Time estimates for whole pieces and selected sections

• Apr 12, 2021 - 13:23

If a piece is loaded up to MusicScore.com and then played, times are shown at the top, indicating the total time and the time remaiining.

It would be very useful to know - even roughly - how much time a whole piece is likely to take, and also the time for sections of a piece when using the MuseScore program. Some composers and performers might find this very helpful.

I can get a fairly good idea of this by exporting pieces and sections to an audio file - mp3 will do - and then looking at the timing of the audio file, but I believe this could be estimated reasonably accurately by a process running within the MuseScore program. This could - or at least might - be a lot quicker than the audio export method.

Of course there might be other times of interest, such as the time from the beginning to a given point, or the times of each individual movement or variation in a more complex piece, but once a mechanism for basic timing has been developed it should be relatively easy to adapt it for different scenarios.


Comments

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Thanks - I didn't know that - though that doesn't cope with all the situations I envisage.

For time from a given point to the end:
Open Play panel - takes (say) 3 seconds.
Locate point in score to start from - takes (say) 3 seconds. Note actually have to start playing - space bar - in order to get the time in the Play panel to update.
Find time to end in Play panel - takes 3 seonds
Subtract to get time from start point to end. 2 seconds - so in 11 seconds have the time from a given point to the end, plus also the time to the first marked point from the start as a by product.

For a section between two marks:
Locate first point in score - say 3 seconds - as in previous example will have to start playing to update the Play panel time.
Locate second point in score - again say 3 seconds.
Subtract - allow 2 seconds. Total interaction time about 8 seconds.

For large works the interaction time could be considerably longer depending on which timings required.
Something in the score panel directly as a visual read out could be much simpler and quicker for the end user.

In reply to by SteveBlower

Well few things are perfect. Getting a result without taking into account repeats might be OK, and it would also be possible to unroll repeats which seems to work quite quickly.

I noticed though that unrolling the repeats generates another working copy - but it could still be better - and also quicker than - nothing - or anything else in the short term.

I agree that making a more comprehensive timing facility might be harder to implement, though probably not impossible.

For a more accurate result something equivalent to selecting the section to measure, then generating an audio file, then extracting the timings would work - though often there wouldn't actually be any need to generat audio or do all the things which I sometimes do in order to find section timings.

In reply to by dave2020X

"something equivalent to selecting the section to measure". That is the crux of the problem: how to specify the section to measure. How to arrange it so that the user can specify a start that is (say) the second measure of a repeated section on the second time it is played and an end that is two measures before a To Coda but on the first time that measure is played, or all the other permutations that can occur with repeats and jumps. I expect that that the calculation of the timing would be easy, it is the user interface that is difficult.

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