YouTube reference video

A performance on YouTube is often the best reference there is: the band you’re learning, a lesson, a live take. Add its link to a song and the video plays in a Video pane, driven by Stab’s transport: play, stop, loop and practice speed move the video and your parts together.

A YouTube video as a reference

Available on Mac and Web. Coming to Windows.

This isn’t on Windows yet: it’s coming.

A song’s YouTube video plays in Stab on the Mac and on the web. Here, a song that has one opens as usual, and its Video pane says where the video plays. To learn from a recording on this device, import it as a file: see Recordings and video.

Adding a video

Copy the video’s link from YouTube: a youtube.com/watch?v=… link, a youtu.be/… share link, a Shorts or live link, or a YouTube Music link.
Choose Add Reference Video…Add Reference Video… (not on Windows yet), or press ⌘V on the song with the link copied. Choose Add Reference Video…Add Reference Video… (not on Windows yet), or paste the link on the song.
In the field that opens, paste the link and press Return. Something that isn’t a link to a video is refused, and the field says so.

The video comes in as a reference lane under the song’s tracks, named after the video once YouTube says its title. A Video pane opens beside the pane you were in, if the song hasn’t one; the video always plays in a Video pane. A link with a start time (t=90, t=1m30s) starts the video there at the song’s start.

Adding a video is an edit: a song you can only read can’t take one. The video stays on YouTube; the song keeps its link.

Playing along

Stab’s transport drives the video; YouTube’s own controls are hidden.

Play starts the video, and your parts come in with it a moment later, once Stab has caught the video’s time. They stay together from then on.
Stop pauses it. Stopped, the picture shows the song’s place: where the caret is, the paused playhead, or the moment of a pin you’re dragging, so you can see what you’re lining up.
Loop plays the video’s part of the loop again and again.
Speed slows the video down with the song: the video takes the song’s speed to the nearest 5 %, from a quarter of the speed to twice as fast.
A click on the picture pauses the video, and the song pauses with it.

YouTube’s player needs room: a Video pane too small for it says Make this pane larger to show the video.

Lining the song up with the video

At first the song’s bar 1 sits at the video’s start, or at the link’s start time. To have the bars follow the performance, pin them to moments of the video: sync pins tie a bar or a beat of the song to a moment of the video, and with the video leading, the song’s tempo follows its pins. The lane’s menu has Recording Leads and Tab Leads, and Delete All Pins.

Find the Beats, Write Tab from Audio, Find the Chords and Separate into Stems read a recording’s sound, which YouTube doesn’t hand over: they work on a file. Replace with File… on the lane’s menu puts a file of the same performance in the video’s place and lines it up with the pins: see Replace with File.

The video’s sound

The video’s sound reaches you by a different way from Stab’s. If your parts sound early or late against it, open Settings, choose Editing, and under Reference Recordings move YouTube video’s sound: to the right if the parts sound early, until they’re together. It goes from −300 to 300 ms; Reset puts it back to 0.

In each browser

In Chrome and Edge, the video plays in the editor’s page. Safari and Firefox can’t show YouTube’s player in that page: the Video pane offers Show the Video, which opens the song again in a page where the player can be. There, Stab’s sound is made on the page itself rather than in the browser’s audio thread.

When a video won’t play

Stab says why in the Video pane:

This video can’t be played outside YouTube: its owner turned off playing it in other sites and apps. The song keeps its pins.
This video is gone or private. The song keeps its pins.
This isn’t a video YouTube knows.
YouTube can’t be reached: check the connection.

YouTube may show ads before or during a video, as it decides.

Command	Keys	Where
Add Reference Video…		the File menu
Paste Video Link		the Edit menu › Paste (a link)

Not on Windows: Add Reference Video…, Paste Video Link.

Command	Keys	Where
Add Reference Video…		the Edit menu
Paste Video Link		the browser’s paste