Finale Forum

I've got the newest Finale version, but I was told that keeping 2014.5 will allow me to import .pdf files into Finale. I've got a lesson from someone who seems to have used Finale, but has converted to .pdf. How do I import to Finale for additional editing?

There are available programs that can convert a pdf to an xml file. Then open the xml file in Finale. You might try one of those. Results may be unpredictable.

Zuill

If I recall correctly, PDF import was something MakeMusic announced they were going to do, but then changed their mind when someone raised the issue of copyright violation. I don't think it ever found its way into Finale, but I could be wrong.

You say you have a "lesson" you want to convert. That implies something that might be fairly simple. Timewise, you're probably better off just entering it straight into Finale and avoiding the errors that usually appear in such conversions. Make a template first so it can be used in the future if you like.

N.

PdftoMusic Pro can import pdf files which were exported from a music notation software. But it is not cheap... (199 $, 199 €)
The pdf file is apparently first converted to MusicXML, a format that Finale can import.
http://www.myriad-online.com/en/product ... sicpro.htm

I believe Motet is correct. I also remember the copyright being a major issue, so MM abandoned the project.

If it's just a single page lesson, send it to me at wawoodman at aol dot com, and I'll see if I can do it for you.

Here are instructions for 2014.5. They refer to TIFF files, so you may have to convert your PDF to TIFF. I don't remember if the Lite version did that automatically.

https://usermanuals.finalemusic.com/Fin ... t=scanning

How soon we forget. How many threads are there on this exact subject with the same information? I know, not half as many as on the zendesk forum. So, here goes again.

michelp wrote:PdftoMusic Pro can import pdf files which were exported from a music notation software. But it is not cheap... (199 $, 199 €)
The pdf file is apparently first converted to MusicXML, a format that Finale can import.
http://www.myriad-online.com/en/product ... sicpro.htm

Crapware. It cannot scan a pdf. It can only extract font info embedded in an unlocked document—if a picture or locked .pdf, it won’t work at all. It’s way overpriced for what it does.

Finale owners can purchase SmartScore X2 Pro for the same $199 price through the MM store ($399 through SmartScore directly). It’s a true scanning app with OCR. I find it imperfect but surprisingly good.

The scanning project was not “abandoned” by MM. It was dropped like a hot potato. Musitek’s $99.99 Music-to-XML is the finished app that was to have been bundled with 25. It was to replace SmartScore Lite, bundled with Finale through 2014.5.
https://www.musitek.com/m2xml.html

It’s a ‘black box’ app in that it scans and converts to MusicXML. You edit the results in Finale (or Sibelius, Dorico, Notion, Overture etc.).

SmartScore X2 Pro, otoh, lets you edit before you export—a feature that I and many others appreciate. Well worth the additional $100, IMO.

One of the issues with SS X2P and SS Lite on a Mac is that the documentation is hopelessly out of date re scanning talking about TWAIN drivers and HP all-in-ones and other nonsense that hasn’t applied since OS 10.5 Leopard.. Use Image Capture.app (part of the Mac OS) to do the actual scan from OS 10.6 and later and the apps can open those. Another issue is that it’s still 32 bit, meaning that it won’t work in OS 10.15 later this year. They have promised a 64 bit upgrade but it hasn’t been released.

Funkifized32 wrote:I've got the newest Finale version, but I was told that keeping 2014.5 will allow me to import .pdf files into Finale. I've got a lesson from someone who seems to have used Finale, but has converted to .pdf. How do I import to Finale for additional editing?

SmartScore Lite is the app bundled with 2014.5. In Windows, use it to scan the file from within Finale 2014.5. There are help files. It can also open a .tif scan that meets its requirements—again, in the Help files—and export directly to 2014.5. You can save and open that file in 25 or 26. Unlike SS X2P, SS-Lite cannot import or export lyrics, many expressions and text and won’t export MusicXML as it’s designed to work only with Finale (if you want xml, you would export it from Finale ... yea, right). Some find it useful (a buddy of mine loves it); others a waste of time (guilty). You be the judge.

Mac users cannot scan directly into SS Lite since OS 10.6 as I explained in my earlier post.

If SS Lite isn’t accurate enough, complete enough or too much of a pain, there’s SS X2 Pro as I explained previously. You can download a 30 day demo.
https://www.musitek.com/smartscore-pro.html
The $199 price is found at the MakeMusic Store or as an upgrade from SmartScore Lite (Finale 25 & 26 owners do not have SS-L).


Music-to-XML does not have a demo per se but you can send them a .pdf and they will convert it for free to MusicXML. Import that into your current version of Finale and, if you like it, buy. Note that this scans (through 3rd party apps) in iOS or Android, too. Again, this is the app we were promised that was to be bundled with 25.

MikeHalloran wrote:…

michelp wrote:PDFtoMusic Pro can import pdf files which were exported from a music notation software. But it is not cheap... (199 $, 199 €)
The pdf file is apparently first converted to MusicXML, a format that Finale can import.
http://www.myriad-online.com/en/product ... sicpro.htm

… It cannot scan a pdf. It can only extract font info embedded in an unlocked document—if a picture or locked .pdf, it won’t work at all …

This is a misunderstanding.
michelp said:
“… PDFtoMusic Pro can import pdf files which were exported from a music notation software …”
This does not mean that you can export a Finale document as e. g. a TIFF graphic, convert the TIFF graphic to PDF, and then use PDFtoMusic Pro to import the PDF file.

Quoting Michael Good (who created PDFtoMusic Pro):
“… 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 like ScoreWriter. 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. For those you need a program like SmartScore, SharpEye, or capella-scan …”

In Other Words:

You can only use PDFtoMusic Pro on PDF files that are “vector” graphic files (= “printed” to PDF, or exported directly to PDF via Finale’s Graphics Tool).
But you will get better results than with an OCR program.

PDFtoMusic Pro does not work at all on “bitmap” graphic files.

I'm surprised and a little disgusted that the newer versions of MacOS won't run 32-bit applications, if true. The hardware supports it (as Windows demonstrates), so it's either laziness or a way to force you to pay for software upgrades.

Peter Thomsen wrote:

MikeHalloran wrote:…
Quoting Michael Good (who created PDFtoMusic Pro):

To clarify, I did not create PDFtoMusic Pro. That is the work of Didier and Olivier Guillion and their colleagues at Myriad. My company did resell PDFtoMusic Pro back in the previous decade. Note that those comparisons were to SmartScore X, not the latest SmartScore X2.

Michael

Thanks for the clarification.

Duly noted.

motet wrote:I'm surprised and a little disgusted that the newer versions of MacOS won't run 32-bit applications, if true.

It’s not.

It will be with the next OS. Apple first announced this was coming in 2012 and the can has been kicked down the road many times. Year before last, they announced it’s really happening.

motet wrote:The hardware supports it (as Windows demonstrates), so it's either laziness or a way to force you to pay for software upgrades.

It could really be the stated reason that 64 bit will make the OS and apps run better with greater security.

How well does Finale 25/26 run over 32 bit Windows? Oh wait...

musicxml wrote:

Peter Thomsen wrote:

MikeHalloran wrote:…
Quoting Michael Good (who created PDFtoMusic Pro):

To clarify, I did not create PDFtoMusic Pro. That is the work of Didier and Olivier Guillion and their colleagues at Myriad. My company did resell PDFtoMusic Pro back in the previous decade. Note that those comparisons were to SmartScore X, not the latest SmartScore X2.

Michael

Hi Michael!

MikeHalloran wrote:How well does Finale 25/26 run over 32 bit Windows? Oh wait...

That's the opposite situation from what I'm talking about, which is Apple refusing to run 32-bit applications on a 64-bit processor. 64-bit Windows runs old versions of Finale just fine (I still have Finale 2005). Macs and Windows machines use the same processors, so Apple could do it if they wanted.

motet wrote:

MikeHalloran wrote:How well does Finale 25/26 run over 32 bit Windows? Oh wait...

That's the opposite situation from what I'm talking about, which is Apple refusing to run 32-bit applications on a 64-bit processor. 64-bit Windows runs old versions of Finale just fine (I still have Finale 2005). Macs and Windows machines use the same processors, so Apple could do it if they wanted.

And they clearly don’t want to for reasons they’ve been stating for seven years now.

What do you hope to accomplish by beating this dead horse?

I'm not beating a dead horse. I mentioned it once, then corrected your fallacy in comparing it to 32-bit Windows not running 64-bit Finale.