Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Scanner options? (Read 4952 times) previous topic - next topic

Scanner options?

Hello all,

Is there a plan to put a scanner option in NWC to allow us to scan and recognize music so we can transpose as needed?

Thanks!

Re: Scanner options?

Reply #1 –
Copied from another topic:
Quote from: Lawrie Pardy –
actually, there is a pretty good tool called "SharpEye" which is an OCR for music.

Scan, edit in SharpEye, export to MIDI or MusicXML and then import to NWC1 from the MIDI or from MusicXML into NWC2 using Nicolas Hatier's MXML2NWCC converter.  It works quite well.

However, a few caveats:
a) Your source music needs to be pretty good, or you end up with a lot of corrections to do in SharpEye.
b) I find it is best to do as many corrections as possible in SharpEye prior to export to minimise the work in NWC
c) MIDI import is nowhere near as good as MXML import, so it's good if you qualify for the NWC2 beta
d) Some shorter works are easier to simply rekey - especially if you've gained some facility at the task.

Re: Scanner options?

Reply #2 –
Thanks!  I'll try it!

Re: Scanner options?

Reply #3 –
What is MXML import?
Carl Bangs
Fenwick Parva Press
Registered user since 1995

Re: Scanner options?

Reply #4 –
G'day Carl,
some time ago Nicolas Hatier (Niversoft) created a user tool that allowed import of MusicXML (MXML) files into NWC2. 

MXML is simply a variant of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) that is specific to music notation.  There are several products around that are compatible with it.  As with XML in general, it allows for easier file (document?) sharing amongst disparate software applications.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Scanner options?

Reply #5 –
Can you give us some guidelines or hints about what we could use to go from scanned music to MXML then to NWC2?  Thanks!

Re: Scanner options?

Reply #6 –
G'day 'pianner,
Quote from: oldesawmillpiano –
Can you give us some guidelines or hints about what we could use to go from scanned music to MXML then to NWC2?  Thanks!

I used Sharpeye2 to scan the music and do the OMR (Optical Music Recognition?).  This product has the option to save in/export to MXML.  This creates a file that can be read by Nicolas Hatiers Mxml2NWC user tool.  The instructions for its use are included with it IIRC.

If you check this post there are links to the necessary software:
https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=6321.msg42683#msg42683

I don't recall the actual steps as it's easily a couple of years since I needed to use it...  I think David and Rich have used them more recently.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Scanner options?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: Lawrie Pardy –
I think David and Rich have used them more recently.


Indeed I have.   The process is relatively painless.  With Sharpeye you load in as many images one at a time.

Read in the first image of a piece of music

It's then a matter of pressing a button to read the images.

Once read, the software will tell you if it thinks something is wrong.  At that point I usually ignore the problems although you can correct if you like. These are most likely mis-readings (the better the image, the better the reading - but you can get issues with chords, grace notes etc.
You can save at this point.

Now you can load in the next image and so on. You now have the option to replace or append to the current read sheet.

Continue in this manner until done. At which point you can save to mxml format. (You could save each scan if you wanted)

Now you can load this output into Nicolas Hatier's program. Note that NWC2 needs to be running.

When you load in the mxml created above, the program then creates the appropriate number of staves in NWC2 - Job done.

It is at this point that I prefer to do most of my amendments rather than in Sharpeye - but you do get used to which ones are better to do in which product, but it is easier to amend in NoteWorthy. I wouls amend in sharpeye if  knew the error would give timing problems in the mxml.
The main problem I have with mxml2nwc is that it creates a new staff for any chords where the flags are going in the opposite direction to the main flow. So if you have a piece of music that has quite a number of two directiional chords, there will be a lot of post processing if you want to correct this.

If you use Photoscore rather than Sharpeye it is also possible to read in pdf files as long as you have ghostscript installed.

Hope this helps.


Rich.
 

Re: Scanner options?

Reply #8 –
I'm a fan of Sharpeye, and bought version 2 which is very good.  It will batch process the images in order.  I scan with an ordinary scanner and create TIFF images in black and white, either enlarged to 110% or 120% or at a fairly high resolution.  600 dpi works very well, but my scanner operates slowly at that resolution.  400 dpi is good too.

I have tried using a digital camera too, to speed up the process, but I don't recall if I was terribly pleased.

As a workaround for pdf files, I do a screen capture, paste that into an image processor, and save the result as a tiff which I will then import to Sharpeye.  No need for GhostScript, I think - unless it runs in the background and I just don't know it's there?

Sharpeye does make errors, sometimes quite a few.  Its reliability depends partly on the image size and clarity, and also normal forms of notation rather than stylized handwritten ones. 

I will try to fix the timing errors in Sharpeye but you need to use the mouse - I therefore do a lot of correcting in NWC, where it's really easy to edit . 

Sharpeye and MXMLwhatever do leave hard to see artifacts in bars, usually where Sharpeye it was unable to identify the note but wants to  preserve the space.  It's hard to find these in NWC2, but looking for bar lines that don't line up from staff to staff is one way to detect them.

Sharpeye is not perfect, and it's a pain to fix the errors, but believe me, it saves significant time if you're working with a score.