I'm looking for a free countdown video to apply to the beginning of a
video project of mine.  Preferably I'd like to find the old filmstrip
kind - black and white, with rotating bar in circular motion that
changes from 10 to 9... down to 1 as the bar passes the top of the
circle.   I guess there must be some freebies out there for amateur
video.  A video resource web site perhaps...

I'd like to find it in quicktime (mov) or I'm sure I could use a real
player file or a windows media player too if that's all that's out
there.

don't go to too much trouble to find it, It's just something I'd like
to add if possible...

also, any movie that has one at the beginning would work as I could
just trim out the portion after the countdown...

Adobe Premier has this function built in.  I'm guessing you may not be
using Adobe Premier.  Luckily, somebody has exported this movie in a
variety of high quality formats for you to use:

http://www.archive.org/details/Universal_Counting_Leader

There's a very simple movie countdown clock here:

http://www.flashkit.com/movies/Animations/Vector_Animations/Objects/Film_Cou-Mark_Fen-193/index.php