Compatibility with Sibelius?
Submitted by RaviC on April 2, 2009 - 5:13pm.
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Hello, I was thinking of using this software for a music project. However, it needs to be compatible with Sibelius so I can send it to others to revise (since they only use Sibelius). Is such a feature available in this program? Thanks a lot for your help.
Compatibility with Sibelius and over one hundred other score editors is available via MusicXML. Just save the file as MusicXML and it can be open in Sibelius.
Thanks for the help.
For the latest Sibelius, we can only go from Musescore to Sibelius, and not vice versa. Correct? I'm interested in this other way.
Also, for older Sibelius versions, no path either way... Correct?
Thank you for pointing this out. I just assumed Sibelius supported MusicXML export. I am shocked. I thought that every serious scorewriter included MusicXML support these days.
A quick search shows that a company is selling this feature for $69.95. (http://store.recordare.com/doletsib1.html)
You can now export any Sibelius scores to MusicXML for free. The dolet plugin is free now.
See: http://www.makemusic.com/Products/MusicXML.aspx
For the time being, I can convert from Sibelius to MuseScore by printing the score to PDF and using the demo version of PDF to Music Pro (http://store.recordare.com/pdftomusicpro.html), splitting the score into one pdf per page and re-joining them back in MuseScore. It will work until a permanent solution is available. A Sibelius export plugin would be excellent.
The most convenient way wolud be the ability to open .sib files in straight in Musescore...
I guess that with such an option the Musescore would make it to the top :)
The problem is ofcourse that Sibelius uses its own proprietary format. Is there a way to overcome this? (I am not a programer so I just wonder...) That would help a lot!
The trouble is that Sibelius uses a proprietary, undocumented format. Probably the results would never be as good as the MusicXML route and it would take considerable effort.
And I'm sure Sibelius would not be really happy with that! (Read: threats, lawsuits, etc.)
I have just tried this, and it works splendidly - and truly not too much of a hassle to do it (but then, I am not a professional and "lots to work on" person, just somebody who wants to produce simple scores for a small amateur local choir to listen to, and use for practice at home). One of our group is professional, doing arrangements for us, and he uses Sibelius to do it - but Sibelius doesn't seem to want to be use-able by little local groups. So how can we distribute and use his good works to just ordinary people? MuseScore and PDFtoMusic to the rescue.
Using the scores provided by PDFtoMusic, I was able quickly to create a full MuseScore file.
Simply export the pdf page-by-page (choosing to leave out or include instruments as one wishes), and as RaviC says, open them one at a time in MuseScore. Then append an appropriate number of measures to the end of page 1, copy that same number of measures from page 2, and paste them at the end of page 1 - and so on - seems to work nicely.
"How to open Sibelius files in MuseScore", overthere, http://musescore.org/en/node/14319
Regards!