Prior to using Finale, I used MOTU’s Composer’s Mosaic. I have a choral score that I would like to resurrect. Obviously, I can’t access the original MOTU files, but I have PDF’s of everything. Is there some recommended software that can read a PDF file and convert it to musicxml? Thanks in advance for any insight you may have!
On my experience it would be faster and easier in the long run to type it in again natively to Dorico. Then you would benefit from Dorico’s algoritms of spacing the music instead of fixing the scanned music - and you can edit it easily later.
I recently used ForScore 2 for a super quick horn chart. Aside from fixing the rests and a couple sections it turned out very well - I was able to get all of the notes in, and add a few accents and other notes, and kick out parts in like 20 mins for three horns. Another chart I tried, not so much, so it seems like the source material quality/formatting makes a big difference.
PlayScore 2 works really good !
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As Carlovanderput said: PlayScore 2 is great.
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I can recommend PlayScore2 for mobile devices. Very reliable and with astonishing good results when exporting to .xml.
You can (actually you have to) use it on a mobile device, like a smartphone. It’s intended use is for playing back scores, but it’s recognition engine works so well I prefer it to other desktop applications.
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I have used PhotoScore for a long time. It has it’s flaws, but I’m used to them now. It can chew its way through large documents with ease and given a decent quality pdf (anything produced by Finale would be no problem) has excellent accuracy. (Unfortunately it has not been developed for a few years now and is not cheap)
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Janus, I also used Photoscore Ultimate for a long time, but even on an old computer it feels aged and it’s not been updated anymore it seems. Someone should go round the house of the developers and check that everybody is ok.
PhotoScore seems to have problems with recognising Multirests. Even after correcting mistakes, each Multirest needs corrections again after .xml export import. I know, it’s easy to do, especially in Dorico, but why? At least that was my experience…
I don’t disagree. As I said it has its flaws. Multirests is one, double flats is another. It has a habit of displacing slurs and can, on occasion, mistake an accidental for a key change (interestingly that was how I discovered the power of shift-I Bb=B in Dorico!). Lastly you need to be careful about tuplets - but correcting them becomes mechanical.
[EDIT] Oh and cross staff piano notes are a disaster . Delete them in PhotoScore and enter from scratch in Dorico!
I’ve tried many of the alternatives and always been even more disappointed. (I do a lot of work with IMSLP 18C scores and only PhotoScore gets anywhere close).
OMR seems to be a neglected area of software development.
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Thanks for the hint Janus, I will have to give PhotoScore another try, with these kind of scores I so far gave up and input them by hand completely…
I use Photoscore ultimate and SmartScore 64 NE for scanning both graphics and PDF’s
Photoscore doesn’t appear to be being developed any longer. I think the person that did their OCR is long gone and they haven’t replaced, or didn’t want to! This means that the the XML output is missing many current developments. I find the best way to use it is to output to Sibelius and then output Sibelius to XML.
In my opinion SmartScore does a better job at recognition in its latest incarnation, but correcting the output is very fiddly and doesn’t seem that logical but it does a reasonable job.
TBH sometimes I give up too!
that’s why most of the time it’s better to do those corrections in the target / notation application.
I agree with your comments on PhotoScore, but I still find it much easier to ‘correct’ than SmartScore. (each to their own I guess)
Newzik does a good job at converting pdf to xml
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I can confirm that! I have several not very accurat scanned PDF Copys of Scores, which Newzik Prozesse very Well!
Since I have no great need(one short score), I will take the approach of typing the score into Dorico. I don’t want to spend any funds on this capability as I doubt it will be used much past this one score. Everything else I have in the old MOTU program are old lead sheets, which I no longer need. Thank you for all the responses!