Thanks for taking the trouble to provide this information, Craig​
On 29 January 2014 13:44, Craig Parmerlee <cr...@parmerlee.com> wrote: > I have spent a lot of time the past 10 days assessing the progress of > the music scanning software. I last used these products about 7 years > ago and lost interest because they were just too limited. I couldn't > find any cases where it was faster to scan than to just enter from > scratch. After diving back into this arena, my first impression was > that the progress has been discouragingly slow. Indeed, it seems the > only supplier that has had any recent innovation is Musitek with their > Smartscore X2 product. > > My initial tests convinced me that the error rates were still > unacceptably high -- with a majority of measures requiring some > additional editing/correction. As I have continued my deep dive, I am > coming to a somewhat different opinion, based on two important factors > that were not initially obvious to me: > > 1) While there still are many recognition errors in today's products, > the current products do not make many errors on the pitch of notes. And > as I look back to my experience 7 years ago, my greatest frustration was > that there were so many pitches entered incorrectly that I wasted an > enormous amount of time going over the translated score note by note to > make sure all the pitches were correct. I am finding I don't have to do > that now. There may be rhythm problems, but generally speaking the > pitches are reliable unless the original document has problems like > slurs passing through accidental marks. And when you combine that with > improved playback quality (Garritan etc.), I am simply not spending a > lot of time worrying about pitches now. That part is rather clean. > > 2) While the start-to-finish time inside the scanning program is not > radically improved in the current generation, that is not really the > important metric. The important metric is how long does it take from > start to finish on the project. There have been many little > improvements that help the work flow and reduce the time incrementally. > Such as: improvements in MusicXM, better recognition of dynamics, > articulations, hairpins, etc. And one big step forward for me is that > the new Smartscore will use a PDF if it is of sufficient resolution. > That means for music that is in letter-sized format, I can drop the > whole thing in my scanner's sheet feeder and be ready to start on the > recognition within a minute. All those things tilt the balance toward > scanning being a viable way to work on some projects. I also have a > scanner that can sheet-feed 11x17, but I haven't tried that yet. > > Based on these improvements,I have upgraded to the SmartScore Pro X2 > product. I expect I will be able to use that 3 or 4 times a month at > least. I have given up my wish that I could simply push a button and > have the music cleanly imported into Finale. That's isn't happening. > However for many things I do, I believe Smartscore will save some time. > For example, I might take a published piece for solo flute and piano > accompaniment, scan it in, and turn it into a trumpet duet with piano > accompaniment. Or maybe I'll take all of that into a DAW and add other > instruments to make it a richer orchestration. For projects like that, > it looks like scanning is viable, as long as one accepts that scanning > in 2014 is just a tool to speed up part of the first step. > > I'd be interested in any other experiences / philosophies. > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > Finale@shsu.edu > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > > -- www.facebook.com/blaxlandpianopathways _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
