workflow tips for video production using musescore?

• Nov 24, 2021 - 09:15

Does anyone in here have experience making videos from Musescore, and have workflow tips to share?
I'm trying to make myself sort of a template that would make it as easy as possible to make video lessons with lots of examples (a few bars, one stave), with as little post production editing as possible. I want each page to contain one example, like a "slide".

All of that is easy enough - but filming (screen capture) offers some challenges.

I find it very difficult to get each page to stay on the exact same position on the screen. There's always something that makes is move slightly to the right or left in page turns, and it's often difficult to find a zoom percentage that makes sure there's no scrolling happening within a page. As I said, I kind of want it to look like powepoint slides, rather than pages.

There's a few features I'd might like to suggest, but I'd rather check with the hive mind if there are workflows or settings I've overlooked before cluttering the bug trackers and feature requests threads... 😉 I'll add my suggestion here, anyway, just in case they make clearer what I'm trying to achive. 🙂

1: add "screen resolutions" as page size options, at least 16x9 (we can of course make our own, but why not add them)
2: add a full screen mode
3: make an option to show single pages rather than adjacent left and right pages
4: add a way to jump to next page (pg up/pg dn) where the top left corner of the page sits at the exact same position between "page turns"

Any of these 4 would make things easier, but especially the first 2 points would make for far better and easier video production, I think.

What do you say, people - if you're still here 😉 - is there any ways to do something like this already? Or do you have any other tips on how to do stuff like this? I'm adding as an example of what kind of lessons I'm trying to make.

Attachment Size
Tonale_utsving.mscz 6.62 KB

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• Nov 24, 2021 - 14:32

Hi again!
I've briefly replied on your Facebook post with this example video of what can be achieved with minimal post-processing: [EDIT: video removed, see next reply for updated example]

Here are the pointers as to how I did this:

Part 0: Correcting the score in MuseScore

These are things you'd likely want to correct regardless of the video output target, but different, more consistent, ways of achieving the same score structure.

  1. Remove all the horizontal frames you've used
  2. Add a section break to the last measure of each example
  3. Remove all caesuras
  4. Remove the additional half length rests you've added at the end of each sample; you'll have to restore some end barlines now
  5. Set a section break pause to 7s using the Inspector (F8) to match the duration of the now-removed caesuras; then press the "S" (set as style) button for that setting
  6. Add a Vertical Frame at the start of each example and add the Title to it (right-click the frame, Add → Title)
  7. Remove the example titles that were entered as Staff Text

Part 1: setting up the score in MuseScore

I started off by setting page settings to the ratio you wanted. As MuseScore is a vector-based program, the actual size in mm is fairly irrelevant, although you probably don't want to go too small to avoid rendering artefacts. Since you were looking for a 16:9 video I chose a paper size of 160x90mm, which off course is a Landscape page. I've unchecked "Two sided" and set all page margins to 5mm.

Next thing I did was add a page break to the end of each example, as we want each example on their own "slide"

The following step is to reopen Page Settings and play with the scaling factor to make the music as big as you need it to be, whilst still fitting onto a "slide".

The final step I did was slightly increase the Chord Symbol Size to fit the slide format a bit better. The easiest way for me is to select one of them; adjust the size in the Inspector and click the "set as style" button for it.

If you want, you can save this score also as a user template; so next time you want to create this, the page/scaling settings will automatically be as you want them.

Part 2: Setting up the score view for recording

1.) In the View menu uncheck most options (invisible, unprintable, irregular measures, frames, page margins). I personally keep the status bar in view for my own convenience, but you can hide it if you so please as well.

2.) Maximize the window

3.) Make sure the "Pan Score Automatically" button is active.

4.) Set the score zoom to "Whole Page" using the dropdown options. From this point on, be careful to not drag the score anymore to facilitate having the correct vertical position. Use Shift+Scroll Wheel or PgUp/PgDwn to move the score.

5.) Switch to the "playback" workspace. This is a custom workspace in which all toolbars have been disabled. Either set it up yourself or use the one attached (unzip it and place it in the correct folder while MuseScore is closed)

6.) Switch to fullscreen mode: View → FullScreen (Ctrl/Cmd + U)

7.) * Click on the first note of the 2nd example; you'll notice that at this moment you likely have a small border at the top of the slide.
* Press and Hold the Left Arrow key to have the score view scroll to the start of the score and highlights the first note. The slide should now have repositioned itself to be top aligned.
* Press Esc once to clear the selection, this first note remains the start of playback reference point

Part 3: set up your recording software

I personally use the open source OBS Studio software to record my screen. But any other capture software that is to your liking should do the trick. For OBS Studio the setup process is as follows (is only required once).

1.) Create a new Scene

2.) Add a "Desktop Capture" element to it, I've set it to not capture the mouse pointer

3.) Right-click on it and choose to "Edit Transformation". Now adjust the clipping values to cut away the top (tabs from MuseScore, for me about 50px), bottom (statusbar, if you have it active, for me about 25px) and the right ("slide" edge to screen edge, for me around 135px).

4.) Stretch the now clipped capture frame back to the full size of the capture canvas in the smallest fitting direction. Then right-click it and choose to Center it in the other direction

5.) Mute your microphone source within OBS, so it only captures the desktop sound

Part 4: Record

1.) Hit record on your recording software
2.) Alt+Tab to cycle to your MuseScore window
3.) Space to start playback in MuseScore
4.) Wait for playback to finish
5.) Alt+Tab back to your recording software
6.) Stop recording

Part 5: Editing Video

Load your recorded video into an editor of your choice (free open source ones are OpenShot and kdenlive)
Cut the first and last part of your recording which'll likely be you switching windows and hitting that stop recording button.
Do whatever else you want (add tiles/credits/whatever)
Save your video.

Part 6: Finally

Leave fullscreen mode again and switch back to your regular workspace.

Attachment Size
326773-Tonale_utsving.mscz 9.42 KB
playbackWorkspace.zip 5.94 KB

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• Nov 24, 2021 - 15:13

Wow, this is just a fantastic help, and will make life alot easier for me in years to come! :-) Thanks a whole bunch for taking the time! With some removing of the things specific to my original file, this would be a perfect tutorial on musescore and video production as well!

One quick follow up question: those added hidden 6/4 bars were there primarily as a count in to each example, using the hidden woodblock stave. I ended up for my test to just start and stop before each example, to activate the count in from the play panel. Is there a way to have the count in activate after a section break?

If not, I don't think that makes for big issues. I'm fine with starting/stoping to get the count in, and just cut away the excess frames in the middle, as long as every slide lines up like in your edited score.

Thanks again, this is great!

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• Nov 25, 2021 - 09:13

I totally overlooked the count-in purpose, apologies.

There are a few tricks you can use for those as well (including additional measures and negative horizontal frames etc) but I think the one with the least impact and easiest to achieve is to indeed work with a lengthened measure. But instead of lengthening the end of the previous slide, lengthen the beginning of the actual slide itself. The main advantage to me is that the slide itself is then already shown during the count-in process; making it easier for someone watching to be prepared to sing along.

The trick used is to thus add the half rest at the beginning of the first measure, turn it invisible and set its "Segment Leading Space" as negative as you can (-10sp) to have it be placed at the start barline. This still creates some additional space at the visible start of the measure though, which seems to be unavoidable without going into a laborious and tedious process of tweaking all X-positions manually.
What does give a fairly decent result imho is to reduce the measures stretch one notch (down to 0,90). While the gap is still notable in the 2-measure examples, it is very much less present in the 4-measure examples;

Side-by-side comparison of the 2-measure examples:
326773-slight-additional-starting-space-count-in-few-measures.png

Side-by-side of the 4-measure examples:
326773-additional-starting-space-less-obvious-with-more-measures.png

Score attached and resulting video capture available at https://youtu.be/IApXLqSmqKs

Attachment Size
326773-Tonale_utsving-with-count-in.mscz 9.62 KB

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• Nov 25, 2021 - 20:10

No apologies needed, whatsoever!

This again looks like a great workaround, adding beats in the beginning of each excercise is the way to go! It all seems like it's a bit of setup, but the goal is to then just recycle the "template" for new excersices, press record and play, and then be done with it.

I've also played around with adding some text elemenst that I previously added in DaVinci Resolve, as header and footer text, which also seems quite handy.

Thanks again for the great help!

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