Klarinet Archive - Posting 000520.txt from 2010/09

From: Oliver Seely <oseely@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Converting IMSLP files to midi format
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 14:47:38 -0400


My experience with music scanning programs ended about 15 years ago with MIDISCAN 2.5. It is interesting to read that some of the same problems exist: working with only the cleanest printed facsimile and the need for an editorial cleanup after the scan is complete.

The sticking point for me was the realization that one ought to decide on an acceptable error rate which would preclude the need for a cleanup after scanning. The need for a cleanup increased my expended time to about 80% that needed to put in the notes manually by "speedy-entry" in Finale. That is, one hour of Finale time translates to 48 minutes of MIDISCAN time -- and that's for the very cleanest of printed copies. For any scanned piece and any error threshold, the amount of time remains constant for cleanup because all measures have to be checked.

So one asks, what is an acceptable error threshold? One bad note in a hundred? Certainly not for me. Playing a piece with a bad note appearing at increments of 100 would be unacceptable. Three people playing a scanned piece together would find one bad note in 33 assuming the bad notes to occur at different places. Maybe one in a thousand. At that level I think that I would be able to accept my live players saying, "Hey, there's a bad note here." They rather get used to exercising their red pens in any case during our afternoon musicales.

Things have to have improved a little bit in the intervening 15 years, but when I read that a cleanup is necessary my interest in the program being considered diminishes considerably and I resign myself to a manual entry of notes.

Oliver

> From: martinbaxter1@-----.com
> Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 19:19:16 +0100
> To: klarinet@-----.com
> Subject: Re: [kl] Converting IMSLP files to midi format
>
> Smartscore lite, which is included with Finale, won't convert PDF files but the full version claims to do so. Ha anyone out there used it; I fancy the idea but don't want to spend that much money without knowing how well it works.
> Martin
> On 18 Sep 2010, at 18:47, Mark Thiel wrote:
>

_______________________________________________
Klarinet mailing list
Klarinet@-----.com
To do darn near anything to your subscription, go to:
http://klarinet-list.serve-music.com

   
     Copyright © Woodwind.Org, Inc. All Rights Reserved    Privacy Policy    Contact charette@woodwind.org