Re: I wrote a MIDI to Lily front end; also questions about video

[Stefano Antonelli]

On Wed, 2023-12-06 at 17:21 +0000, Chris Korda wrote:
> I spent much of the last week converting my compositions from MIDI
> files to Lily format. I tried midi2ly first, but found it lacking,
> and decided to roll my own in C++. I gather there are other
> converters around, as I saw at least one on GitHub.

It probably would have been nicer to fix midi2ly.  It's been around for
a long time.  Fragmentation in the open source world is high and no one
benefits from it.

> My actual question regards video. I have investigated the various
> methods, and I'm considering rolling my own, partly because I'm 

Again fragmentation is high.  There are at least 4 different projects
that do this in various ways.  Most use python and one uses
bash/scheme.

> reluctant to install Python, but also because it's an interesting
> problem. I tried outputting the score as one long strip, via ly:one-
> line-breaking, nice and easy. Presumably I could then scroll the
> resulting PNG file to generate video frames. But would I know the 

ly2video already does it that way.  You can search for ly2video on
youtube and find some examples.  Like this:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDOZZzbfL00>

I'm actually working on adding some new modes to ly2video right now.
 Not for horizontal scrolling though.

The reason I'm working on ly2video is because it already supports midi
rubato.  Which I need to sync recorded audio to moving transcriptions.

For what it's worth, I despise python.  Rather than rolling my own
though, I decided to modify ly2video.

I'm not a Windows user anymore, so I don't know your Python pain.  For
end users of the program though it's possible to build a self contained
python executable.  I think this can be run through github actions too
(though I haven't done it).  So if properly set up, the end user just
downloads a windows binary and runs it.

For development, you can upload to github and download a build.  You
may not need to install Python.  It's a little slow.

Another option might be Windows Subsystem for Linux.  You should be
able to install Python there and work with it like the rest of us linux
people do.  I've never tried it though so I don't know if that's a good
option.

-Stef