macro (just with different times), but I changed it to the following because it wasn't working like I thought it would:
So that said, let me be sure I understand what you're suggesting with the macro set you listed in your response. In lieu of tracking the OBS recording timer (which I do hope you'll implement in a future build!), I set up my own timer, have it start and stop with the recording, and use that for setting specific times for my popups? I did try to do exactly that when I realized the "recording for exactly x seconds" wasn't working like I thought, but it was still giving me the same problem. Of course, the devil is in the details, so I probably missed one somewhere.
The other thing is that I'm trying to make it so that my pauses don't just cut the video as soon as I press the button. I have a luma wipe that switches to the black scene before it actually pauses via the macro, which means I can't use the actual OBS pause hotkey because that would cut the video immediately before the nice transition, so I have to base it on when it switches to the black scene.
Full disclosure...I detest video editing and I've already got this set up so I don't have to do it anymore. The tracking of actual recording time would just be the cherry on top to make it so my videos come out at the end of the recording looking exactly the way they do now. The only reason I'm doing all this is so I don't have to wait for video renders at the end just to put on logos and overlays.
Thanks for the detailed response!