exporting score as video (mp4 or the like)

• Oct 10, 2019 - 21:38

Hey there! I'm a very long-time user of Sibelius and am trying to get into Musescore, both to support its open source mission and, of course (no denying it!), to save money.

I frequently use Sibelius to export scrolling score videos. Is this not possible within Musescore? I see that non-pro users can upload one video per day to youtube and pro users unlimited, but can one really not just export directly to a video file? Or is this feature deliberately withheld to encourage pro subscriptions? Thanks so much for any guidance!


Comments

In reply to by rtestroet

No, it also doesn't exist as a video file on musescore.com.
You could try to download it from YouTube though after you've performed the Send to YouTube function.

Another (offline) possibility is to use some screen recorder software (it seems OBS works quite well)

In reply to by jeetee

Hallo Jeetee,
Op 15 januari kon ik wel een mp4 video file downloaden van een score/ partituur op musescore.com. Ik kreeg deze toegestuurd per email. Nu wilde ik van een andere compositie van mij een video (mp4) downloaden, maar dat lukt niet meer. Als je de video naar youtube verzend zijn de noten niet zo scherp. De mp4 die ik kreeg is glashelder en scherp. (als een vector-bestand).
Weet u hoe het komt dat deze mogelijkheid van een mp4 downloaden enkele dagen geleden wel maar nu niet meer beschikbaar is? Of hoe ik een mp4 kan verkrijgen van een lopende partituur?

In reply to by rtestroet

Once you send to YouTube, then it's a video you can download (what's on MuseScore.com isn't a video, at least, not exactly, it's more interactive than that).

Really, though, if you just want a basic video of your score playing, easiest is to install something that can do screencast video - I use OBS Studio, but there are plenty of options for this.

[ EDIT: Doh - tool late! ]

In reply to by bobjp

Sadly, I'm on a Mac. Many thanks, though! I'm playing around with OBS screen recorder, but that requires an additional audio program called ishowu to get it working on a Mac. A lot of rigmarole for something Sibelius does natively! haha. So I might just stick with Sibelius.

In reply to by rtestroet

Chances are there is something else that works on macOS with less fiddling. For instance, see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208721 for two built-in options. And if not that, then probably a dozen other options.

Do realize that video export would add quite a bit of complexity to MuseScore, and as an open source program driven primarily by volunteers, such a feature would come at the expense of other features. We generally prefer to focus on features not already provided by other tools. That's an important part of the open source source philosophy as well - focusing on what's important, defining a problem and solving it well, allowing other programs to solve other programs, and to play nice together.

Obviously, I can't force you to try, but you mention the $$$ - I suspect it would be well under an hour to get screen recording software working, how much is an hour of your time worth, compare that to the cost of Sibelius :-)

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

So this is a feature that works well for creating rehearsal backing tracks for our virtual choir. The problem I have is that the page turn happens at the end of a line so there is no chance to see what is happening on the next page so the choir's entrance is always missed! How could we make the scrolling video have scrolling bar on the top system and the second system as a preview? I can fudge it in Premiere Pro - but it takes ages!

In reply to by Mari'an van Loon

Since your question is about the score sharing website MuseScore.com, the people who can help you are over there on that website, not here on. So best to ask for help there. Or contact their support team directly the link at the bottom of any page.

Meanwhile, as noted elsewhere in this thread, you can always create your video directly from MuseScore favorite screen recorder, such as the one built into your OS.

I made a tool that can create a video with scrolling cursor from MuseScore file: https://github.com/keijokapp/score-util

It has been tested with MS4 but might also work with earlier versions. It does it by exporting SVG-s and playback synchronization info using MS CLI and then combining these together.

It's not perfect but I find it still better and more reliable than the online service or screen recording. Known problems are:
- Audio needs to be exported and added to video separately. I haven't found a way to programmatically export audio while taking mixer settings into account.
- Encoding SVG-s to video is quite slow (less than 1x on my computer)
- Video frames are cut out directly from SVG-s, so if systems are too close together, they might not be separated cleanly.
- The video width is harcoded to page width and aspect ration is hardcoded to 16:9. Higher systems might not fit into that rectangle and are clipped. It's still better than what the online service does because it does not make systems shorter and more zoomed in than in the original score.

Feedback and contributions are welcome.

In reply to by keijokapp

Hi, I tried to use your tool as per the instructions, but I get the following error message:

s>create-musescore-video input.mscz output.mp4
internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1149
throw new ERR_REQUIRE_ESM(filename, parentPath, packageJsonPath);
^

Error [ERR_REQUIRE_ESM]: Must use import to load ES Module: C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\score-util\bin\create-musescore-video.js
←[90m at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1149:13)←[39m
←[90m at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:977:32)←[39m
←[90m at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:877:14)←[39m
←[90m at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (internal/modules/run_main.js:74:12)←[39m
←[90m at internal/main/run_main_module.js:18:47←[39m {
code: ←[32m'ERR_REQUIRE_ESM'←[39m

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