How to do it, click by click
Every picture below is the real SheetVideo editor, with what to click ringed and numbered. The example is a recording of Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat, Op. 9 No. 2.
1Start a project and add the recording
Open SheetVideo and start a new project — there is no account to make first. The steps down the left are the whole job: Recording, Score, Sync, Look, Text & effects, and Clips & export.
Step 1 is the recording. Click Choose a video or audio file… and pick the video of your performance. MP4, MOV and WebM all work, upright phone clips as well as landscape, and so does an audio file on its own.
Step 1: Choose a video or audio file… The file stays on your computer — nothing is uploaded. 2Bring the score
Step 2 asks for the notes you played. SheetVideo needs them to know what to listen for — and they are what ends up drawn on the video.
Click MIDI and pick the .mid file. You can also drop the file anywhere on the window. No file at all? “Write it in the score editor” opens tab, a piano roll and a drum grid.
3Give the score its name and key
The Nocturne’s MIDI file comes in as 141 bars in two parts, drawn straight over the video. A MIDI file is performance data, though: it has no title, and this one has no key signature either, so every E♭ is spelled as a D♯.
Click the project’s title at the top of the window to open the song’s details.
4Tell it which part you played
“What did you play?” is the most important choice on this step. SheetVideo listens for exactly the notes of the parts ticked here, so a part that is not in your recording — a backing track, a doubled line, somebody else’s part — makes it listen for notes that never sound.
This MIDI has a second part, Music Box, that only doubles the piano. It is not in the recording, so only Grand Piano is ticked. “What goes on the video?” below it is a separate choice: you can sync on one part and show another, or show several.
5Press Sync score to video
Step 3 is one button. Click Sync score to video.
Under the button it says what it is listening for — the parts you ticked on the Score step. If that is wrong, Change takes you back to them.
6Look at what it flagged
When it finishes, every bar has a place in the recording. The timeline under the video shows it: green where the sync is sure, amber and red where a bar is worth a listen.
The same bars are listed on the right with their times. Click one to jump there and listen; if it sounds right, click Sounds right and it drops off the list. In the Nocturne most of them sit in the closing bars, where the cadenza is played very freely.
7Choose how the score looks
Step 4 is the look. Every project starts on Strip: a dark band along the foot of the picture with light notes, built to read on a phone.
Under the view are the settings it offers — notation, tab or both; top, centre or bottom; one line or two; light or dark ink; size, backing, colour; the playhead, the lit note and bar numbers. The video previews every change as you make it.
Between the two sits Instruments: a fretboard, a piano or a drum kit that plays along. It is a choice of its own, so any view of the sheet goes with any instrument, or with none.
The picture is the export itself, in the shape picked under the video — Original, YouTube 16:9, Reels 9:16, the 4:5 feed or square. Pick it before you style, and what you set here is exactly what the file holds.
8Add an instrument that plays along
Under Instruments, click No instrument to open the picker: the Fretboard for guitar and bass; Keys, Light Strings, Hammers and Falling Notes for piano; the Drum Kit, Beat Grid and Drum Rings; and the Circle of Fifths.
9Pick its parts, its look and its place
Pick Keys and a keyboard appears in the room the sheet leaves, the keys going down as they sound and both hands in their own colours. Under it are the parts it plays — both piano hands here, picked for you — six looks from Neon to a concert Grand, and its size, height and how far ahead it rings the coming notes.
Drag it on the video to put it anywhere else. Reset position puts it back.
10Or let the notes fall
Falling Notes drops each note onto the keyboard as a bar as long as it is held — the look people know from piano tutorials, here following your own performance rather than a MIDI playback. It keeps the look, size and parts of the instrument it replaced.
11No video? Choose what goes behind the score
An MP3, WAV or M4A works as the recording too. With no picture of its own, the Recording step asks what goes behind the score: an image of yours, or just the score, large and centred with the title above it.
Click An image and pick a photo or artwork. It stays on your computer like the recording, and you can change it — or go back to your video — at any time, here or on the export step.
An audio file with a picture of its own behind the score. 12Pick what to export and its shape
Step 6. What to export: your clips, the synced part, or the whole take. Made for sets the shape: Original (as filmed), YouTube 16:9, Reels 9:16, Feed 4:5 or Square 1:1.
Behind the score chooses between your video, an image of your own and just the score — your recording’s sound with the score large on a stage of its own. The picture on the left is the export itself, so what you see is what you get.
