Topic by yaccob

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  • yaccob
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  • From: Zurich, Switzerland
  • Registered: 21-03-2008
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Topic: Demo - Pianoteq in creating audio track for YouTube piano-playing clip

Hi everybody,

I wanted to share with you another possible use of PianoTeq.

I wanted to post to YouTube a videoclip of me playing piano, however, since I don't have a video camera, I used an iPhone to film myself

You can imagine that the audio quality was not good enough for a quality listening to a piano playing (video quality is not perfect either, but that's another story), and since my piano (Yamaha GranTouch GT2) has a MIDI output, i decided to replace the original audio with a Pianoteq-generated audio track. I simultaneously recorded video and MIDI:

1. Video capture: iPhone; I then transfered  the MOV file to a Windows XP PC and converted to AVI with "Format Factory" (a great free piece of software!).

2. Simultaneous MIDI capture: recording MIDI output from Yamaha Grantouch GT2 with Red Dot Forever (another useful freebie), converting MIDI to WAV with Pianoteq 3 (i decided to use "C3 Solo Recording"), converting WAV to MP3 with Audacity-another freebie (before converting to MP3, i amplified the signal).

3. Combining AVI and MP3 & adding title: Windows Movie Maker, aligning original audio track with the Pianoteq-generated track - very important, otherwise your fingers won't be in sync with the sound , muting the original audio track, saving as WMV, upload to YouTube.

Of course, the velocity curve in Pianoteq must be properly adjusted to the piano keyboard profile.

Now, these are my first attempts, apologies for sloppy playing and a couple of mistakes, i am not used to filming myself The brightness is too high, my mistake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRtDkNYr6bc

Although there seems to be a lot of steps, some of them were mostly due to the fact that Windows Movie Maker does not accept iPhone MOV files (at least not in Windows XP) and WAV files (as generated by PianoTeq).

However, I do like the chance of using whatever PianoTeq preset I may desire, especially since the original internal Yamaha GranTouch GT2 sound samples are not perfect (after all, this model is about 11 years old).

Hope that perhaps somebody will find this useful.

Kind regards,
yaccob

Reply by Jake Johnson

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  • Jake Johnson
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Re: Demo - Pianoteq in creating audio track for YouTube piano-playing clip

You get really good results, here. To me, however, there was a slight disconnect between the video and the sound\timbre. The sound seems a little more distant than the camera, as though we were listening from a distance, but watching a medium shot of the playing. Just a first impression. I hope you'll post more of these. Maybe using the new rock preset for this same piece? The piano in the video, after all, is a Yamaha.

Last edited by Jake Johnson (17-07-2009 21:22)

Reply by yaccob

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  • yaccob
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Re: Demo - Pianoteq in creating audio track for YouTube piano-playing clip

As to the audio sounding more distant than the camera, you are absolutely right, i did not pay attention to the realism and simply used the sound recording preset with 4 microphones placed at quite some distance from  the piano.

Now, i did another quick and simple test and used Erard player preset (therefore much less reverb) with the 2 microphones placed where the 'camera' (iPhone) was standing (this Pianoteq function is a real beauty!). Here's a short clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VZFnzYbTUE

This seems to be a little better now, i.e. more realistic.

As far as sync between video and audio goes, i did some googling and found that with youtube clips there are occasional issues, depending on the codecs used, on the computer itself, and similar. The original videos before posting to youtube are actually fully in sync, so i'll keep working on eliminating this potential problem and post the results.