YouTube to MIDI
Save a copy of the video's audio or the video itself, then choose that file in Noteline to turn the melody into MIDI.
Pasting a YouTube link won't work: Noteline reads local files in your browser and never sends the audio to a server.
How to convert YouTube to MIDI
- Get a file you have permission to use. If you uploaded the video yourself, use your original file or follow YouTube's instructions for downloading your own upload. If someone else owns the video and you only have the link, ask them for the clip or its audio.
- Try the local video first. Select it with Choose audio, even if it is an MP4. Noteline reads the video's audio track. For an audio-only copy, choose the MP3 or PCM WAV instead.
- Convert and save the notes. Select Convert to MIDI, download the
.mid, and open it in your music editor. If you only need a phrase from the video, make a local clip around that phrase before converting.
Does exporting the video to MP3 change the MIDI?
On our 9-second melody, the MP4's AAC track and the MP3 made from it both produced 14 notes, with the first note at 244.792 ms and the last note ending at 8,744.792 ms.
We synthesized a mono melody with Python, made an H.264 MP4 with AAC audio in FFmpeg 9.0.2, then used that MP4's audio track to export a 128 kbps mono MP3. We converted each file in the same live Noteline converter in Chrome on Windows. We read the note events from the downloaded MIDI files in Mido, using their embedded tempo. Times are relative to the start of each conversion.
| Input file | Notes | First start (ms) | Last end (ms) |
|---|---|---|---|
| MP4 (AAC) | 14 | 244.792 | 8,744.792 |
| MP3 | 14 | 244.792 | 8,744.792 |
The difference was zero notes and zero milliseconds at both ends. The two MIDI downloads were identical byte for byte. This was a local synthetic clip; it does not measure how YouTube's own encoding affects other recordings.
Download the MP4 result, the MP3 result, or the note-by-note CSV to verify the comparison.
YouTube video to MIDI questions
Does “YT to MIDI” mean I can paste a YouTube link?
Not in Noteline. Open a copy of the video or its audio from your device. The link identifies a video but doesn't give this converter an audio track to read.
Should I make an MP3 before trying the video file?
Try the original local video first. If your browser cannot read its audio codec, open the file in a local editor that can play it and export just the audio as PCM WAV or MP3.
Can I get the video's original MIDI back?
Ask the uploader if they have the project MIDI. Noteline estimates notes from the sound it hears; it can't recover the original instrument tracks from that sound.
Still choosing a file? Start with the copy that's closest to the phrase you want. If you already have a playable MP4 of that phrase, try it before making a second file.