Kino time entry widget is a combination of a free-form text entry and a spinner . The spinner always increments and decrements by one frame. Then, it updates the text entry according to the currently selected time format. The interpretation of the free-form time entry depends upon the currently selected time format as follows.

If the currently selected time format is frames (the section called “Frames”) or SMPTE (the section called “SMPTE time code”), then one must enter time formats using SMPTE time code or a number with no separators is interpreted as frames. If the current format is one of the SMIL formats, then Kino interprets a "bare number" (no separators or unit suffix) as seconds per the SMIL specification. One is not required to specify all the digits of precision that Kino uses for display.

There are shortcuts for time entry. One can omit parts of a clock (the section called “Clock”) or SMPTE time code value. Kino parses the parts from right-to-left; one need not enter all parts of the time value. For example, "3:16" is 3 seconds and 16 frames in SMPTE time code, or 3 minutes and 16 seconds in clock format. Also, digits can be ommitted between separators. For example, "1:" is one second in SMPTE format or 1 minute in clock format. Finally, while SMPTE on NTSC displays a semi-colon as the seconds and frames separator showing dropframe (Section 2.6, “Drop Frame”), one can enter a colon or semi-colon.