Scanning Into Finale

[Dan Schultz]

I'm at my wits end trying to get good recognition when scanning music into Finale using 'SmartScan'. I'm using a HP-3050 scanner... which seems to be just fine for everything else.

I've been talking with 'Musitec' about a scanning condition they call 'dithering'.

I have been considering upgrading from Finale 'Print Music' and 'SmartScan Lite' to the 'pro' programs but until I resolve the scanning issue it won't make any sense.

Anyone out there in TubeNet Land using Finale who's been through this?

[PMeuph]

What resolution do you use when scanning? I don't use Finale much these days, but on Sibelius' photoscore I have found that nything less than 600 dpi usually doesn't yield great results. For short files I sometimes use 1200 dpi (the larger the dpi, the more ram the computer needs to handle is well, imho) and have had nothing but good outcomes.

[Dan Schultz]

What resolution do you use when scanning? I don't use Finale much these days, but on Sibelius' photoscore I have found that nything less than 600 dpi usually doesn't yield great results. For short files I sometimes use 1200 dpi (the larger the dpi, the more ram the computer needs to handle is well, imho) and have had nothing but good outcomes.

I've experimented with resolutions up to and including 1200 dpi. The results were a bit better but the character recognition is still sub-par.

The problem as I understand it... when the HP scanning software (and Windows 7) creates a .tiff file (which is what Finale requires for recognition) ... the characters are 'dithered'. This means that the text and characters are 'messed with' to make them more readable and less 'blocky'. This is what Finale tells me, anyway. Finale uses Musitek's 'SmartScore' for importing scans.

I've even tried scanning hi-res into MS-Paint... saving as .tif... and then importing into Finale. There was a little improvement but still unsatisfactory results.

[Dan Schultz]

Dan,
Music OCR is not really ready for prime time yet. .....

Ain't that the truth!

The only reason I'm interested in the scanning/importing business is to transpose treble clef tuba music to bass clef. I did eight full pages a couple of days ago by basically entering everything via 'speedy entry'.

After several emails to and from Finale and SmartScore I came to the conclusion that the biggest problem is the cheap HP all-in-one hardware i'm trying to use.

Funny, though... one of the tunes (a one-pager) I just transposed imported with only a couple of errors. When it works... it works.

I am going shopping for a new Cannon all-in-one next week. If it works... I'll upgrade to SmartScore Pro.

Cincinnati was a real treat! The Netherlands Hilton Hotel and Founders Hall (Masonic Temple) were both worth seeing. We won our division. That was best!

[ralphbsz]

Funny thing you should bring this up. During the last week, I've been tinkering (sorry about the pun) with scanning myself.

My son has been hand-transposing the solo part of Gliere's horn concerto to be played on the tuba, by re-typing it into MuseScore. Extremely tedious. And since there will probably be lots of music I'll have to transpose for him, I decided to try out scanning and automatically transposing.

So I downloaded the demo versions of Finale and Sibelius, including the upgrade to the pro version of SmartScore (to be used with Finale), and the ultimate version of PhotoScore (to be used with Sibelius). Scanned the sheet music using my HP flatbed at 600 dpi, converted from .pdf to .tiff. Since I'm using a Mac, I used VueScan for the actual scanning (which probably does not dither). Note that this is a dedicated flat-bad scanner, not a all-in-one.

The result with Finale / SmartScore was disappointing. About 90% of the notes are right. Dotted notes are frequently missing the dots. Recognizing triplets only works intermittently. Multi-bar rests are never recognized. And you can forget about dynamics, text (like "cresc" or "rit"), hairpins, or any such luxuries. Very frustrating.

Interestingly, the results with PhotoScore Pro were remarkably good. It got nearly all the notes right, except the same problems with dotted notes (it misses the dots). It managed to recognize nearly all the triplets, nearly all slurs / ties, and the majority of hairpins. Multi-bar rests still don't work, but those are easy to add by hand. And it got much of the text right! On this 6-page score, I could probably repair the stuff it missed during the scan in 3 or 4 hours; much less work than typing it in by hand.

So on my one experience with 6 pages of music, it seems that Sibelius + PhotoScore Ultimate are "close enough", and that Finale + SmartScore are hopeless. Your mileage will certainly vary. And also note that buying licenses for this type of software will eventually cost many hundreds of $$$; for that I can hand-transpose lots of charts.

[MikeW]

You can sometimes get better results by tweaking the physical contrast at the scanner:

Put a backing sheet or two behind what you're trying to copy: experiment with either matte black, or the brightest white you can find. This will often improve the scanned image, presumably by increasing/reducing the amount of light from the scanner that passes through the paper and reflects off of the backing sheet (YMMV). I've never tried a mirror, but who knows? (on the other hand this might dazzle the scanner).

I know this sounds goofy, but I've used it with the OMER OCR package from MYRIAD, and there was a definite improvement.

[MikeW]

Have you looked at "Harmony Assistant" from Myriad (http://www.myriad-online.com/en/index.htm" target="_blank" target="_blank) ? They're a French company (two brothers, I think) who sell a music notation program with add on OCR, synthesized virtual singer, band-in-a-box type rhythms, wave-table synthesized instruments, Karaoke mode, special effects (choir,reverb, wah-wah, etc.), midi-to-notation conversion, transposition is a snip, keyboard input, tab for various instruments, cards for street organs, I'm not sure, but I think you can hook up a midi controller and play single-line parts directly into the program - all kinds of toys ( with learning curve of course - but there's a bunch of good on-line tutorials ) .
It's output is probably not as refined as Finale, but it's crazy cheap : $85 for Harmony Assistant, $25 each for OMER (OCR) and Virtual singer. There's a free trial package which lets you enter music and play it back, but it won't save your work (for that you need to buy a licence). Assuming their business model is still the same, updates are free.

I used it to typeset a couple of pieces for the concert band: reasonable quality and perfectly playable, but probably not quite good enough for publishing. One of our horns used it a lot for transposing stuff for his Finnish folk group.

I haven't used it lately because I converted my PC to Linux and there is no Linux version, so I have to run the Windows version in Wine, and my hardware can't quite keep up: in playback mode, it scrolls the score across the window in real-time, showing you what's playing, and that's just too demanding for Wine (works great on my wife's XP machine).
I just checked back with Myriad, and found that they now support Linux as well as Windows and Mac.

Not the most sophisticated output formatting, but bang-for-buck is phenomenal.

[tbn.al]

I do a lot of scanning. I have tried this and that and finally found a combination that gives me about 98% recognition. Sibelius + Photoscore + Epson at 600 DPI on greyscale. It used to take me 6 to 8 hours to correct a 14 page Church Orchestra score. Now I'm down to about 2 hours. The main issue now is dots and slurs. When scanning anything with lyrics you are better off just to erase and retype them.

[Dan Schultz]

OK. Here's the 'poop'....

Customer support at Musitek (Finale) was firmly blaming my scanner... which is a crappy HP-3050 all-in-one. So... at a rehearsal on Sunday I gave a page of a piece of music that's been kicking my butt. He took it home, scanned it using an Epson V700 scanner, emailed the .tif file to me, and I ran it through recognition using my SmartScore Lite. The results were dramatically improved.... to the point that I only had a couple of edits to do to clean it up.

The 'dithering' that's applied by some cheap scanners to make scans more pleasing to the eye is the culprit.

This evening, I scored an Epson V300 (flatbed scanner) off FleaBay for $41.

I firmly expect that my ability to scan and transpose the damned treble clef tuba parts (that my brass band insists on giving me) will improve.

While we're on the subject.... European publishers need to see the light and offer parts more readable to those of us on the 'West side of the pond' who live in the bass clef World. After all... most of the US publishers now offer 'World Parts' for the asking.

[ralphbsz]

Interesting. Scanned it as grayscale (a.k.a. black-and-white picture), at 600 dpi. The files are pretty big. But now both Finale and Sibelius are recognizing most of it. It's to the point that a 5-page solo would probably only take me a few hours to fix up. That's getting close to workable, and is now much more efficient then typing it in from scratch.

[Dan Schultz]

Interesting. Scanned it as grayscale (a.k.a. black-and-white picture), at 600 dpi. ....

One would think that black & white should be the most logical choice. However... the folks at Finale more-or-less insist that scans be in grayscale. Further... they mention that scanning at resolutions higher than 300 dpi is just a waste of memory.

[tbn.al]

Interesting. Scanned it as grayscale (a.k.a. black-and-white picture), at 600 dpi. ....

One would think that black & white should be the most logical choice. However... the folks at Finale more-or-less insist that scans be in grayscale. Further... they mention that scanning at resolutions higher than 300 dpi is just a waste of memory.

In my experience the DPI setting varies with the print size. If I am doing a single part like tuba treble to bass clef I use 300 DPI. If however, I have a full score on the table with tiny print, I find 600 DPI helps eliminate the errors. The files are huge, but once I get it scanned in to Sibelius I erase them. Also I have no contact with Finale folks, nor do I wish to. Gave up on that program years ago. I disliked it so much I replaced it with lowly Encore. I may resurect my flatbed scanner though, I'll bet my Epson uses dithering.

[Dan Schultz]

.... I have no contact with Finale folks, nor do I wish to. Gave up on that program years ago. I disliked it so much I replaced it with lowly Encore. I may resurect my flatbed scanner though, I'll bet my Epson uses dithering.

Funny you should mention Encore. Our local school system music teachers have been 'hung up' on Encore for many years. I've never tried it. But, from what I understand, it's more user-friendly than Finale or Sibelius.

At this point in time.... I think the major players need to pay some attention to compatibility across the different platforms. I've not had much luck with XML.

Sort of reminds me of my experience with AutoCad/Solid Works/Idea cross platform hassles of just a few years ago.

[tbn.al]

10 or 12 years ago, after complaining to my church music director that Encore had gone out of business, which they did for a while, she was generous enough to buy Finale for me. I tried to work with it for a year but always went back to my horribly out of date Encore program when I got into a time crunch. I finally bought Sibelius myself on a recomendation from a friend and have been happy ever since. I started with the 2nd version and have gone through 8 or 9 upgrades. I wouldn't think of changing now. Not even back to Encore. Sibelius is almost as user friendly as Encore and nearly as feature loaded as Finale. Great compromise for what I do. It is frustrating when I get a score from Finale and can't easily load it into Sibelius.

[Carroll]

Sibelius is almost as user friendly as Encore and nearly as feature loaded as Finale. Great compromise for what I do.

You have, my friend, hit the music transcription software nail on the head. If you don't need all that Finale will do... find something that fills your need. I wish all users could find this pragmatic approach and "just get along".

[Dan Schultz]

Sibelius is almost as user friendly as Encore and nearly as feature loaded as Finale. Great compromise for what I do.

You have, my friend, hit the music transcription software nail on the head. If you don't need all that Finale will do... find something that fills your need. I wish all users could find this pragmatic approach and "just get along".

This is great advice.

I chased the solid-modeling engineering software for many years until I came to realize that 99% of what I needed to do could be done with AutoCad LT... a watered-down version of AutoCad.

With this venture into notation software... I started with Finale 'Printmusic' because it is the lowest level of Finale products that has scanning capabilities. There is no way I would ever use even all of the features in 'Printmusic'. Much less the features of 'Finale'.

If some of the lesser programs like 'Mozart' and 'Noteworthy Composer' had the ability to scan... that is what I would be using.

[pgym]

If some of the lesser programs like 'Mozart' and 'Noteworthy Composer' had the ability to scan... that is what I would be using.

Check out Harmony Assistant ($85) and the OMeR add-on ($25), mentioned up-thread.

As MikeW mentioned, it's not as refined as Sibelius or Finale, but it runs rings around Mozart and Noteworthy, and OMeR absolutely pwns SmartScore Lite (Finale) and Photoscore Lite (Sibelius).

Alternatively, if you're already entrenched in PrintMusic, take a look at the open source OMR (optical music recognition) program Audiveris. It written in JAVA and outputs to MusicXML 2 and MIDI, so it's platform- and program-agnostic.

[tbn.al]

If you want to scan music, don't fool around with any of the "Lite" programs. All optical recognition music software is problematic at best. The "Lite" ones are ulcer generators.

[Dan Schultz]

If you want to scan music, don't fool around with any of the "Lite" programs. All optical recognition music software is problematic at best. The "Lite" ones are ulcer generators.

Well... I was considering a move to SmartScore Pro thinking it would help resolve my problems with scanning and recognition. The 'help' guys at Finale basically told me that if my scanning wasn't near-perfect... none of the high-end programs would help. I have a demo copy of SmartScore Pro and although it has some additional features, there is really no improvement of the recognition. I'll still eventually make the move to SmartScore Pro but am currently still enjoying the exploration of 'Lite'.

My hat is off to Finale for setting me straight without selling me the high-end software.

[tbn.al]

I probably overstated my case a bit. I have no expeience with SmartScore. The experience I have had with Photoscore leads me to believe that the recognition is much better with the pro than the lite. Hats off for the techies at Finale. Sounds like they are more concerned with you having a good experience than they are for what's in your wallet. That's hard to find anywhere nowadays.