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Topic: Publishing Scores (Read 8672 times) previous topic - next topic

Publishing Scores

I'd like to share this with you...

Firstly, this is how I use NoteWorthy:
1. import a midi file from my sequencing software.
2. fix up any mistakes with the rests, and add dynamics.
3. copy to clipboard as metafile a conductor's score and inidividual parts.
4. paste into Publisher 97 into my template (with my own titles, copyright info, address, etc.)
5. print out all the pages.

And from there I either print out the parts, or use the publish to web feature (and get a gif file from publisher 97). I may also scan in the printouts to get better gif files than the publisher ones. (I sometimes have to scan in a printout to add some markings not provided in NWC)

Q: Why do I want gifs?
A: It's easier to manage the pieces. I can batch print gifs so if I need another copy of a piece I can get the complete chart with a couple of clicks. I can also email a whole piece to any orchestra in the world. And the person receiving the work usually has a program to print out gifs. (and they can print in landscape or portrait, according to the part)

Q: Why do I do it this way?
A: Because I can use the wonderful resultant NWC staves in my own published music. Also because this way (in my opinion) is infinitely better and faster than using Finale, or Encore, etc. (I'm sure of this because I know the average time it takes to publish a piece)

Q: Do I find a problem with this method?
A: No, only that Noteworthy can't do drum tracks (and that is a pity). :(

I'd love to read how other users use Noteworthy to publish scores...

I'd also like to know what others think of my method, (please email!).

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #1 –
I published a book of six scores centred around hammered dulcimer last year (a second volume perhaps later this year...).
We used M$ Word for the text and simply printed the score (full score in the book and separate parts as separate sheets) straight from NWC. My main beefs with doing it this way were
1) No running headers or footers
2) Couldn't configure the page numbers how we wanted, but just did them anyway
3) Couldn't configure the title text font, but that's changed with the later version
4) We really needed more lines for composer/arranger info.
5) Would've been nice to add a graphic or two to NWC (rather than the reverse, which is what we all have to do at the moment).
6) Not being able to manually kick around the staffs (ie when a new line should be started, etc) was a real pain, as we often would end up with a single staff on a new page.

My main problem with importing huge WMF files was that they often wouldn't resize correctly. I must visit the problem again and see if I can work out why (it may have vanished in the most recent version).

Andrew

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #2 –
On my page setup options page (as you can guess) is set to not include title page info or page numbers, etc. It's great that NWC has given us these options...but not forced us to use them!

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #3 –
I haven't found a satisfactory way to publish yet, but I'm
working on it. I won't be using Publisher, though, but I am
curious: what do you mean that it creates poorer gif files
than a scanned image? You'd think the ideal way would be
to convert directly from WMF to GIF....

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #4 –
>> what do you mean that it creates poorer gif files
>> than a scanned image?

Well, I think the scanned image has much softer edges, that's all. (and I can set the res. of the scan to get the size image I need.)

>> You'd think the ideal way would be
>> to convert directly from WMF to GIF....

You're right, but I like to drag and drop images/text on some of the pages of my scores, so I do it in Publisher. It would be even good to get gifs out of NWC but I think it wouldn't be used much at all. (even I wouldn't use it.)

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #5 –
An interesting thread, this and it prompted me to do a bit of experimenting. I favour Page Plus for my publishing, I've found it accepts the NWC metafile (copy from page preview) accurately and quickly, then I can play around with fancy titles, extra symbols etc. at my leisure. But the finished files tend to be quite large, particularly if one wants to send them to someone else either on a floppy or e-mail, so I had a look at file sizes with the following results:

These figures are for a single page not too complex score, and the compression system used was Winzip

Original Compressed (file size in bytes)

wmf 157,290 36,579
gif (300 dpi) 86,028 86,043
PagePlus (wmf) 245,114 44,758
PagePlus (gif) 173,848 94,755

A self extracting Winzip .exe of the wmf Page Plus file was approx. 64,600 bytes.

The .gif file, being already compressed, didn't benefit from Winzip, but it's interesting to note that the metafile ended up less than half the size of the gif, even when embedded in Page Plus. I favour metafiles because they are fully scaleable without loss of definition - the 32 bit NWC doesn't save metafiles directly to disc, but I'm using 16-bit at the moment.

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #6 –
Oops! Lost the spacing in transmission. Here is the table again, spaced with underscores - I hope this works:

_______________Original Compressed (file size in bytes)

wmf___________ 157,290___ 36,579
gif (300 dpi)__ 86,028___ 86,043
PagePlus (wmf) 245,114___ 44,758
PagePlus (gif) 173,848___ 94,755

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #7 –
Well, that'll have to do!. Just a quick further point of interest - Page Plus supports booklet printing - set the pages in A5 size, then the program can print A4 paper with the pages correctly collated to form a booklet. Page Plus is available from Serif (http://www.serif.com ) I hasten to add I've no connection with Serif other than as a satisfied customer!

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #8 –
Well. I may need something like that! I think my COrelDraw 4.0 is a bit too old for Eric's metafil format. I find some of it really hard to scale. I'll experiment and get back to you (maybe try Word 98, too!)

btw: wouldn't it be nice if NWC 32 saved metafiles direct to disk! (cc: wishlist!)

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #9 –
Furthermore, Andrew : why couldn't NWC export _automatically_ each page to a new page_###.wmf file ? :) Though once again macro recorder may help, it is not "clever" enough!
MAD

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #10 –
Let me point out a lovely program called IrfanView, which free to one and all.
It will let you view almost any graphic file, including WMF, and convert them to an number of formats (I'm not sure if WMF is among them).
It will also resample the image and perform limited manipulation, including cropping and brightness/contrast/gamma adjustments.
It is avalible at: http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9227474/
I am just a happy user.

Cyril N. Alberga

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #11 –
?ten eht no elaniF laodnwod ot ecalp a ereht sI

!xnaht

Re: Publishing Scores

Reply #12 –
There are two good reasons for not generating .WMF files:
1) Microsoft changes file formats more often than they get
sued.
2) It's not portable: to Apple, Sun, or the MS-Windows
successor. You're unneccessarily limiting your users' target
audience.

So far as I know, as PDF is the only thing resembling a
DTP standard; it's probably the best way to publish digital
score images.

Is Adobe Acrobat the cheapest way to publish .PDF files?
Note that I am trying not to ask for PDF output from NWC.