I searched up PlaySK a little while back and in the web results
I found a previous message to MMDigest written by Phil Dayson;
here's what he wrote.
Ref. https://www.mmdigest.com/Archives/Digests/202106/2021.06.28.01.html 

> According to the PlaySK website it appears that a scan or video
> feed can be converted to MIDI in real time. Did you find that
> to be the case?

You have to film the piano roll with the camera level in relation
to the tracker bar and make sure that the edges of the roll are
approximately 1/16 of an inch away from the video frame edge. Any
skew will mess up the tracking and make a MIDI mess. This will give
you something close to proper alignment.

This is an annoying and very trial-and-error-based process to get
the roll lined up. You also have to make sure the roll is lit very
brightly as the program works by detecting the darker than 50% grey
pixels in the video to trigger notes.

Once you have a video filmed all you have to do is open it in PlaySK.
The video _must_ be 640 by 480 pixels resolution! The program cannot
open anything smaller or bigger so make sure your camera can film in
that resolution or skip to the next step.

If the video cannot be aligned manually then you can edit it in
a video editor. I use Adobe Premiere but I'm pretty sure there are
many other programs where you can rotate, scale and crop the video
to fit the frame. It's just tweaking one thing at a time and viewing
the video in the scanner until stuff lines up.

Once you have the video lined up and scannable, you need to decide
how you are going to run the MIDI signal to a MIDI keyboard, MIDI
editing software, digital player piano etc. If you want to record
the MIDI output you're going to need loopMIDI. This program makes
a sort of MIDI tube where you can set the port as MIDI in and out
on the scanner and MIDI software. All you have to do then is start
playing the roll and hit record on the MIDI editor. (Don't slow down
the roll Tempo -- this will make some frames not get played in the
scanner, making the tempo very jittery and notes will get lost.)

Be aware that lyrics printed on the roll will trigger treble notes
and will have to be cleaned out in post-recording editing in the
MIDI editing software. The sharper the video the better the results.

I can try to scan videos for you as well if you post the videos
on YouTube under an unlisted link. I can then download them with
a YouTube to MP4 converter and do the whole procedure myself and
email you the results.

Hope this helps anyone wanting to scan rolls from video!

Piotr Barcz
thepiotrcorporation@gmail.com.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]