Preferences

This dialog box enables to set up the PDFtoMusic behaviour. Don't hesitate to explore carefully the numerous options. It can prove to be very useful.

Starting

Load documents automatically at startup
If ticked, when the application is started, documents that were open during the last session are automatically reloaded. It's possible to cancel the processing at any time, either by closing the window, or by hitting the Esc key. You'll then be asked for confirming cancellation.

Open file selector ar startup
When ticked, if no document is loaded when the application starts, the file selector will automatically open, so that you can select a file to be loaded.

Document

Store corrections in PDF file
When ticked, the amendments you could have applied to the PDF file are stored within the file itself. When not ticked, they are saved into a separate file, located in the "Corrections" folder of your user folder.

Note: see the chapter about the miscellaneous file saving modes.

Make a backup copy of the original PDF file
If changes are stored in the PDF file itself, you can also ask for a backup copy .bak.pdf to be created at the same level as the original PDF file. It is even recommended.

Open drawer automatically
When ticked, the drawer will be automatically open if the document contains more than one page.

Open full screen
When ticked the document window will extend over the whole screen when loaded.

Activate Virtual Singer automatically
You can specify whether Virtual Singer is active or not when a document is loaded. You can specify whether Virtual Singer is automatically activated when a document is loaded.

Display recognition results
When ticked, the recognition results will be displayed when the document is loaded.

Note: you can activate/deactivate this display through the "Display" menu.

High precision
When ticked, all documents will be loaded in high resolution.

Note: you can activate/deactivate this feature on a per-document basis through the "Correction" menu.

Alerts

Display processing errors into a text window

When PDFtoMusic detects an error when processing the document, it will display a small icon over the document itself representing each item you have ticked in the Alerts panel of general preferences.
In parallel, PDFtoMusic can create a list of all errors encountered as text in a special window (pink background). Right-clicking this window opens a contextual menu for erasing, saving or printing the window content.

The following items enable you to mask some errors (these errors are still present but no longer displayed). Here are the descriptions of the miscellaneous processing errors

Display "Impossible to apply beam"
PDFtoMusic recognized a character that looks like a beam, but couldn't find any music symbol close enough.

Display "Impossible to apply ornament"
PDFtoMusic located a character that looks like a note ornament, but couldn't find a note close enough.

Display "Broken slur"
PDFtoMusic recognized the shape of a slur (possibly a tie), but either it could find the source note for this slur but not the target note, or it could find the target note but not the source. It therefore can't apply the slur.

Display "Impossible to find a measure for this symbol"
PDFtoMusic recognized a musical character in the document, but could not relate it to any measure (bar) area. It can happen for instance for some time signature indicators that are put as a reminder at the beginning of a line.

Display 'Impossible to find the reference note on tablature"
When the document shows tablatures for fretted instruments, PDFtoMusic estimates the duration of notes written on the tablature by seeking for the matching note in the regular staff. If PDFtoMusic can't find this reference note, it generates this error.

Display "Incorrect measure duration"
When several staves are present in a single system (staff group), PDFtoMusic checks that the duration of each bar is consistent. If PDFtoMusic detects a difference in measure duration, this error is generated. It can occur in the following situations:

. PDFtoMusic made a previous miscalculation either when extracting the symbol duration, or when locating chords within the measure (especially when notes in chord are not on the same vertical line)

. There is an error in the source score's notation. This may depend on a number of factors, including the overall accuracy of the source program used to create the PDF.

In some cases, PDFtoMusic can consider two notes that are horizontally close together to be in chord, instead of considering that they are consecutive.
By un-checking the various options in the "Correction" menu, you can deactivate the display of specific types of errors that cause "Incorrect measure duration" warnings.

Export

The export settings don't affect batch processing, which uses its own options.
When loading a PDF file, PDFtoMusic analyzes it automatically. It can then export it immediately in any of the available formats, and open this resulting document in an external application. The following options are available in the Export tab of the Preferences:

Export all opened files automatically
This check box activates/deactivates the automatic export.

"to folder..."
If automatic export is activated, use this option to select the path to the folder where the resulting documents will be stored.

The "Change" button enables you to select another (file) path.

"File format"
This pop-up menu lets you select the export format to be used (Cf appendix about format description)

Open automatically exported files
When this option is active, each exported document will be opened automatically by the program of your choice (it supposes that the selected software is capable of reading this kind of file).

The "Edit" button enables you to select the application that will be used for opening each of the export file formats.
The "Delete" button lets you specify that you don't want this format to be processed.

Glyphs

PDFtoMusic uses optical recognition algorithms on music fonts to detemine the meaning of each symbol.

Store glyphs into a cache
When this option is ticked, symbols that have already been encountered at least once will be processed more quickly.
However, activating this option can lead to a bigger memory consumption.

Erase font cache at exit
When this option is not ticked, glyphs are preserved from one session to another.
Deactivating this option can lead to a bigger memory consumption.

Note: the glyph cache is located in the preference folder:
"Myriad Preferences/PDFtoMusic/GlyphesData". Please do not apply any action to this folder while PDFtoMusic is running.