Which is the way to go - Export a Sibelius XML or MIDI for Dorico 4 import?

Just a quick question.

Seeing as though there is alot of new import features for midi files in Dorico 4. Am i better off importing Sibelius 7 or later files as XML’s or just plain MIDI files now. Haven’t done alot of this. If anyone has any good tips on XML import settings or MIDI import settings in Dorico 4 that would be great. No stress. It could be just a bit of trial and error work ahead. I know that apparently Sibelius can access the Dolet 8 plugin natively or something along those lines (of which I’m no expert, just read it) so maybe this might enhance the XML’s in some way. Cheers and thanks in advance to anyone who responds. All the best, Simon.

XML transfers far more information than MIDI, e.g. lyrics, Tempo indications, slurs, dynamics markings, etc, etc.

One thing: I would advise looking over the Music XML import options in Dorico (under application Preferences), and de-select everything except for Note durations and Text. (If there’s anything you particularly want to keep, then you can consider selecting it.)

That way, your new project file will use Dorico’s Options to globally configure the document, rather than using ‘override’ properties on everything.

Champion! Thanks mate. Will do. Does the page orientation and size of a Sibelius file as an uncompressed xml score usually get detected automatically by Dorico on import?. Just a random question but I imported a file with pretty much had all xml options ticked (which I now realize was wrong from your response) It was a score reduction with a lot of annotations and it was all a bit squashed as though the page or margins weren’t big enough or it was the wrong orientation or something along those lines. Don’t know much about Dorico’s Layout and engrave options as I’m usually toying around with expression maps and trying to do things in write mode or PT’s etc. I did import an uncompressed full orchestral score which seemed to be a bit squashed but wasn’t too bad but it also could have been the options being all ticked as you specified making it a bit squashes. I’ll give it a try. Thanks for your help.! If I run into too much trouble I might upload an example or something but I’m sure it’s something I’ll be able to figure out hopefully without hassling anyone here. Cheers Simon.

Some aspects of Page Layout do get imported, and the Layout Options are configured accordingly.

You may or may not want to Revert the Layout Options to your Dorico defaults, (or just change the margins, staff size, etc, yourself) and see what that does.

The beauty of Dorico’s Layout Options is that it is possible to configure an entire document there, so that you often don’t need to do any manual adjustments!