Request to the developers:
Now that Finale is being discontinued I’m one of many Finale users that will switch to Dorico.
I’ve been writing in Finale for 25 years and I frequently open old Finale score files to copy parts of my older work into my current work, or adapt older scores to current projects.
At some point in the near future with the advancement of MacOS we won’t be able to open Finale anymore to export XML. I have tens of thousands of Finale files. To preemptively export them all to XML files would take weeks if not months of work.
For a future update of Dorico, can you please consider incorporating a function to directly open Finale files in Dorico ?
Thank you!!!
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I think the first thing you should do is to make sure that you have PDFs and XML of all files.
You may be able to automate this somewhat.
I’m sure someone from the team will comment on this; but I really think the two products are so different that it would such as huge undertaking as to grind all other development to a halt.
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As I wrote in my original post, I have tens of thousands of Finale files that would need to be exported to XML files before we lose the ability to open Finale at all.
I’m no expert, but it looks like bulk export is possible…
@RichardTownsend is correct:
This ScoringNotes blog post has some additional detail/advice about 3/5 of the way down:
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So why not try this:
Dolet 7 lets you translate an entire folder of MusicXML files into Finale files, or an entire folder of Finale files into MusicXML files
FWIW, I just looked into this, and even downloaded it, thinking it might be necessary to convert Finale files in batch to MusicXML (then later to Dorico). I noted it is a 32-bit plugin, and only supports through Finale 2014.5, which I do have.
However, I also have Finale V26 (never upgraded to V27 as I had already switched to Dorico 4 Pro by then), and it turns out there is a batch MusicMXL folder export facility built in there. You just pick File/Export then the Translate Folder to MusicXML option. It prompts you for the folder, and you can point it there, and it will then create MusicXML files in that same folder for any MUS or MUSX files in the directory. There is also an MusicXML preferences menu where you could have it also include subfolders (which you’d need to set up before the actual conversion if you need that to be active).
In V26, they only support MusicXML 3.1 and earlier – V27 adds MusicXML 4 support.
I just used this facility to convert all the Allegro and Finale files I had to MusicXML (not a huge amount – maybe 70 across a few different folders), and it was pretty quick, with the only interaction on my part being to point it at each folder with the MUS/MUSX files. I then, semi-randomly, imported a few of the resulting files into Dorico to get an idea of the quality of the conversion. It seemed to be pretty good on the actual notation, but not good on other things, like writer credits, headers/footers, notes like a typical swung eighth notes instruction. (Maybe MusicXML 4 would have done better if that was in my version of Finale, though?) But I’ve always made PDF print images of my work (which is mostly lead sheets – I had only one score), so, if/when I want to work on them into the future, I can always refer to those to add the missing information in Dorico while making whatever other changes might be needed. I just wanted to do this batch conversion now, while the expiration date is fresh in mind, just in case, since I may not have Finale available at all by then (e.g. if I need to install on another computer).
Unfortunately, XML will not convert headers, credits, etc. Dorico and Finale handle those totally differently. You will need to input those properly in Dorico.
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The upgrade to V27 IS still available.
If you are planning to export Finale files to XML I highly recommend you upgrade to V27 first, because XML 4 is MUCH better than XML 3.
This is from the MM website:
Can I open Finale files (.mus or .musx) directly in Dorico?
Finale’s proprietary file format was specifically designed to be read only by Finale, making it difficult for other software to interpret. Much of the way a score is displayed in Finale depends on algorithms and routines unique to Finale’s code, which process the document when opened.
In contrast, MusicXML is designed for file exchange between different notation programs and is more suitable for this purpose. Steinberg is gathering tips and tricks to help ensure a smooth export/import process, which will be published on the Dorico blog soon. Since Dorico is actively being developed, MusicXML imports will likely continue to improve over time.
- Exporting MusicXML Files from Finale (Article)
- Import MusicXML into Dorico (Video)
Here is the full page:
Another reference:
Just looking now at the MusicXML 4.0 enhancements, there really doesn’t look to be anything that would be applicable to my uses. Almost all my notation is just lead sheets – i.e. fake book style with notes, lyrics, and chords.
The main things that would have been helpful if they were converted beyond what I saw in my spot checks of the batch conversions I did yesterday would have been title, writer credits, copyright notices, swing/tempo notations, and footer/header information, but those aren’t mentioned in the Music XML 4.0 update notes. (Since I also have PDF printouts of my lead sheets, I can just use those for most needs and use them for reference if I ever need to update the lead sheets in Dorico and recreate that information.)
Certainly some of those things could be imported more fully by Dorico. We recently did a significant round of work on improving the import of “credit” elements in MusicXML, and my impression was that we were doing a semi-decent job. But text in MusicXML is one of the trickiest areas, because there’s precious little semantic information available about what the text really is – you have to do a lot of guesswork to try and figure out what the text is meant to be.
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I should note that I was trying the import (of MusicXML 3.1, I think – definitely 3.x, from Finale V26) in Dorico 4 (final version). I upgraded to Dorico 5 this morning, but haven’t tried any further imports of MusicXML, so, if there is some difference, I would not have seen it yet. (I just tried now looking at one of my MusicXML files in Notepad++, but it seems to be in a binary format (.MXL) rather than a typical text XML format, so I can’t tell if the relevant text information is actually in the file.)
Is this only in the form of the latest offer, crossgrading to Dorico and receiving the upgrade to 27? Or is it still possible to buy only the upgrade?
Some XML files are zipped. Change the file ending to .zip, extract it, and you’ll find the actual text file inside a folder, along with some other files.
Do you mean the Finale upgrade? If so, probably the best place to ask this is with the MM support team. You could also check in your MM account to see if it is there for you.
Thanks for the tip. This lets me see that the relevant information is indeed in the MusicXML file. For example, very early in the file, it has basic file properties information:
Not too far below, there is also specific layout information about credits for the first page and the rest of the pages in the lead sheet:
Just to give an idea of what this looks like, here are the first two pages of the PDF print image from Finale (highlighted for clarity):
Now here is the Print view from Dorico 4:
And here is the second page:
Dorico 5 basically does the same thing on the metadata/header/footer fronts, so I won’t bother with screen shots, other than the top part to show how its making a stem direction choice other than the one in my original (which Dorico 4 at least interpreted correctly) makes the notation less presentable (not that it was perfect in Dorico 4):
Anyway, the bottom line is that, unless there is just some step I’m missing, while Dorico is importing the title, it isn’t importing the rest of the metadata (I also checked the File Info section for that in Dorico 5), nor the header/footer information.
If I remember correctly (I’m on holiday at the moment so can’t fully check) the “creator” element from the MusicXML file ends up being used for the flow composer in Dorico, rather than the project composer. This is similar to how the “movement-title” element ends up in the flow title rather than the project title. The fact that Dorico supports multi-flow (or multi-movement) projects makes this sort of metadata handling a bit complicated. You can use the Project Info dialog to copy information from the flow to the project.
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I do mostly lead sheets as well. I did the experiment last night in the same-ish way, Finale 2012 files opened in F 27 then MusicXML export, then attempt to open them in both Dorico 4 and 5. I couldn’t see much if any difference in the chart elements that don’t come across properly.
Maybe the fact that mine are 2012 make it even less likely that I’m getting any help from MusicXML 4 vs 3.1