[Musicxml Export] - Measure numbering not correct

• Jul 21, 2019 - 23:27
Reported version
3.2
Priority
P1 - High
Type
Functional
Frequency
Once
Severity
S3 - Major
Reproducibility
Always
Status
closed
Regression
No
Workaround
Yes
Project
MuseScore
Tags
musicxml

Hello,
This is an old problem. When in a piece with multiple movements, Musescore ays treats the whole score as one, exporting the measure numbers from 0 or 1 to the end into Musicxml, no matter whether the numbers are reset at the beginning of a new movement. The exported pdf can show correct numbering, but Musicxml not. This brings lots of confusion when importing the xml files, and also for braille transcription, where I have to calculate measure numbers myself, or import and reset them in Sibelius and export a page mapping text to ease my personal calculation. Is this easy to solve? Thank you in advance!

Regards
Haipeng

Comments

• Jul 22, 2019 - 08:06

Then everytime I have to do calculation between the two points. Sometimes Sibelius will fail to import some complicated Musicxml because it has not been updated to Musicxml 3.1, and it's very difficult to have them do that.

Haipeng

Reply

• Jul 22, 2019 - 16:00

I really don't think the workaround should be included. The purpose of exporting to musicxml, esepecially for hhpmusic, is to use the MuseScore score in another program. His program does not give him the ability to recalculate the measure numbers and it should not be required to. As far as major vs critical is concerned, it probably should be major, but recalculating the measure numbers puts a heavy burden on him. Many of the scores he works on are multiple movement symphonic score where it is expected that numbering will restart at 1 in each movement.

Reply

• Jul 22, 2019 - 19:09
Priority ⇒ P1 - High

FWIW, though, it seems like any program that imports MusicXML probably should provide an easy way to do this. For example, if you imported a score into MuseScore that did not reset the measure numbers, all you would need to do is add a section break, no need to recalculate anything. I would imagine most other programs already have, or could be modified to add, such a facility. And it would be a good idea, because you can't really rely on people having used section breaks properly anyhow.

That said, seems obvious enough that this should be fixed at our end too.

Reply

• Aug 14, 2019 - 14:32

I just met such a big score:
https://musescore.com/openscore/scores/5673458?from=notification
And it's almost impossible to manually calculate measure numbers of every piece in this score which has nearly 4500 measures counted continuously in the exported Musicxml! The pdf score shows correct measure numbering, and Sibelius is impossible to import such a large file for rendering bar number changes. So the ultimate solution should always be the export side.

Haipeng

Reply

• Aug 17, 2019 - 11:10

As far as I understand the MusicXML specification, measure numbers have to be unique within a part in a MusicXML file, as they are used for the part wise to time wise transformation. This means I fail to understand how this can be solved.

I would highly appreciate:
- a MuseScore file with a SIMPLE multiple movement example piece
- the correct encoding in MusicXML

Reply

• Aug 17, 2019 - 12:38

It seemed to be so, the unique measure numbers. But the actual export of multiple movements in Musicxml does generate bar number changes without any problem. As I work with lots of large Sibelius projects, there are tons of such bar number resets, and it's totally valid. The only limitation is you can't include multiple movements as titles, subtitles, composers along with the reset measures. These texts have to be converted as plain words. So you can freely include any bar number changes, and this works fine.

Haipeng

Reply

• Aug 17, 2019 - 15:16

I only produced it using Sibelius, for I can't write using Musescore.But I'm wondering how Musescore resets bar numbers. In Musescore 3 files, there are no numbers attached to (on the contrary, Musescore 2 files have clear measure numbering tags, but Musicxml export has this lost), but I can find measure numbers in the pdf file which can be converted into text. What's the rationale? If possible, we can just follow Musescore's measure setting and apply correct Musicxml measure numbers.

Haipeng

Reply

• Aug 17, 2019 - 15:18

The MuseScore format changed in 3 to not have the measure numbers in the score files, for the score comparison tool to work better. The numbers get generated on the fly when opening a score.

Reply

• Aug 17, 2019 - 22:55

It's unbelievable to make Musescore files have such a strange behavior, for it's more convenient to debug using measure numbers. Then when I read the big Gluck opera, how does Musescore 3 file handle the new measure numbers? The xml export should also adapt such a command to have a new number count.

Haipeng

Reply

• Aug 18, 2019 - 08:15

For how to encode multiple movements in Musescore,please look at the Gluck opera whose link was provided in one of the previous post. I don't know whether this is considered as a multimovement score, but the measure numbers are changed. Also, the Open Score project has a set of 3 Chopin waltzes op.64, whose measures are numbered individually in one piece. To export Musicxml, you have to include independent measure numbers as I said, and put all tbox or vbox title information rather than the first movement as plain . When MNX is invented, there will be hope to include every piece as an individual movement using correct properties.

Haipeng

Reply

Fix version
3.3.0