Tip Sheet To Convert Finale Files to Dorico Files

We’ve compiled some general guidelines to help users convert their Finale files to Dorico files.
https://www.richmanmusicschool.com/articles/convert-finale-files-to-dorico-files

For safekeeping, it makes sense to convert things now because we never know if we will need to go back into a file to make further updates at some point in the future.

This article just addresses the conversion process and not how to use the Dorico software itself.

1 Like

Thanks Richard

This will not happen, because it does not make sense. A music.xml file created from the newest Finale version will transform more information of your notation file, than the finale file of the same project itself. Reason for this is that a lot of what finale displays, is generated by the finale application “on the go”. This information can only be carried outside finale by using music.xml export.
This has been very clearly explained my Michael Goode (former developer of music.xml format). There are a couple of links to his statement in this forum.

3 Likes

On the one hand, a converter would be good in the event MakeMusic shuts off the authorization server and a user eventually has to move to a new CPU and can’t authorize their copy of Finale (MakeMusic said it would maintain the servers indefinitely but that isn’t forever of course).

But to have the ability to import .musx files, I’d think Dorico would have to have access to some or all of Finale’s code base and that is very unlikely to happen.

Hopefully MakeMusic will eventually simply release a version of F27 that is stopped of the need for authorization. I doubt it, but that would be a solution. Anyway, it’s merely speculation.

If lets say- tomorrow all Finale autorizations would be blown I do have a converter app ready on my Mac. WINE plus Finale Windows installer. It works 30 days unauthorized and then you can just delete that install and install Finale again. Tested. Some people do have virtual machines saved with Authorized Finale for doomsday but I prefer not to get Windows, Wine works without Windows install and is a good solution for XML-conversion.

3 Likes

I and others had suggested a Parallels (they have a non-subscription option) VM on the Finale forums as that would not require a future reauthorization, unlike an APFS partition or external SSD that all are tied to a specific CPU for authorization). I haven’t actually done that but if the auth server does eventually get discontinued then I’d likely do it. More just to have access to existing files for tweaking etc. with over 30 years of finale files I’m not up for prepping them and then converting to MXML but YMMV.

Authorized VM option is good backup option if one really needs to work with Finale- set up stuff, fonts, plugins etc.
I put WINE in the mixture because this thread is about file conversion. For that purpose it is a good solution. Because:

  • You do not have to buy any virtualization engine (although UTM or Virtual Box are there for free)
  • You do not need WINDOWS (it is also not free, actually)

The decision has to be made based on whether one wants to continue using Finale or just converting files. Luckily for MAC users the last OS15 was merely bells-an-whistles update and not too much changed under the hood. We got next native Finale year…

If someone wants to play with Finale Windows on Mac and have some WINE on the side then wine-devel can be downloaded here:
Wine devel download page.

I admit I was honestly very underwhelmed/disappointed by the “tip sheet” in the original post. I had been expecting something along the lines of the excellent recent page on the Dorico blog about such conversions, which was excellent and gave very specific advice for what kinds of things could go wrong:

Instead of being detailed like that, the tip sheet in the original post above was rather generic, just telling people how to save and import MusicXML in general, which could easily be found on any help resource.

Even worse, it gives the very dubious advice that people can use Finale for decades provided that the computer is disconnected from the Internet and remains at the current OS version. This would be great advice, if we lived in a parallel universe where old computer hardware never failed. It’s honestly really bad to tell people “oh yeah, continue to use Finale forever to make new scores if you don’t want to switch, your computer hardware will never fail, it is all fine!”. And this isn’t because I want to drive people to Dorico - I honestly don’t care what people go to, but it would generally be a very bad idea for people to be starting to create new projects 2 or 3 years from now in Finale with no intent to switch to anything else.

A solution of keeping an old computer around or even a VM is really just a temporary solution at best and should really just be done for opening/converting and maybe doing minor edits to old/existing projects.

2 Likes

@mducharme
Michael, let’s appreciate if someone is making an effort. Of course there are always different or even better ways. As this forum lives by contributions of it’s members, feel free to give own suggestions. Your link to the Dorico blog is very helpful, indeed; and it will also help people looking for a good solution when converting files.

1 Like

I do appreciate making an effort, but not even mentioning the potential risks people face by continuing to use Finale to make new scores indefinitely is really an issue to me. I would also be much more forgiving of these types of issues if it was under someone’s personal blog or something along those lines; but, in this case it is a music school, and the article is short (probably put together in an hour or two), has some misleading information and bad advice, is not well researched at all, and feels like it was created as a way to advertise their services at the music school.

Regular people might also be more trusting of the advice since it is printed by a company and feel that it has more accuracy and truth to it. I’ve seen randos on Facebook giving similarly bad advice but there I think most people ignore them - whereas this advice seems like it comes from a semi-official source at least.

You are right Michael, but I still think, they are just doing their best. Of course this may look as some sort of advertisement for the school itself, but lets be generous, music schools don’t have an easy time these days and at the end they will provide us with a new generation of customers, so I think one can turn a blind eye on it.

Once MM formally discontinued Finale development (and let’s be real; it was circling the drain for 2-3 years at least), I migrated to Dorico. It seems counterproductive to me to continue to use a program that is end-of-lifed, especially when said program has some annoying bugs and glitches that make using it a crap shoot. I was hoping Finale would be
“fixed” if not enhanced, and as neither are in the cards, I went over to Dorico and it’s been mostly fine. I already spent a lot of time in the past 2-3 years tweaking old scores and making sure the audio files are decent (many are released on Bandcamp and various streaming services) so it’s a good time to just move on.

4 Likes