Synthesia Video Creator

Archived development update discussion from past versions
Archived development updates.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Synthesia Video Creator - 10.2.3886 (Beta 1)

Image

Download:
Official version available here!

This tool can create fluid, 60 FPS, HD videos of Synthesia playing songs with the UI hidden and with perfectly synchronized audio. While this utility is a little outside the mission statement of "create the best piano practice tool", it has become abundantly clear that people are going to make these types of videos regardless. So, if Synthesia is going to be on public display, we should help it look its best. (This is also the only tool we'll be releasing with official support for Black MIDI files.)
  • Requires at least Windows Vista or at least Mac OS X 10.7.
  • Requires a copy of Synthesia that is unlocked on the same computer.
  • Can output audio-only (Raw PCM Wave or Ogg-Vorbis) effectively making it a MIDI-to-WAV converter.
  • Can output video in the WebM container using the VP8 codec. (Ready for immediate upload to YouTube, etc. Or easily convert to a different format using third-party tools like HandBrake.)
  • If you've never seen a .webm file before, try dragging it to your web browser! It'll happily play in a new tab all on its own. Think of it as the Internet's video format.
  • Supports 720p, 1080p, 1440p, and 4k output resolution for videos.
  • Supports all the standard video frame rates: 15, 24, 30, 50, 60, and each of their NTSC/PAL drop-frame equivalents.
  • Supports arbitrary .DLS sound sets (including the built-in sound set on PC and Mac systems).
  • Allows easily adding a background image.
Let me know if you have any trouble!

Test video at 60 FPS with a background image:

silvrica
Posts: 40

Post by silvrica »

Thank you very much for this tool!!! A very nice Christmas gift!!!!
It works perfectly in windows 7 and I can open the .webm file with the VLC player, but when I tray to convert it to MP4 using Handbrake, as you suggest, the video did not play. I would like to open the videos in a video editor.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Hmm, did you change any settings in Handbrake? (I've run into the same problem in the past: it's pretty easy to choose a setting that isn't viable.)

I just tried with a 1080p video, picked my source .webm file, clicked "Normal" from the presets pane, set the destination path, and clicked Start. When it was finished, the output .mp4 played just fine in WMP, VLC, and dragged to a new Chrome tab.
silvrica
Posts: 40

Post by silvrica »

Thanks for your response

I play with the settings in handbreak and finally I can play my mp4 video!!!!
ExiledEtude
Posts: 7

Post by ExiledEtude »

I've got Windows 7 and tried creating a video using just the creator and whenever I click export and choose a name it comes up with an error screen that says unhandled exception occurred. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

Awesome Nicholas!
Web media file and 4k support for the first build!

Well i go finally download this :)

Funny quote about the Blacjk midi stuff:
"published by the non-profit arts organization Rhizome,[1] which described how the music is created using piano software like Synesthesia."

I don't think these guys have ever open synthesia (not Synesthesia lol) :)

But i am curious how do they make those midi files?

Edit: works like a charm but only dls files on mac?
I have tried with a soundfont but i haven't sound when i watch the video.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

ExiledEtude wrote:... it comes up with an error screen that says unhandled exception occurred. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hmm... I'll try to get our crash reporting stuff in there for the next beta. Without seeing where the exception is happening, it's hard to tell what's going wrong. Sorry!
kiwi wrote:... but only dls files on mac?
Only DLS files on PC and Mac. The offline synth we're using only supports DLS. There are a few old-timey programs out there that can convert SF2 to DLS, but I've heard a little bit is lost in the conversion. (The best one I know of is Awave Studio, but unfortunately it's not free.)

We went with DLS for two reasons: first, we already had a synth that supported it -- Android's Sonivox synth can load those files natively and is free to license -- and every single computer that this is designed to run on already has a built-in DLS sound set. That saves us the user-education trouble of "Now go find an SF2 archive, get sf2ark, extract it, put it in the right place, point the video creator at it", and so on.

Eventually the plan is to add proper VSTi support, which is a million times stronger than SF2. (For what it's worth, DLS is more capable than SF2, too... just a little less popular.)
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

Yep the dls isn't popular so not so mcuch good bank even if it's better in some way :)

But how i can change the dls soundfile i have found somes, but i can use them only in the dsl music device but not in the built in softsynth and by the way Synthésia use it too.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Synthesia Video Creator - 10.2.3891 (Beta 2)

Download: Changes:
  • Added automatic crash reporting to Windows version.
  • Fixed a bug in DLS loading that was preventing big sound sets (like Fury.dls and Airfont_340.dls) from working.
  • Fixed an informational label that was getting cut off.
  • The version (e.g. "10.2.3891") is now included in the window title bar.
ExiledEtude wrote:... it comes up with an error screen that says unhandled exception occurred.
Sorry for the trouble! Try running this version and let me know if a crash report file is generated on your desktop. You can email that to support@synthesiagame.com and we'll take a look.
kiwi wrote:But how i can change the dls soundfile i have found somes, but i can use them only in the dsl music device but not in the built in softsynth...
I tried some larger banks and discovered a bug in the synth where it was arbitrarily limiting the allowed size. (The synth was originally written for early feature-phone hardware so it is tuned to be ultra fast/efficient.)
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

Well i use Fury.dls and other not so big and haven't any problems here when i load them in the dls device.(you can choose the dls file in garageband)
But i don't know how to change the one on the default built in synth.Even if it's broken with larger bank i can make a tiny bank better than the default one...If i know how to change the dls...

I am pretty bad for now on mac for the mao stuff :p

Question i have found the fury dls on a old reggae website ( it's great for reggae) where did you found the fury dls?am just curious cause i have tried many dls and theres not so much .
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

kiwi wrote:... where did you found the fury dls?
I just did a search for "DLS files" and the #2 result (after the Wikipedia page) was this place. It's got Fury and Airfont_340 (along with a handful of SoundFonts, too).
kiwi wrote:...If i know how to change the dls...
I'm not sure how to change it for the whole computer, but for the Video Creator it's just the 3rd box down in the window. See the screenshot in the top post. The "..." button next to "DLS Sound Set" should let you pick a different one.
linuxgemini
Posts: 1

Post by linuxgemini »

Wow, DLS Set reminds me a conversion I did.

I actually converted a Piano SoundFont to DLS. And it worked properly.

But, I can't try the Video Creator because I don't have the unlocked version of Synthesia. Also, the beta seems very good.
KaleidonKep99
Posts: 58

Post by KaleidonKep99 »

Still waiting for an option to change the note speed!

Other than that, it's really good!
No more laggy recordings! Yay! :D
Gingeas
Posts: 11

Post by Gingeas »

Converter works very well! This will prove extremely useful for quick/bulk uploads. The fact that it supports 1440p and 4K is astounding!
Can't wait to see the final build.
Ray890
Posts: 1

Post by Ray890 »

I've seen resulting videos from this Video Creator and it looks very nice, I have suggestions for three advanced settings that can further enhance them:

- A gain control to avoid/eliminate audio clipping on loud MIDIs
- A voice limit control to allow the user more flexibility over resulting polyphony (~100 will not be enough for some)
- Note drawing limit control, users who will open Black MIDI files will easily exceed this limit, and may not mind trading some additional render time for having more notes show up at once
techguy101
Posts: 26

Post by techguy101 »

ITS FINALLY HERE :o
joeybab3
Posts: 8

Post by joeybab3 »

KaleidonKep99 wrote:Still waiting for an option to change the note speed!

Other than that, it's really good!
No more laggy recordings! Yay! :D
It appears that it takes your settings from synthesia, so you should be able to just change it there?
joeybab3
Posts: 8

Post by joeybab3 »

The gui disabling should be an option, I kind of like the little banner at the beginning that shows the song title and other info if you use metadata editor.
KaleidonKep99
Posts: 58

Post by KaleidonKep99 »

Ray890 wrote:I've seen resulting videos from this Video Creator and it looks very nice, I have suggestions for three advanced settings that can further enhance them:

- A gain control to avoid/eliminate audio clipping on loud MIDIs
- A voice limit control to allow the user more flexibility over resulting polyphony (~100 will not be enough for some)
- Note drawing limit control, users who will open Black MIDI files will easily exceed this limit, and may not mind trading some additional render time for having more notes show up at once
The DLS synth uses Microsoft Synthesizer, so it has unlimited voices support, and making a voice limit control should be easy. (Just like FL Keys on FL Studio)

Anyway, I don't think this was supposed to happen...
Spoiler:
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Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Oh hai, everyone. :lol:
KaleidonKep99 wrote:Still waiting for an option to change the note speed!
This was an oversight that I noticed just after beta 2 went out the door: speed is always 100% and not taken from Synthesia (like the rest of your settings). I already have it fixed internally. I was just waiting to see a crash report from ExiledEtude so I could hopefully get that bug fix included in beta 3 as well (vs. releasing a ton of separate betas with one or two changes each).
Ray890 wrote:A gain control to avoid/eliminate audio clipping on loud MIDIs
Hmm... as we start to add things like VSTi support, this might get a little trickier to support universally, but it wouldn't be hard to add some slider that controlled the global output volume for all tracks. That should at least let you avoid clipping.
Ray890 wrote:A voice limit control to allow the user more flexibility over resulting polyphony (~100 will not be enough for some)
KaleidonKep99 wrote:The DLS synth uses Microsoft Synthesizer, so it has unlimited voices support, and making a voice limit control should be easy. (Just like FL Keys on FL Studio)
While the Video Creator uses the Microsoft sounds by default, the synth itself is actually the open-source Sonivox library from the Android code repository. This is because the Microsoft and Apple synths don't appear to be able to render MIDI in the background/offline/non-realtime like the video creator requires. The Sonivox synth is cool: you pass in MIDI events (and the "current" time), and get raw PCM data out that you can use however you want. On Android, they hand it off to the sound hardware for immediate playback. In the Video Creator, we hold onto it to save to disk.

I think polyphony is set to 256 in the synth right now. (The library requires it to be hard-coded at compile time.) Let me try cranking it up to something ridiculous like 2048.
Ray890 wrote:Note drawing limit control, users who will open Black MIDI files will easily exceed this limit...
This is another oversight, sorry. Because the main Synthesia client and the Video Creator both share the same rendering infrastructure, I didn't even think to increase that limit. I'll bump it way up for the next beta and you guys can let me know if it breaks anything. :lol:
joeybab3 wrote:I kind of like the little banner at the beginning that shows the song title and other info if you use metadata editor.
Cutting that out was for expedience. The banner is kind of grossly hard-coded into the proper-game's playing screen, so it will take more effort to pull it out into a reusable component. I had figured that by giving users a really "clean" video with no UI bits, they'd be able to run it through whatever video editing software they like and add whatever fancy stuff they wanted.

That said, I can definitely see an argument that this tool should be completely turn-key and be able to generate a nice result in one click or whatever. I can add the banner as a choice under "More Options".
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