Video player for making scores for film
We would love it if you implemented a video player, so that when you play the score it plays the video in sync. And if not a full feature, then at least the plugin components necessary to make a plugin like this. If you added plugin objects that allowed us to relay the signal from the 'play' button to a plugin, and a way to get the time the BLUE cursor is at (like the cursor object with time(), but for the blue cursor), we could at least attempt to make a simple Java video player that communicates with a plugin to synchronize the video with the score.
Comments
I second that.
It really would be a big help to those of us who do music and video.
Comment if you think this would be a good thing to have.
It is something nice wich would add more value to the software. In Linux it would be enough to add Jack-Transport support, like almost all music-linux software does (Lmms, Ardour, Audacity, Rosegarden, Hydrogen, etc), to use it with the video-window Xjadeo. At the moment jack receives only start-stop from MS, I believe.
Wait, so Jack can recieve the play signal from MuseScore!? That's enough right there to play it to video, you would just start it with the MuseScore player.
And in fact I was thinking about it, and Jack transport really would be the best option, because when you think about it in Sibelius the video goes really slow and skips and stuff sometimes, so with Jack you'd think it would actually go full speed playback and be more accurate on timing.
Currently MuseScore only supports start and stop in the Jack Transport API. I tested with Xjadeo and MuseScore on MacOSX and it's working as well. If you are at the beginning of the score, you can start the video by pressing play in MuseScore. Pause will pause both playback. Rewind, forward, click in the score etc... are not supported. It should work on Windows as well, but for an unknown reason I can't make Xjadeo connect ot Jack.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUq4Hl2l2TY
with full jack-transport, it would be cool:)
It would be nice to be able to synchronise several different computers displaying the same score for group playing so that the 'conductor' could control the others and other midi instruments.
(mainly adressed to lasconic-werner)
Since this is a feature I think Ms could benefit a lot, I emailed Luis Garrido, developper of Xjadeo, the video player that synchronise with Ardour thru jack, asking for help improving the jack support inside Ms that would solve the problem. He said(in order to solve the "new cursor position feature", missing in jack-transport integration in Ms):
"It should be possible, just finding the section in Ms code in wich the answer to the event that re-positions the cursor is, and adding a call to jack-transport. Be aware that there could be additional problems I cannot think of right now, as I don´t know the Ms code"
He can´t do himself this work of looking into the jack-Ms portion of code tha should be improved (too busy right now), but is open to give advice/help to someone willing to do the job. Also, I think Paul Davis, the actual creator of jack, would help in form of advice/guidance.
Hope someone with the right coding skills volunteers, that would be a great improvement for Ms(my opinion)
I am currently doing some research into the feasibility of creating a feature film on Linux. A video player would definitely help make that more likely.
KoRnKloWn:
"Wait, so Jack can recieve the play signal from MuseScore!? That's enough right there to play it to video, you would just start it with the MuseScore player.
And in fact I was thinking about it, and Jack transport really would be the best option, because when you think about it in Sibelius the video goes really slow and skips and stuff sometimes, so with Jack you'd think it would actually go full speed playback and be more accurate on timing."
JACK Transport support was implemented last summer.
I thinkv video integration would be an important and helpful addition to MuseScore.
If someone could make a tutorial on how to use MuseScore and Xjadeo to score for a video that would be awesome!
To sum it up:
The result
That's cool enough it makes me want to take on a movie scoring project just to try it out...
I figured it out! (in more detail, anyways)
Basically, open the video in xjadeo (right click, open).
Run Jack PortAudio.
In xjadeo, right click, Sync > Jack.
(I'm assuming the above MuseScore configuration.)
The MuseScore controls should play the video.
Tried it as per instructions above, works like a charm! Thanks so much, this will be very useful!
That's pretty cool, worked the first time for me and I am impressed, but how can we set the frame rate to use? Not only frame rate, but to be truly useful, need to be able to specify the starting SMPTE frame for the start of playback.
Also does anyone know if its possible to use this feature without Jack by just sending MMC/MTC over midi, so that it can be sent via network midi to another computer running something like VideoSlave?
It would also be very cool if when clicking on the score in various places, the video would seek to the point of the video that matches that particular thing clicked on, etc.
It is neato that we can play a video though, but without the frame rate I'm not sure this has practical value.
Hello.
"Also does anyone know if its possible to use this feature without Jack by just sending MMC/MTC over midi"
This summer I implemented Midi Machine Control, SysEx messages support to control MuseScore from other applications. This feature is experimental and not included in the master branch, but my sources are available on the internet. Welcome for testing!
"so that it can be sent via network midi to another computer "
You can use some software to control MuseScore over midi via internet, or try using some solutions to use JACK over the internet.
"It would also be very cool if when clicking on the score in various places, the video would seek to the point of the video that matches that particular thing clicked on, etc."
This is what exactly JACK Transport does. If you click on some place of the score, video in xjadeo should seek to the corresponding place too.
"but how can we set the frame rate to use? Not only frame rate, but to be truly useful, need to be able to specify the starting SMPTE frame for the start of playback. "
Sorry, for now it's impossible to change the frame rate, it's fixed to 30. As I mentioned before, you can use MMC to specify the starting frame for precise positioning.
I think its pretty cool that MuseScore is integrated with jack and I wish that Jack was more widely accepted and used on Mac and Windows.
Here are some general suggetions, take it or leave it..
1 - almost nobody makes a 30 frame per second film. 29.92 is much more common and there are actually a number of different frame rates that need to be supported for the feature to be any real practical use for anything other then home movies. If you have the wrong frame rate, then the video will not be playing properly in sync to the music and will drift out of time pretty quickly.
2 - Additionally, if someone is trying to compose music to a video, then they need to be able to scrub the music forward and backward and watch the video scrub forward and backward in sync, so that they can see how the music they are entering lines up, exactly which frame. in the case of notation, you don't really have a way to scrub. but you can move from beat to beat, or from note to note, so to speak. Usually in film scoring there is a need to adjust tempos and meters so that actual beats fall within a frame or two of a particular hit points in the video action. So being able to see the video track what you're doing as you move around the score would be extremely useful, not just sync while playing back, but as you move around the score...or have a way to move forward/back one note at a time or one beat at a time or something like that and have the video sync shuttle to the appropriate frame with that. This is a moot point if only 30 frames per second are supported
3 - the reason I asked about MMC is so that other external video devices can be used, such as external tape machines, video slave software, etc, on other dedicated machines. This requires that MMC be --sent-- from MuseScore...and also MTC. This would be instead of Jack. There are very few products out there that actually support jack syncronization, particularly on mac and windows. However many products do support MTC/MMC sync..including hardware devices.
All that being said, its pretty cool that you are at least thinking about Jack, I like that. And its cool there is a way to play a video back along with the music, but with only 30 frames/sec available, its sort of a moot point...not a usable platform for any real video or film project which almost never comes at that rate.
and also, I did get xjadeo working with jack on my mac and it played back and I was impressed. but clicking on the score didn't seem to shuttle the video.