Studio reference

This page is the full version of the help panel inside the studio. Every control that shows a hint in the studio has a section here with the same wording, plus extra detail where a short hint isn’t enough.

To see hints while you work, open the help panel with the ? button in the bottom-right corner of the studio, then hover over any control. To share help for one specific control, hover over its heading below and copy the link.

Step 1 · Files

Add a PDF of your score and a recording of the piece. You can also add a MusicXML file to make auto-sync more accurate.

Score file (MusicXML)

Optional: the MusicXML export of this score. With it, the studio places every line's start time automatically, and the sync step becomes a quick review.

Without it, auto-sync may still work. A PDF exported from notation software has the notation built in, and the studio can read it from there. Scans and photos don't, so those still need to be tapped in by hand.

Experimental: Instead of a MusicXML file, you can add a Finale .mus or .musx file, a MuseScore .mscz, .mscx or .msc file, or a Dorico .dorico project file.

Continue to crop

Move on to cropping. This is where the studio reads your score: it scans every page, reads the notation, and finds the lines of music, all on your own computer. If you have a MusicXML file, add it before you continue so the studio uses it as the reference score.

Step 2 · Crop

Each page is split into systems (lines of music). Click a box to select it, drag its edges to resize it, and click its number plate to include or exclude it. Boxes that overlap merge into one, so move, resize, or draw a box over others to combine them. Split box cuts a box in two at the cleanest gap. Snap box to ink tightens the selected box, and new boxes you draw snap automatically unless you turn that off. Reset this page and Reset all pages bring back the detected boxes. Ctrl/⌘+Z undoes your last edit on this step and Ctrl/⌘+Shift+Z redoes it. Each step keeps its own undo history.

The page and its boxes

The current page and its detected boxes. Boxes that overlap merge into one, so move or resize a box over another, or draw across several, to combine them. With a mouse or trackpad, drag on empty paper to draw a new box, or click empty paper to deselect.

A crop box

Click a box to select it. Drag it to move it, or drop it onto another box to merge the two.

The number plate

This line's place in the play order. Click the plate to include or exclude the box from the video.

Delete a box

Delete this box. Keyboard: Delete or Backspace.

Resize grips

Drag an edge or corner grip to resize the selected box. Stretch it over another box to merge the two.

Previous page arrow

Go to the previous page. Keyboard: ← or [.

Next page arrow

Go to the next page. Keyboard: → or ].

Page navigation

Step through the pages of your score. Keyboard: ← and →.

Page strip

One square per page. An outlined square means that page has lines included in the video. Click a square to jump to that page.

Selected box type

Change what the selected box is. Music lines are timed in the sync step. A title appears above the next music line, a title page is a full-screen cover shown before or after the music, and page headers and footers travel with their page without being timed.

Split box

Cut the selected box in two. The cut goes through the emptiest gap nearest the middle and avoids slicing through music whenever a clean gap exists. Keyboard: S.

Reset this page

Return this page to the boxes the studio detected. This discards your crop edits and tapped times on this page, so you'll be asked to confirm first.

Reset all pages

Return every page to the boxes the studio detected. This discards all your crop edits and tapped times, so you'll be asked to confirm first.

Snap box to ink

Shrink the selected box to fit the ink inside it, trimming empty margins in one click.

Snap drawn boxes

When you finish drawing a new box, it shrinks to fit the ink inside it. Turn this off to keep exactly the rectangle you drew.

Review flagged crops

Step through the boxes that may be wrong: a box holding more than one line of music, one line split across two boxes, a line with no box at all, or a box where the bar count doesn't match. Each stop explains the problem, and you decide whether to change anything.

The studio reads every page in two ways: once from the image, the way a scanner would, and once from the layout data that notation software stores inside an exported PDF. Where the two readings agree, the box is almost certainly right, so this review only stops where they disagree. Instead of checking twenty pages by eye, you check the handful that matter.

Continue stays available the whole time. If you know your score is fine, you can skip the review entirely.

Include: title pages

Include detected title pages (full-page covers). They show before or after the music, and you set how long each one stays up in the sync step.

Include: titles

Include inline titles: headings that appear above the next music line. They aren't timed and sit outside the highlight box.

Include: page headers

Include the text above the first line of each page, such as the title block and composer.

Include: page footers

Include the text below the last line of each page, such as page numbers and copyright notices.

Included line count

How many lines are included in the video, out of all the lines detected across every page.

Continue to sync

Move on to syncing. If the studio has a score to work from (your MusicXML file, or notation read from the PDF), it aligns the recording first, so the sync step opens with every line already placed and only the flagged ones left to check. Otherwise, you'll tap each line in by hand.

Step 3 · Sync

Play the recording and tap at the start of each slide to drop its marker on the waveform. Slide 1 is pinned to the start, and a tap never moves a slide you've already placed. Drag markers to retime them, drag the end handles to trim the clip, and zoom in for finer timing. The rail lists every slide: click a placed one to jump there, change a slide's type with its picker (the ? next to “Slides” explains each type), and use “Add repeat” to mark a section the music plays again. Title-page covers sit at the top (intro) and bottom (outro) of the list, and you set how long each one shows. Ctrl/⌘+Z undoes your last change on this step and Ctrl/⌘+Shift+Z redoes it. Each step keeps its own undo history.

Live preview

A live preview of your video at the playhead. It updates as you place and adjust lines.

Playback bar

Scrub through the recording right under the preview: drag the handle, or click anywhere on the bar, to move the playhead. It shares its play button, position, and speed with the controls below the waveform, because both run the same player.

The shaded ends are the parts of the recording the clip handles trim off, so you can see at a glance how much of it ends up in the video. The arrow keys move the playhead one second (Shift plus an arrow moves ten), and Home or End jumps to the start or end. The waveform playhead, the up-next card, and the preview all follow along live.

Up-next cue

A thumbnail of the next line to place, and how many lines you've timed so far.

Tap button

Press at the start of each line as the recording plays to place its marker. Keyboard: Space.

Go to start

Jump the playhead back to the start of the recording.

Play / pause

Play or pause the recording. Keyboard: K.

Playback speed

Slow the recording down to tap fast passages accurately, or speed it up. Your timing stays exact at any speed.

Timeline zoom

Zoom the timeline in or out for finer placement. Tip: hold Ctrl/⌘ and scroll over the waveform.

The waveform

The recording's waveform. Click to jump to a spot, or drag across it to scrub. Drag a numbered marker to retime its line, and drag the dark end handles to trim the clip. You hear the recording as you drag, so you can place markers by ear.

Clear all times

Remove every placed time and start syncing over. Line 1 stays pinned to the start.

Auto-sync

Align the recording to the score and place every line's start time automatically. Lines you've placed by hand stay where you put them.

Auto-sync uses your MusicXML file if you added one. If you didn't, and your PDF was exported from notation software rather than scanned, the studio reads the notation from the PDF itself. That's why the button appears for some PDFs and not others.

Reading the PDF is less exact than using a MusicXML file, so expect more flagged lines to review. You can add the MusicXML file at any point, and auto-sync will switch over to it.

If auto-sync can't place a score with confidence and you're signed in, the studio may ask whether you'd like to share that project's files with the Score to Video team in exchange for a free credit (one per account). Sharing is entirely optional. Your files are uploaded only if you choose Share, and a person on our team will open them to see why auto-sync fell short. They are emailed to us rather than stored on our servers, and we delete them once we've looked. Very large sets of files aren't offered. The Terms and Privacy Policy have the details.

Review flagged

Step through the auto-placed times that need checking. The playhead jumps to each flagged line in turn.

Up next card

A preview of the next slide: the first placed slide after the playhead, or the next one waiting to be tapped.

The ? beside “Slides”

Open the help panel with an explanation of every slide type: music line, title, title page, page header, and page footer.

Add repeat

Mark a section the music plays again: pick its first and last line, and the video shows those lines a second time. Each pass gets its own taps, and one repeat can sit entirely inside another.

Mark unsure

Mark a passage auto-sync can't follow: pick its first and last line, the same way you mark a repeat. Auto-sync stops trying to match that passage, places the music on either side of it properly, and estimates the times inside it from the score instead.

Some passages give auto-sync nothing to match. A cadenza printed without bar lines has no measures to count, and a run of measure-repeat signs has no written notes. Neither is hard music, but measuring harder won't help. Auto-sync can race through a stretch of score with nothing in it while the recording barely moves, and that drags the lines around it out of place.

The times inside a marked passage are estimates, worked out from the score's tempo between the lines on either side. Treat them as a starting point to nudge, not as exact placements. The timeline draws them differently so you can tell them apart.

Only mark what you have to. Auto-sync needs solid stretches of music to hold onto, and a score that is mostly marked passages is mostly guesswork.

The slide rail

Every slide in play order. Click a placed slide to jump the playhead to it. Repeated sections show one entry per pass.

A slide’s type picker

Change what this slide is: a music line, a title, a title page, or a page header or footer. The ? next to “Slides” explains each type.

A slide’s ⋮ settings

Open this slide's settings to change its type or, for a title page, how long it shows.

A title-page row

A title-page cover. Open its ⋮ settings to set how long it shows. Intro covers play before the music and outro covers after.

Slide types

Every box you keep has a type, and you can change it with the picker on any slide:

Music line

A line of the score. It's timed on the waveform and highlighted while it plays.

Title

A heading, such as the name of the piece or a section title. It has no time of its own: it appears above the next music line when that line plays, outside the highlight box.

Title page

A full-screen cover shown on its own while no music plays. Intro title pages show before the music and outro ones after. Add as many as you like and set how many seconds each one stays up.

Page header

A running head (title block, composer) at the top of a page. It appears above the music and isn't timed.

Page footer

A page number or copyright line at the bottom of a page. It appears below the music and isn't timed.

Step 4 · Export

Choose your video style (camera motion, highlight color, paper, and contrast), then render. Free exports are 720p with a small ScoreToVideo.com badge in the corner. A credit unlocks this project for good: badge-free 1080p and 4K, plus your own watermark (a diagonal line of text, a logo, or both) under “Your watermark”. Ctrl/⌘+Z undoes your last style change and Ctrl/⌘+Shift+Z redoes it. Each step keeps its own undo history.

Aspect

The shape of the video: 16:9 widescreen, 4:3 (a squarer frame), or Vertical for Shorts, Reels, and TikTok. Vertical video can't use the Book layout.

Motion

How the camera moves. Scroll glides down through the score line by line, Page cuts from one screenful to the next, and Book shows two pages side by side, which suits tall scores. Book isn't available for vertical video.

Transitions in Scroll mode

Glide the camera down to the next line as it approaches. Turn it off to jump from line to line instead.

Transitions in Page mode

Cross-fade to the next page just before its first line plays. Turn it off for a hard cut, like flipping a page.

Transitions in Book mode

Cross-fade to the next two-page spread just before its first line plays. Turn it off for a hard cut, like turning a page.

Transition duration

How long each glide or cross-fade takes. Shorter feels snappier, and longer feels slower and more cinematic. Only applies when Transitions are on.

First page (Book mode)

Book mode only: whether the piece starts on the left or right page of the first spread. “Right” leaves the first left page blank, like a printed score that opens on a right-hand page.

Highlight

Draw an outline and a progress bar around the line that's playing. Turn it off for a clean, unmarked score.

Highlight color

The color of the highlight outline and the progress bar under the active line.

Paper

The background the score sits on. The studio keeps only the ink and lays it on the color you pick, so you never see white page scans floating on cream. Black inverts the score to light ink on a dark background.

Contrast

Darkens the ink and removes the paper tone from the page. Raise it to clean up gray or faint scans. Clean PDFs need little or none.

Preview playback

Play the preview, or drag the handle to jump to any moment. It uses the same player as the sync step, so the frame you see here is exactly what the render will show at that point.

Use it to check what a still frame can't show: the transitions between lines or pages, where the watermark sits as it moves between corners, and whether the highlight keeps up with the music. The arrow keys move the playhead one second (Shift plus an arrow moves ten), and Home or End jumps to the start or end.

Free 720p export

Render a 720p video with a small ScoreToVideo.com badge in the corner. It's free, unlimited, and needs no account.

Export master

Spend one credit to unlock this project for good: watermark-free 720p, 1080p, and 4K exports, re-renders included.

Your watermark

Unlock this project to remove the Score to Video badge and add your own watermark: a diagonal line of text across the frame, a logo in a corner, or both.

Your logo is saved in this browser, not in the project, so one upload works for every project you make on this device.

Watermark switch

Add your own branding to this project's exports. Turn it off to render a clean video with no marks at all.

Diagonal text

A faint line of text across the whole frame, such as an imprint, a copyright line, or “perusal only”. Leave it empty for no text.

Diagonal strength

How strongly the diagonal text shows. Low is barely visible; high is hard to ignore or crop out.

Diagonal text color

The color of the diagonal text. Pick one that stands out against your paper.

Logo

A PNG, JPEG, WebP, or SVG logo shown in a corner of every frame. Drop a file on the tile or click it to browse. The logo is saved in this browser and shared by all your projects.

Show logo

Show your logo in this project's video. Turn it off to leave the logo out of this project while keeping it saved for others.

Logo corner

Which corner the logo sits in. Pick one that stays clear of the score's margins and page numbers.

Logo size

How big the logo is, as a share of the frame. Tall logos fit the same box as wide ones, so they never run off the edge. The logo scales with the export, so it looks the same at 720p and 4K.

Logo opacity

How solid the logo looks. Use full strength for a publisher's mark, or lower it for a subtle signature.