Wanting to convert folders of Sibelius files to MusicXML for MuseScore...
Please forgive me - probably may be felt to be rather an impertinent request, but I'm wondering if there's any nice person out there with Sibelius, who's able to convert a couple of folders of .sib files to MusicXML and would like to do me a favour with that facility. I've been searching online, with a growing frustration at not finding any means that doesn't require Sibelius.
I do have Sibelius 4 (which originally produced the files), but that doesn't work in Windows 10, and I can't afford to upgrade to the current Sibelius version (hence now having a go at starting up with MuseScore) - and am very reluctant to go the 'free trial' Sibelius route when I'm definitely not buying - and am doubtful anyway that a free trial would have the wanted export function enabled.
The folders together contain 63 files, totalling 4.89MB, so obviously batch processing would be required in order that the task not be far too time-consuming.
Many thanks for your patience!
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Sib-Final-1.zip | 2.2 MB |
| Sib-Final-2.zip | 2.7 MB |
Comments
Do you know for a fact that it won't run on W10? If you still have a valid Sibelius account it should work. You may have to jump through some hoops and compatibility mode issues. You can't just install it and activate it. That system doesn't work any more. Was it deactivated on your old computer?
The Avid Knowledge base has lots of information.
http://www.sibelius.com/cgi-bin/helpcenter/chat/chat.pl?com=thread&star…
Thank you for suggestions, Bobjp and frfancha.
My delay in coming back here was to take time to re-check as to whether I'd previously missed anything with regard to getting Sibelius 4 running in Win10. I did get a ray of hope after mostly drawing a blank with it, because I established that there was a version 4.1.5, whereas I'd got 4.0.0. So I upgraded to that version (free download still available), but it didn't change anything. I set Compatibility mode for, successively, Win XP SP2, XP SP3, Vista SP2. Also tried running as Admin - all to no avail.
The issue isn't an activation one. On running the program I get a dialog telling me I have full function for two weeks before it would lose the ability to save if I still hadn't registered it by then. As I was only testing it, I didn't bother to do the registration, which I couldn't do online anyway - perhaps because the address it tries to connect to for that purpose is out of date (it's allowed in the firewall).
Frustratingly the program does work in some ways. It loaded and displayed .mid and .orc files as well as could be expected, and indeed (from .mid) did a better job of many aspects than MuseScore - though I think the latter more frequently recognised dotted rhythms within triplets, which is a common thing in many of my works. But I haven't the time to go putting in the masses of markings and corrections that would be involved in building up a proper working score again from any of my MIDIs - which are mostly of large orchestra, often with up to 8-part choir.
Weirdly, when it came to .sib files, as previously the program failed to load the files, either freezing or crashing and evaporating from the screen and memory - except for just one of my .sib files, which is actually one of my largest (my single-movement Symphony 5), which did load and display okay, but Sibelius was unworkably sluggish and laggy with that one loaded, so clearly something was still wrong even there. That sluggishness couldn't be anything to do with an inadequate system, for this computer has MUCH more resources all round than the old Win7 computer on which it was very acceptably agile, and I was watching little monitoring icons I have in my system tray, and didn't see any undue memory or CPU load when Sibelius was being sluggish with my Sym5 score.
I checked carefully, and didn't find any facility in Sibelius 4 to export as MusicXml, but then that's a bit academic as this Sibelius version on this system chokes on all my scores anyway. I note that there is a version 1.1 of Dolet (plugin to export as MusicXml) that is downloadable free, for Sibelius versions 1-5, but I read that Dolet 3, which is the real one for Sibelius 4, is a fairly expensive purchase.
I also thought perhaps temporarily to have Windows 7 installed in VirtualBox so I could run Sibelius 4 properly and maybe then I could use that with Dolet 3, stomaching the price for that to get all my scores tolerably converted to MusicXML for import into MuseScore. Although Dolet 1 is a free download, it exports too few score elements to make its exports worthwhile for me - too much work rebuilding the scores in MuseScore. -- I do have my original Win7 product key, but no longer the original disc, and I couldn't find any legitimate source now for a Win7 download. Some show up in search engine listings, but they're all obsolete now or dubious sources I wouldn't touch.
So, at the moment, Sibelius, and actually being able to edit my extant scores, is looking to be a write-off, unless I happen to find somebody who is happy do the exporting to MusicXML for me, and has something with equal or better performance than Dolet 3 to do the conversion.
In reply to Thank you for suggestions,… by Philip Goddard
Indeed, online registration for versions 1 through 7 is no longer possible. But it can be done offline. This is for v7 but it might work for you. Who knows. 4 should export as midi. Not the best but at least workable.
https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/How_To/How-to-manually…
In reply to Indeed, online registration… by bobjp
Actually, as I explained in my second post, registration isn't the issue, and I already have MIDI files of all the works, but the work involved to build up a proper score of each of my works from an imported .mid file - whether in Sibelius or MuseScore - is unworkably huge (not least, all the corrections of the notation program's errors in interpretation of rhythmic elements, as well as inserting all the score markings), and I'm not repeating all that now. Years ago, with other time priorities having arisen, I gave up converting my MIDIs into scores, so a bit under half of my works never made it into scores - though I still have the MIDIs of them incorporated into videos on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-HzTrGvOCJBQbhAXEh41Hg .
So my only prospect of getting the full, accurate and properly marked-up scores in MuseScore is to have the head-start of a MusicXML - not .mid - intermediate.
In reply to Actually, as I explained in… by Philip Goddard
There you go. Have checked one or two of the xmls, seem to be ok. Split the last file as was over 4Mb.
In reply to Actually, as I explained in… by Philip Goddard
There is no difficulty in opening the original .sib with Sibelius 7.5, exporting it as .xml and opening it with MuseScore 6.3.2........
In reply to There is no difficulty in… by Amnor
Looks like I'm late .....
In reply to There is no difficulty in… by Amnor
Rather MuseScore 3.6.2 ;-)
In reply to Rather MuseScore 3.6.2 ;-) by Jojo-Schmitz
Yes, a little dyslexic........:-)
In reply to Thank you for suggestions,… by Philip Goddard
Oh my goodness, SO many thanks KJ_Palmer, Amnor, and all you other nice people seeking to come to my aid! :-) I have to say, I'm really impressed by the friendly nature of this MuseScore forum - a very welcome change from various others I've posted in and then wished I hadn't! I hope that in time I'll be helpful here too, and not just leaning on others.
Anyway, what a relief! I've just imported, cursorily checked and saved as MuseScore files a few of the xmls - particularly the large scores - and am impressed and relieved at their appearance. Yes, of course there are the odd detail issues needing attention, and some of the sounds need changing - particularly as my own MIDI setup when I created those compositions in the Digital Orchestrator Pro sequencer up to 2005 had a very non-standard sounds setup using three MIDI devices. But those issues are minuscule beer compared with building new scores from the original MIDIs. I really can work with these.
Those MIDIs still have great worth, however, for I fine-tuned them with use of continuous controllers - a facility apparently lacking in MuseScore - to produce real (albeit non-realtime) performances that I find much more 'humanly' expressive than algorithm-driven 'auto-expressivo' functions can achieve. I have those MIDI performances up on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-HzTrGvOCJBQbhAXEh41Hg/videos . For anyone who does have a peek there, I recommend particularly Symphony 1, Music From the Mountain Waters, and Et In Arcadia Ego as a telling introduction to my 'performances - not just playbacks' approach.
I'm looking towards presently re-recording at least most of them with the better soundfont instruments and choir sounds that I gathered up recently. Now I just have to find a MIDI player or sequencer that gives me the flexibility, intuitive and ergonomic working, and large number of tracks required for that - Digital Orchestrator Pro having long ago bitten the dust.
In reply to Oh my goodness, SO many… by Philip Goddard
Sorry Philip'
I couldn't convert them because my computer with Sibelius is unavailable to me right now. I kind of thought that you might be interested is getting v4 to work. There are things I like about Sib better. Good luck.
In reply to Oh my goodness, SO many… by Philip Goddard
Well, I've now imported each of the xml files into MuseScore - except that just two consistently cause MS to crash at about the end of the rendering process when loading. I wonder if any other nice person here would like to have a go with those, using a different Sibelius version or / and Dolet v.6 or better. I've peeked inside the xml and see:
Sibelius 7.5.1
Direct export, not from Dolet
So, anything different from that combination just might possibly succeed.
Many thanks!
In reply to Well, I've now imported each… by Philip Goddard
I can confirm the crash
Stack trace (on both files):
1 Ms::Element::parent element.h 199 0x10433bc
2 Ms::Measure::system measure.h 120 0x1044028
3 Ms::Chord::layoutArticulations3 chord.cpp 3679 0x944403
4 Ms::Score::layoutSystemElements layout.cpp 4367 0x9f4e8c
5 Ms::Score::collectSystem layout.cpp 4070 0x9f25d7
6 Ms::LayoutContext::collectPage layout.cpp 4731 0x9f7397
7 Ms::LayoutContext::layout layout.cpp 5049 0x9f9022
8 Ms::Score::doLayoutRange layout.cpp 5037 0x9f8f82
9 Ms::Score::update cmd.cpp 302 0x5348e8
10 Ms::Score::update score.h 756 0xf186da
11 Ms::readScore file.cpp 2383 0x4cb7ff
12 Ms::MuseScore::readScore file.cpp 473 0x4bc2dc
13 Ms::MuseScore::openScore file.cpp 415 0x4bbd9c
14 Ms::MuseScore::doLoadFiles file.cpp 348 0x4bb4e3
15 Ms::MuseScore::openFiles file.cpp 313 0x4bb12c
16 Ms::MuseScore::cmd musescore.cpp 6240 0x43131b
17 Ms::MuseScore::cmd musescore.cpp 6032 0x43024a
18 Ms::MuseScore::qt_static_metacall moc_musescore.cpp 524 0x5ec67c
19 void doActivate(QObject *, int, void * *) 0x68b978bb
20 QActionGroupPrivate::_q_actionTriggered() 0x32654cc2
...
Something about an articulation and a not existing measure?
In reply to Well, I've now imported each… by Philip Goddard
Direct export is for use between different versions of Sibelius software.
Dolet export is for MusicXML compatible export.
In reply to Well, I've now imported each… by Philip Goddard
In a further effort to not be much help, I am able to open Sym1. I've no use for a dolet but a redownload to xml or mxl still don't open in MuseScore. Non dolet worked for the other files. These two may be multiple problems. I only found one obvious one that I fixed. Still won't open. It needs someone to go over it measure by measure. At this point all I can do is provide a PDF and a picture of the problem I found. If the picture is any indication of what is wrong, I'm not surprized it wont open.
In reply to In a further effort to not… by bobjp
My goodness, thanks for taking the trouble, Bob.
The file to search is actually not the symphony but the other one, which is an adaptation of the third movement of the symphony as a stand-alone short piece. Any problems not in the third movement would thus most likely not be connected to the MuseScore crashes.
In reply to My goodness, thanks for… by Philip Goddard
Sorry - should have added that the third movement (not given a title) starts at bar 275 and finishes in bar 316.
Hope that helps to make sense of it a bit easier.
Must say, though - that weird beam you noticed certainly could upset an applecart or two! How that escaped my proof checking I really don't know!
In reply to Sorry - should have added… by Philip Goddard
To further complicate things, I deleted all but the 3rd movement. Then exported as an xml and an mxl. Sibelius took several minutes to open the xml. And opened 3 copies at that. The mxl opened normally. Both versions had multiple clef an bracket problems I think all the notes are there. Plus the added bonus of a Coda marking on the second page.
In reply to To further complicate things… by bobjp
Thanks indeed for your work there Bob.
I'm puzzled because I've been through your PDF of the full score, and I didn't spot any obvious anomalies, and certainly didn't spot a Coda marking on the second page of the third movement - and indeed I never inserted a Coda marking anywhere in any of my scores. So if you saw one, that would have had to be an anomaly introduced in the conversion to xml or subsequent parsing of that xml. Neither did I spot any clef / bracketing anomalies. Just maybe, ones that you found in the conversion of the 3rd movement could also have been conversion errors...?
I do have to qualify any statement about my not finding problems, though, because my score-reading ability is much poorer than one might imagine from my producing symphonic scores, so I could well miss relatively inconspicuous anomalies that could still be important to address.
Also, a significant minority of the xml exports from my other sib files got a non-critical 'Corrupted file' error on completion of loading into MuseScore. Fortunately the latter behaved in exemplary fashion in all those cases by enabling me to view and copy the list of errors (nearly all bars with contents not matching the time signature), and also allowing me to 'ignore' the errors so that the scores still displayed okay. So I pasted each such report into a text file that I gave the name of the particular score, so when I tidy up each of the imported scores I can check through those lists and correct each of those anomalies.
Again, I don't know to what extent those errors were mine or were introduced during export from Sibelius or parsing by MuseScore (not that that matters now!).
In reply to Thanks indeed for your work… by Philip Goddard
Just for fun, I decided to carry this further. I had noted that I had exported The third movement as mxl. And that MuseScore could not open that mxl. When I open it Sibelius, it does not look the same. That's the one with the coda.
So then I exported that as midi 1, and also as midi 0. Both open in MuseScore with different results.
Attached is what looks like the more accurate (?) version. You can view it full page in Continuous view. This is probably not of much use to you. But this whole thing points out problems with trying to work between different platforms. Not to mention different versions within those platforms.
I still think it's worth your trying to get your copy of Sibelius working. Sibelius 4 was my very first notation software. I wrote a passacaglia for orchestra. The theme started, of course, in the low strings. I remember being totally blown away because I could hear the sound of the bow moving across the strings.
In reply to Just for fun, I decided to… by bobjp
Well, of course the MIDI doesn't have nearly so much opportunity for 'conversion corruptions' as compared with the xml route, because it's already been so corrupted that all score marks and notation (after first import of the original MIDI) have been lost - so then I'd have all the notation corrections and markings to do all over again - a lengthy and draining pursuit that I definitely don't want ever to do a second time, and is one of my prime reasons to be no longer composing (as nowadays I have other strongly competing priorities for my time)!
...Well, yes, of course it's much better not to have to do a cross-platform transfer, and indeed it would be worth getting Sib4 working on my system if that were a practical proposition - but as I've explained further above, it appears not to be a practical proposition at all. I haven't yet had any suggestions as to how I'd successfully and workably have it running on my system, beyond what I've already said I'd considered or tried! :-)
In reply to Well, of course the MIDI… by Philip Goddard
FWIW on rereading your post, I think that your copy of V4 was indeed not activated. Online activation for older versions (like yours and mine) is not possible. Your copy has been running in demo mode, just like any copy of Sibelius until it is activated. That's why you have limited capability. No saving or export. You would have to activate offline like I did. In addition to the link I already posted, here is another one for V 1-6. Check out both.
https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/error_message/Error-on…
And I had to try multiple times before it worked. It's not so much a compatibility problem. I hope you were able to deactivate Sibelius on past computers. Otherwise, the other problem you have is that you might be out of activations. You can have it activated on two computer at once. If those computers died before Sibelius could be deactivated, you are out of activations and you would have call avid to see if they could fix it. I don't know how well that would go.
I had to go through activation headache because I copied my HDD to a SSD and the software didn't like it.
In reply to FWIW on rereading your post,… by bobjp
I appreciate your good intentions, Bob, but it does appear that you're ignoring relevant things I'd written previously in this thread...
-----------------------Quote:
The issue isn't an activation one. On running the program I get a dialog telling me I have full function for two weeks before it would lose the ability to save if I still hadn't registered it by then. As I was only testing it, I didn't bother to do the registration, which I couldn't do online anyway - perhaps because the address it tries to connect to for that purpose is out of date (it's allowed in the firewall).
Frustratingly the program does work in some ways. It loaded and displayed .mid and .orc files as well as could be expected, and indeed (from .mid) did a better job of many aspects than MuseScore - though I think the latter more frequently recognised dotted rhythms within triplets, which is a common thing in many of my works. But I haven't the time to go putting in the masses of markings and corrections that would be involved in building up a proper working score again from any of my MIDIs - which are mostly of large orchestra, often with up to 8-part choir.
Weirdly, when it came to .sib files, as previously the program failed to load the files, either freezing or crashing and evaporating from the screen and memory - except for just one of my .sib files, which is actually one of my largest (my single-movement Symphony 5), which did load and display okay, but Sibelius was unworkably sluggish and laggy with that one loaded, so clearly something was still wrong even there. That sluggishness couldn't be anything to do with an inadequate system, for this computer has MUCH more resources all round than the old Win7 computer on which it was very acceptably agile, and I was watching little monitoring icons I have in my system tray, and didn't see any undue memory or CPU load when Sibelius was being sluggish with my Sym5 score.
I checked carefully, and didn't find any facility in Sibelius 4 to export as MusicXml, but then that's a bit academic as this Sibelius version on this system chokes on all my scores anyway. I note that there is a version 1.1 of Dolet (plugin to export as MusicXml) that is downloadable free, for Sibelius versions 1-5, but I read that Dolet 3, which is the real one for Sibelius 4, is a fairly expensive purchase.
I also thought perhaps temporarily to have Windows 7 installed in VirtualBox so I could run Sibelius 4 properly and maybe then I could use that with Dolet 3, stomaching the price for that to get all my scores tolerably converted to MusicXML for import into MuseScore. Although Dolet 1 is a free download, it exports too few score elements to make its exports worthwhile for me - too much work rebuilding the scores in MuseScore. -- I do have my original Win7 product key, but no longer the original disc, and I couldn't find any legitimate source now for a Win7 download. Some show up in search engine listings, but they're all obsolete now or dubious sources I wouldn't touch.
-----------------------End of quote
I don't know of any program that crashes on loading its own data files because it's not been activated! :-)
Anyway, whatever anyone may think, I'm clear that I've taken all reasonable measures to see if I could stay with Sibelius (seeing that I can't afford to upgrade), and now that I've come to 'cut Sibelius loose' point, I find that at least MuseScore is a bonus in that it's up-to-date and pretty good notation software for free, and, as I've found, it has a very friendly and supportive forum community.
In reply to I appreciate your good… by Philip Goddard
Sorry. I had indeed read all your posts. I only notice that people have gotten v4 running on w10. Of course that doesn't mean it's worth it. I assume you loaded it directly from the disc.
You will notice that there are people who have MuseScore crash while it loads.
I am working with Musescore because I know the day is coming when Sibelius won't work on windows. Not there yet.
Good luck and a good future to you.
In reply to Well, I've now imported each… by Philip Goddard
Thanks for responses so far - but, funny me, I'd actually not meant to post the xml files but the sib ones, so that there would be a possibility of somebody getting success through converting with Dolet or at least from a different different Sibelius version. Here are the sib files...
In reply to Thanks for responses so far … by Philip Goddard
Well, I think I have found the cause of the crash, there are 8 situations that cause it: The grace notes assigned to the first note of a measure but located in the previous measure. this is given in the measures:
19, 23, 27 and 30 of Piccolo
22 and 29 of Violin 1
31 of Flute
29 of Violin 2
Thanks to Google translator...:-)
My English is very bad....
In reply to Well, I think I have found… by Amnor
Same problem with grace notes.
Measures:
191 and 303 Flute
291, 299, 300 and 302 Piccolo
294 and 301 Violin 1
301 Violin 2
In reply to Same problem with grace… by Amnor
Wow, well done and congratulations on that, Amnor, and so many thanks! --You've truly made my day!
That must have taken you an age to comb through and find those details.
Can't remember now whether I put the grace notes in preceding bars in the score, though of course in the MIDI versions that were imported into Sibelius, the grace notes couldn't help but be in the preceding bars for correct rendition.
At least now I have all my compositions as MuseScore scores. Tidying up the various errors resulting from the conversions will be an ongoing task, to be interspersed with other tasks in order not to drive myself (still more) insane, and I've noticed in the odd place in a few of the scores an anomaly that I may be seeking advice over, where there exists a completely unwanted tie, extending over two to several bars, and generally not attached to a note at either end, or, in one case I spotted, attached to a note at the start point. Some of those cannot be deleted, at least by normal means. The one attached to a note could be deleted but the attached note was deleted too, so I undid that and will deal with that when I get round to tidying up that score. Those are definitely conversion artifacts and not errors of mine - far too conspicuous to be overlooked!
Export to uncompressed xml from Sibelius than import to musescore