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, and Clips & export.
Step 1 is the recording. Click Choose a video… and pick the full take. 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… 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.
3Tell 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.
4Press 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.
5Look 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.
6Choose how the score looks
Step 4 is the look. For a phone, pick a view that stays readable small: Strip, Pulse Ribbon and Ring View all do.
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.
7Try another view
Click the view’s name to see all twelve as thumbnails — the classic ones that sit still over the picture first, then the ones that move with the music. Pick one and the video shows it straight away, with the same sync.
8Mark the part worth posting
For a Short or a Reel you want the best thirty seconds, not the whole take. Stop the video at the bar where the clip should start and click Mark a clip under the video.
A clip of about thirty seconds appears on the timeline, starting on that bar — cut on bar lines, so it starts and ends on the music. Drag its edges to change it, or drag across the bars on the timeline to mark another. Every clip you mark is listed on the Clips & export step.
9Pick what to export and its shape
Step 5. 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.
Picture chooses between your video and Score only — 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.
10Export it upright for Shorts, Reels and TikTok
Click Reels 9:16. A landscape video does not get stretched: it sits whole on a blurred copy of itself, or with black bars, or fills the frame with a centre crop — your pick under “When the shape differs”. The score is laid out again for the narrower frame.
Exporting needs a free account — sign up when you get here, and whatever you did as a guest moves into it. Free exports are up to 60 seconds with a small moving “Made with SheetVideo.com” mark; Pro exports the whole take without it.
