Tips for Importing/Converting PDF
I tried seeing what might have already been posted about this, but everything I found was several years old and didn't seem to apply to this particular question; so I apologize if I've overlooked anything more recent that might be relevant.
Is there any special tricks or tips for importing PDFs through the MuseScore feature to improve the likelihood of it being converted correctly or at least within a reasonable degree of accuracy? The very first attempt I made with one piece of sheet music was really encouraging, converting the first handful of measures correctly, then after that it went off the rails; and none of the rest of that music or any subsequent attempts with any other music have even been remotely close to what it's supposed to be.
The sheet music I've tried is old, but as far as I can tell, it's fairly clear to read, at least for the most part. I appreciate that this is a free conversion tool, and that there are bound to be limitations of what it can do, and I wouldn't mind if the things that needed to be fixed were minor, but so far I haven't really gotten it to work at all and I'm just curious if there's something I could or should be doing differently that might improve the odds somehow of it working? There doesn't appear to be any settings that can be adjusted.
I've been making do manually inputting everything, but that takes awhile, at least for me.
Comments
Good luck. "Fairly clear" may not be good enough. Your PDF needs to be as sharp, clean, high dpi. high contrast (no gray), as possible to even have a chance. If your pdf is like some pdfs of old scores like you see on IMSLP, gray with blotches and what-not, there isn't much hope. You may be able to read it, but a computer is trying to make sense of every dot, blotch, wrinkle, and marking. You might be able to remake your pdf.
There are those that will say that it is indeed faster to just re-enter everything.
In reply to Good luck. "Fairly clear"… by bobjp
"Your PDF needs to be as sharp, clean, high dpi. high contrast"
That's more or less what I meant by fairly clear. So far NotateMe Now has faired better; the only downside is having to do it one staff at a time with the free version. I still have to clean it up a little, but it's far from starting from scratch.
In reply to "Your PDF needs to be as… by stargazer1682
The transformation from a graphical to a music format is always problematic and you will need manual corrections even when using commercial programs. Maybe you will get a little bit better results by installing and running Audiveris (which is used also by musescore.com) on your PC, but it always will need some manual work.
https://github.com/Audiveris/audiveris/releases
https://bacchushlg.gitbooks.io/audiveris-5-1/content/
https://youtu.be/718iy10sKV4