Convert pdf. to mxl

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John335
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Post by John335 » Mon Oct 08, 2018 2:39 am

Does anyone know of anything that will convert a pdf. file into a mxl. file to import into Finale? I've tried Smartscore, and Photoscore but the files sometimes don't work. I'm looking for an alternative.

Thanks,
John


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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Oct 08, 2018 3:09 am

Getting the name right might help you in your Googling--it's MusicXML.

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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Mon Oct 08, 2018 3:36 am

If the PDF file was created from a music notation program (= vector PDF), then try PDFtoMusic Pro, and you will get quite good results with the resulting XML files.
With PDF files printed from notation programs PDFtoMusic Pro will work better than SmartScore X Pro and other optical scanning programs.
This is because PDFtoMusic Pro knows things that an OCR program can't know.
For instance, PDFtoMusic Pro knows
- that staff lines really are drawn as lines,
- that a notehead is a musical font character, rather than trying to determine a notehead from a bunch of dark pixels on a page.
This is much more accurate than optical scanning for PDFs created by a notation program. SmartScore and other optical scanners have to figure out where staff lines and noteheads are from the dots on a page, which is more error-prone.

The flip side is that PDFtoMusic Pro cannot handle optical scans from a scanner at all.

Scanned PDFs will be raster files.
A score scanning software may be able to create MusicXML files from them, but you may be disappointed with the results. There will be errors.
Depending on the quality of the scan, the style of music and the look of the original engraving, there will be more or less errors, but there will always be errors.
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miker
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Post by miker » Mon Oct 08, 2018 2:12 pm

If neither SmartScore nor PhotoScore work for you, I have to ask what are you scanning? If it's a handwritten score, no scanning program that I know of will do it. End of story.

I don't know Photoscore, but I have used SmartScore on hundreds of files. There are scanning errors, in just about everything. But if you take the time to learn the SmartScore program, correcting those errors takes much less time than entering into Finale from scratch.

I had a major failure, just yesterday. The PDF I was sent looked like it was a copy of a copy, with handwritten notes all over it. The scan recognition showed errors in almost every measure. I had to enter it into Finale directly, using Simple Entry. But this was directly related to what I started with.

If you can post a screen shot of what you have, we may be able to make suggestions.
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ebiggs1
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Post by ebiggs1 » Mon Oct 08, 2018 2:46 pm

Convert your pdf to a tiff. Smartscore uses tiff files.
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miker
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Post by miker » Mon Oct 08, 2018 4:41 pm

SmartScore does that automatically. No need to convert. If you tell it to recognize the PDF, the first thing it does is convert it to TIFF.
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ebiggs1
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Post by ebiggs1 » Mon Oct 08, 2018 8:47 pm

It seems to me that if I do the conversion I get better results, so that is my practice I set to dpi very high.
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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Oct 08, 2018 11:01 pm

As someone who worked on OCR long ago, I'm guessing that if you set DPI very high, it's just going to convert it back to 300 or 600, which may be lossy. Just like looking at something with a magnifying glass, at high resolution you're seeing more noise and jagged edges.

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miker
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Post by miker » Tue Oct 09, 2018 12:41 am

SmartScore recommends greyscale, 300 DPI.

That’s always worked for me.
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ebiggs1
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Post by ebiggs1 » Tue Oct 09, 2018 1:00 am

miker wrote:SmartScore recommends greyscale, 300 DPI.

That’s always worked for me.
I have been setting my converter to 400 dpi
"That’s always worked for me."
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motet
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Post by motet » Tue Oct 09, 2018 5:35 am

400 seems reasonable. When you said "very high" i was thinking you meant 1200 or something like that.

John335
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Post by John335 » Tue Oct 09, 2018 12:50 pm

Thank you everyone for trying to help me with this.
I posted my wanting of an alternative because I have used both programs extensively over the years and ever since I updated to High Sierra Photoscore opened the first time after I updated and won't even open now but Smartscore does. But, now if I save the work as an XML file in Smartscore and then try and imported it into finale 25 I get the staff layout but no notes etc. I also get this window;
Screen Shot 2018-10-08 at 7.15.51 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-10-08 at 7.15.51 PM.png (30.06 KiB) Viewed 12727 times
I sent Mike Rosen the enf. file from Smartscore and he was able to save it as an XML file and import it into finale successfully.
I have been in touch with Musitek and Make Music about this issue and I'm waiting for a response. I will post what each company's response is.

In my own opinion sometimes these OCR programs will give you a head start and sometimes you say to yourself why did I even bother. But if you're using a piece of music that is a download from a company like Hal Leonard etc. the XML file is really good and does give you a definite head start. So, PDF to Music Pro is not really going to be the answer to my problems but I will definitely acquire this for PDFs that are made from notation programs. Thanks for that info about that program.
Also, It seems that the 64-bit versus 32-bit issue is not affecting others as far is the two OCR programs working properly. So, I don't know what it is that is going on with my computer.

John

John335
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Post by John335 » Tue Oct 09, 2018 1:08 pm

So, I just downloaded PDF to music pro and I got this window when I went to install it;
Screen Shot 2018-10-09 at 9.04.04 AM.png
Screen Shot 2018-10-09 at 9.04.04 AM.png (39.78 KiB) Viewed 12725 times
It seems the 64-bit issue is at work here.

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michelp
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Post by michelp » Tue Oct 09, 2018 3:01 pm

Apparently the latest version dates from March 2018. There is an email address : support AT myriad-online.com
The problem seems to be related to MacOS (your profile doesn't mention which version of MacOs you have).
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David Ward
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Post by David Ward » Tue Oct 09, 2018 4:08 pm

John335 wrote:So, I just downloaded PDF to music pro and I got this window when I went to install it;

That can be ignored, it won't stop it from working OK until (so it's predicted) the OS after Mojave.
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John335
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Post by John335 » Tue Oct 09, 2018 6:16 pm

Hey Mike,
My OS is 10.13.6

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miker
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Post by miker » Tue Oct 09, 2018 6:35 pm

John,
At 10.13, you shouldn’t have a problem. I used it since it was introduced, and SmartScore worked fine. Did you hear form their tech support?
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John335
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Post by John335 » Wed Oct 31, 2018 4:02 am

Hey Mike,
As of today they're still trying to figure it out. Since then I've installed 26 on my Mini and I get the same response.
Now, If I export an MXL file from 2012 it will import into 2012 but not 25 or 26, and that's on both computers.
It's crazy. Hopefully soon they will figure out the problem. There has been no lack of communication from them. They've been great about this.

John

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miker
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Post by miker » Wed Oct 31, 2018 3:15 pm

I'm having problems, myself, with SmartScore Pro and Mojave. The cursor doesn't change form to reflect which tool is chosen. Tech support tells me that some, but not all, users have reported this. There is no solution from them, except to wait until they release a new 64-bit version, but no release date.

I created a bootable startup drive with High Sierra (thanks, Mike H.) and use that when I need SSP.

Music MXL is an extended form of XML. You can read about it here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=mxl+mus ... irefox-b-1
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John335
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Post by John335 » Fri Nov 02, 2018 1:09 am

I trashed the User Directory twice on my main computer as per their instructions and right now it's importing XML files without any problems, but I did the same on my Mini but it's still not working. The said that they have never seen this before

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Post by ebiggs1 » Fri Nov 02, 2018 3:30 pm

For whatever reason, I have, at random, some xml files that Finale 25 and now 26 won't read. I then try them with Finale 2014.5 and they import just fine. All mine are created fro Smartscore X2 Pro. I am not computer savvy enough to offer any cause and effect but it happens.
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John335
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Post by John335 » Tue Nov 20, 2018 9:22 pm

Hi Everyone,
Well, MakeMusic figured out that the reason I couldn't import XML files was because the first measure of my Custom default file was corrupted.

Easy fix and sometimes it just takes time to figure things out.

John

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Post by Jocko_23 » Wed Nov 21, 2018 3:35 pm

For Windows (or Mac with CrossOver), maybe you could try "Capella-Scan":

https://www.capella-software.com/us/ind ... ella-scan/

Ha problems with "handwritten" fonts like Finale Jazz or so. And, as has been said, real handwritten scores cannot be recognized (there is just too much work necessary for correcting the results)
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