Sync animated score with audio track?

• Mar 10, 2012 - 07:56

Hi everybody,

I've seen the tutorial at http://musescore.org/en/node/11436 showing how to synchronize a score with a YouTube video - sweet :-)

However, my use case is slightly different: I'd like to have a video of the score being played, and I want to sync the score with an audio file of my choice. To be more specific, I want to edit Bach piano music within MuseScore, I want to highlight motivs, themes etc., and then I want to play that score, sync it with a recording of my choice, and end up with a video.

Is there any chance to do something like that with MuseScore? Or are there any other tools capable of doing something like that?

As I'm writing this, I have an idea: 1) Upload "black" video only containing the audio track to YouTube. 2) Sync score with video as in link above. 3) Take video of score being played (e.g., with some screen capturing tool). 4) Manually sync video with audio track.
Comments welcome :-)

Thanks in advance,
Christian

Comments

• Mar 10, 2012 - 10:04

I think you are going to run into problems with copyright

I doubt the music licencing people will regard this as fair use, particularly if you are intending to play this back to other people.

I suspect the only way you will be able to achieve this without having hordes of copyright lawyers baying for your blood is to either use public domain or CCL licensed material, record the performances yourself, or pony up the music companies' pound of flesh.

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• Mar 10, 2012 - 12:19

Hi ChuchOrganist,

hm - probably true. The point is that I wanted to use YouTube as a "vehicle" only, i.e, to sync my audio track with the score, and then to play it once and record it. I don't have any intentions to upload the final video to YouTube (although I had those intentions before reading your comment :-) ). I could even delete the YouTube "helper video" afterwards, but it probably doesn't get accepted in the first place...

Any other ideas, anybody?

Thanks in advance,
Christian

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• Mar 10, 2012 - 14:50

I don't see the copyright issue with Bach's works. You can create the score with MuseScore and upload it to MuseScore.com. Then upload own recording to Youtube and make a videoscore. You can then capture the videoscore with a screen capture tool, but I don't see the point since you can go to the videoscore page instead. Why would you prefer going to youtube instead of the videoscore page?

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• Mar 10, 2012 - 19:01

The copyright issue is with the recordings used.

Speaking from personal experience, if Youtube get even a sniff that your soundtrack isn't public domain you get warnings displayed all over the place.

Last year I uploaded a video of my performance of Bach's Prelude & Fugue in C minor BWV 549 and had to fill in a claim form specifying that it was my own copyrighted work, and not someone else's recording.

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• Mar 11, 2012 - 13:45

I want to use a commercial recording. The whole thing is for a talk I'm going to do in a couple of month, and I'd like to use that very recording.

The idea of capturing it would be to a) being able to postprocess it (I only need the animated score and the sound track), and b) have a self-contained movie which I can use within a talk without being online.

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• Mar 11, 2012 - 14:47

Have you thought of using something like CamStudio to capture the playback in MuseScore?

You can then use software such as Windows Movie Maker to add the sound track etc.

I am currently using Serif MoviePlus for editing the video tutorials I produce for MuseScore, and whole-heartedly recommend it.

There is a free version, which has some features disabled, and you will need to buy access to some codecs (costs £5.00), but that was what I was using until I gave myself the full version for Christmas :)

HTH
Michael

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• Mar 14, 2012 - 10:35

Yes, I see. But when going through YouTube, I can (if I have understood correctly), I can adjust the tempo very easily by pressing the space bar at the beginning of each bar while watching the video, which sounds easy enough... How would you tackle this your way? How do I figure out the actual tempo of each bar?

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