Introduction

September 2008


PDFtoMusic is a groundbreaking and unique program that converts Adobe PDF music sheets into editable music scores.
From an Adobe PDF file created by any music notation program, PDFtoMusic can play the piece, sing the lyrics and export this piece to miscellaneous file formats: MIDI, Myr, BMP, WAV, AIFF and MusicXML  for the Pro version.

What can I use it for?
How does PDFtoMusic work?
What are the differences between the "Pro" and "Standard" version?

What can I use it for?

Usages for PDFtoMusic are numerous. First, on the Internet, many dedicated sites provide large collections of free musical PDF files.
PDFtoMusic will let you play them, or convert them into a music file format that you'll be able to modify by using your usual music notation software.
Thus, PDFtoMusic gives you access to a wide library of public domain score sheets that you can play or edit.

Also, there are many music notation programs, and only a few manage compatible exchange file formats. PDFtoMusic solves this issue. You just have, from your program, to generate a PDF file (see next chapter), read it with PDFtoMusic and convert it into format that can be read by another application, for instance, Myr or MIDI format (or MusicXML for the Pro version).

PDFtoMusic becomes then a bridge between your miscellaneous music programs.

For instance: your choir master only uses "Music Architect 2000", that can only save files in its own, proprietary format. You just have to ask him for a PDF file for the score, and by using PDFtoMusic, you'll get a score that can be edited in Harmony Assistant.

If you own the Pro version of PDFtoMusic, you can also export into MusicXML exchange format, from Recordare.  The Music XML file format is currently supported by a number of notation applications, including Finale and Sibelius.

How does PDFtoMusic work?

PDFtoMusic analyzes the content of Adobe PDF files. It collects all the graphical information that it can process: fonts, lines, miscellaneous graphic objects. From these graphical items, PDFtoMusic will infer the music score to be played.

Note : some PDF files (albeit rare) embed only a single picture for the whole score, instead of  a collection of simple graphic objects. This kind of PDF file has probably been generated from a scanned paper sheet. PDFtoMusic can't extract and process elementary graphical items in such cases, and reports that such a document cannot be processed.

To convert a PDF file, select "File>Open" in PDFtoMusic and select a PDF file on your hard drive. PDFtoMusic will load it, and start automatically to process and display it.
If PDFtoMusic makes a mistake while processing the document, you will be able to fix this mistake manually. It is described in the corrections section of this manual.

PDFtoMusic can export the result automatically each time a PDF file is processed, and open this result in the program of your choice.


What are the differences between the "Pro" and "Standard" version?

The "Pro version" includes options and features that are not present in the "Standard" version:

- Batch file export, to convert in only one operation all PDF files from a folder and its subfolders.
- "Expert" mode to manually override individual default processing settings in order to have more precise control.
- Export in MusicXML format in order to preserve the score sheet layout when importing into one of the numerous programs that support this format.



How do I generate a PDF file from any software?

PDFtoMusic is able to convert a PDF document with such a high level of accuracy because it analyses the actual font characters which are embedded in the PDF document. 

When asking for generating a PDF document, you must ask for the character fonts to be embedded into the PDF document. Generally, it's the default setting.

If PDFtoMusic detects a font that is not embedded in the document, an alert will be displayed:



meaning that the rendering could be different from expected.

Here is how to create a PDF file, depending on your system kind:


With Windows

  With Mac OS X

  With Mac OS 9

  With Linux

With Windows


To create PDF files from any music software (or any other application) under Windows, you must install a small program beforehand.
This program can be either a freeware, like PDFCreator (recommended) or PrimoPDF (not tested yet), a shareware, like PDF995, or a commercial software package like the tools of the Adobe suite.

All these programs behave like a new printer for your computer.
When "printing" a document to it, a file name is asked, and the printing result is actually saved in PDF format.

PDFCreator can be downloaded from here: http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator/download (select preferably the "MSI" installer).

Once downloaded and installed, when printing from any program, in the printer selector that appears:



Select the "PDFCreator" printer then click "Print".
You'll then get a window for entering optional information about the PDF file to be created (Title, date, author...), then a file selector for specifying the name and location of this file.

The PDF file that matches what you asked for being printed is then generated, and can be opened by PDFtoMusic.

You can then either send this file by e-mail to somebody else, or process it with PDFtoMusic to convert it into the file format you need.



 
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With Mac OS X


With a Macintosh under Mac OS X, it's quite easy to generate a PDF file from any program, by using the print dialog box. Once the file is loaded into the software, select "File>Print". The printer selector opens, and you can select here the page range to be printed. 
In the bottom part of this box, you'll see a "PDF" or "Save as PDF" button.



Click it, select a name for the file and save it. The Adobe PDF document is created on your hard disk at the required location.

You can then either send this file by e-mail to somebody else, or process it with PDFtoMusic to convert it into the file format you need.





 
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With Mac OS 9


To create PDF files from any music software under Mac OS 9, you must install a small program beforehand in the system "Extensions folder", like Acrobat PDFWriter or PrintToPdf.

Select the Chooser from the Apple menu, and click on the program icon:



Then close the Chooser. (The AppleTalk setting is irrelevant in this case.)

All these programs behave like a new printer for your computer.
When "printing" a document to it, enter a file name, and the printing result is actually saved in PDF format.

A PDF file of your score is then generated which can be opened by PDFtoMusic.

You can then either send this file by e-mail to somebody else, or process it with PDFtoMusic to convert it into the file format you need.


 
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With Linux


Generating a PDF file from any program under Linux needs to use a special printer driver that saves the graphic commands into a file instead of actually printing them on paper.

You can then either send this file by e-mail to somebody else, or process it with PDFtoMusic to convert it into the file format you need.

With KDE, the "kprinter" command (KDEPrint package) includes an option to generate a PDF file:



If this option is not included in your distribution, you'll probably need to use cups-pdf.
To install it under Ubuntu, please refer to this document:
http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/03/23/print-to-pdf-using-cups-pdf/
To install it under another distribution, please read:
http://www.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~vrbehr/cups-pdf/download.shtml

General application menu

The General application menu is called "PDFtoMusic" on the Macintosh, and "?" on the PC.

About...

Display information about PDFtoMusic: its version and the sound database currently used for playing music. You'll also see whether the program is registered or if you are using a trial version.
For any question about PDFtoMusic, please provide this information to technical support along with your questions about PDFtoMusic.

Documentation

Opens this manual.

Internet

Go to our Website

Connects to the Myriad website

Go to the discussion forum
This forum is a place where you can discuss with other users, and where the authors of the program regularly weight in. It is designed to host discussion about general topics. For specific issues, it's recommended to send a problem report directly to the authors through the following menu option.

Send us an e-mail
You'll send a report directly to the authors, in order to ask a technical question.

WARNING: please be sure to provide a valid e-mail address, otherwise you won't get an answer from us!
When sending an e-mail to the authors through this option, all the necessary information about your hardware and software us automatically included, so you don't have to repeat them in your message.

It is possible, and even recommended, to attach a file that will illustrate your query.

Search for a score
From keywords you provide here, PDFtoMusic will forge a request and sent it to a search engine. The results will appear in your regular Web browser.


Language

Program language selection. This submenu allows you to select the language of the user interface.
Currently supported languages are English and French.

Note: on Mac OS X, language change is temporary and is kept only during the current session.
If you want to change language permanently, you can either: change the Finder language through the "International" control panel, or select the PDFtoMusic icon in the "Applications" subfolder, apply "Command+I", then deactivate the languages you are not interested in.

Ordering

You are connected to the our online store, from where you can order our products.

Please consider that the playback quality of PDFtoMusic, as well as the audio file export (WAV, AIFF, MP3) can be drastically improved by using GOLD 2 sound base.


Input my registration code

This option is active only if your copy of the program is not registered yet. To do it, enter your personal details, as well as the personal license number that you received after your purchase. This operation has to be done only once.

Unregister the program

This option is active only if your copy of the program is registered. It wipes out the registration information. You have to do this when you sell your computer, or if you are using a computer other than yours.

Note: this is important, because you are personaly responsible for keeping the information related to your license confidential.

"File" menu

Open

Opens the window for selecting a PDF file from your hard disk. The file will be loaded and analyzed. Icons show the computation progress. You can cancel the operation at any point by either closing the document window, or by hitting the Esc key. You are then asked to confirm the cancellation process.

Open recent file

In this menu, PDFtoMusic shows the 32 last loaded PDF files. The last item in this menu erases this list.



Close

Closes the frontmost document. If you applied changes to the document that have not been saved yet, you are asked for a confirmation.

Save

This submenu is active only if changes have been applied to the frontmost document.
Changes you made to the PDF document are saved, either in the PDF file itself, or in a separate file (depending on your settings in "Settings > Preferences", "Document" section)


Save as

Saves the PDF document under another name, embedding the changes you applied to it.
It enables you, for instance, to save a separate version of the PDF document that includes your amendments, while keeping the original version unaltered.
It is the only way to store your amendments into a PDF file when the setting for "Store Corrections to PDF file" is unchecked in General Document Preferences.
See this chapter for more details.

Export

Exports the frontmost document in any of the available file formats.
You can select the page(s) to be exported, as well as the parts.
Please refer to the file format description chapter for more information.

Batch process

This option enables you to convert a whole batch of files in a single operation. You just have to select the source folder that contains the PDF files to be processed, and a target folder where the result files will be stored.
- An option enables you to define that generated files will be stored in the source folder.
- A pop-up menu lets you select the export format (Cf "File format" chapter).
- An option enables PDFtoMusic to process also the PDF files stored into subfolders of the source folder.
- Another option prevents PDFtoMusic from processing files which are already present in the target folder.  It is useful when you abort a batch export then wish to resume it without restarting from the beginning.
- An additional option recreates the source folder tree into the targer folder.

You can cancel the operation at any point by either closing the document window, or by hitting the Esc key. You are then asked to confirm the cancellation process.

"Edit" Menu

Undo

When a change (amendment) has been applied to the document, you can undo this operation. The 6 last operations can be undone.

Delete changes

Deletes all the changes (amendments) that have been applied to music symbols and instruments of the document.

Note: changes that could have been applied to the way fonts have to be handled are not altered by this operation.

"Display" menu


Drawer

This option is active only when the document is longer that one page.
Activates/deactivates the drawer related to the document. The drawer shows the document pages as thumbnails. You can jump to any page by selecting its thumbnail in the drawer.
The number of errors found by PDFtoMusic on this page is also displayed over the thumbnail

Note: you can ask for the drawer to be opened automatically when a new document is loaded, by selecting the matching option in the general preferences, "Document" section.

Scroll mode

When this mode is active, the miscellaneous systems (staff groups) are not displayed on top of each other, like in a real music sheet, by one besides the other, as a virtual "ribbon".

Recognition results

When this mode is active, PDFtoMusic displays the symbols it recognized over the regular PDF drawing. These miscellaneous symbols are displayed in color:

        - notes and rests :         dark blue
        - clef, key and time signature: light blue
        etc.

Actual size

Resets the document display scale to 100%

Double size

Resets the document display scale to 200%

Full width 

Adjusts the document display scale so that its width fits the window.

Full page

Adjusts the document window size so that it occupies as many space as possible on screen.

Zoom in

Increases the document display scale.

Zoom out

Decreases the document display scale.

"Correction" menu

As any other system based on computer recognition, PDFtoMusic is not infallible, and can make some mistakes, more or less important depending on the quality of the document. You can interevene on the recognition result and apply amendments. These changes can be saved so that they are preserved when loading the document again.
PDFtoMusic offers two ways of saving these amendments.

Instrument

For each staff found in the document, PDFtoMusic shows the related instrument. You can change this instrument as well as its volume, panning position, octave shift and semitone shift.
If the instrument is human voice, you can specify the language that Virtual Singer will use for singing the lyrics.

A check box activates globally the "surround" effect. This effect increases the panning separation of the miscellaneous instruments, for all the documents.

Staves and systems

PDFtoMusic includes specific algorithms that "follow" staff lines from a system to another. Indeed, in some scores, some staves can be omitted in systems. This amendment mode enables you to change the way staff lines are connected together.
A description is provided here.

Fonts

A PDF document includes graphic objects (frames, lines, etc) as well as characters extracted from a font. Those characters can be either letters and digits, or music symbols.

PDFtoMusic has some manual font recognition settings that can help correct mistakes, which are described here.

Allow multi-voices staves

If PDFtoMusic considers that one or several staves in the document are made of several voices and you are sure of the opposite, you can deactivate this processing mode.

Allow enhanced chords

Two notes horizontally very close to each other can be considered as belonging to the same chord (there are sometimes chords in which the notes are not perfectly aligned). This option enables you to deactivate this mode.

Allow tuplets

In some scores, a digit appears near the note to indicate the fingering. In some cases, PDFtoMusic interprets this fingering text as tuplets (triplets, etc). If there are no tuplets in the piece, deactivate this option to prevent PDFtoMusic from searching for tuplets in the score.

If you deactive this option, PDFtoMusic will no longer search for tuplets in the score.

Allow fingering

If PDFtoMusic recognizes tuplets as fingering notation (this generally provides a bar duration error), you can deactivate fingering seeking for the whole document.

Allow key changes

It can be sometimes difficult to tell accurately whether the accidentals at the start of a bar are a key change, or regular accidentals that has to be applied to the following notes.
For instance:

If PDFtoMusic finds key changes on a document that doesn't include any, deactivate this processing mode.

Allow shared lyrics

In some vocal pieces (for instance, Barbershop scores), when several performers sing the same lyrics, only one lyric line is written:



When this mode is active, PDFtoMusic will assign the lyric line to both staves.

Allow clefs vertical shift

Is this mode is disabled, clefs vertical position will be ignored

Allow bracket to create groups

Normally, staves groups are notated with braces. Is this mode is active,  bracket also create groups.

High resolution

When a document is made of many tiny staves, some inaccuracy errors can occur in the vertical positioning of notes and rests.
Switching to high resolution increases the precision (and the computation time). You can define that all documents will be loaded in high resolution from the general preferences.

"Settings" menu

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

Preferences

Opens the general preference window. You can adjust from here the way the PDFtoMusic Pro interface will react. The miscellaneous options are arranged in sections.
A complete description of each section is provided here.

Expert mode

It's the PDFtoMusic Pro calculation fine setup.
A complete description of each section is provided here.


The document window

PDFtoMusic displays Adobe PDF files as documents. Several documents can be loaded simultaneously.

General points
Toolbar
Drawer
Saving files


General points

While loading and processing a PDF file, analysis progress is shown through icons. You can cancel the processing at any point by hitting the "Esc" key or by closing the window.

Once the analysis is complete, the PDF drawing is displayed in a document window.

Toolbar

The toolbar in the upper part of this window enables you to play music, navigate within the score, pause and restart playback and adjust volume or tempo (playback speed).



Tip: to quickly start or stop playback, you can use the space bar.

If the document contains several pages, the following icons enable you to switch to the previous or next page. You can also use the vertical scrollbar to move through the whole document.

The next icons change the display scale of the document.

The "info" icon displays information about the document. These details are extracted from the PDF file: title, document author, creation date, as well as the character fonts embedded in this document.

If the Adobe PDF document include lyrics, the "bird" icon is present. Click this icon to activate the virtual singer before starting playback. This default setting can be changed in Preferences, "Document" section.

The "export" icon exports the music piece in the current format specified in general preferences, "Export" section. But you can also select another format from the file selector, by typing in the matching extension. For instance, to export in Wave format, end the filename with ".WAV".
You can cancel the export at any time by hitting the Esc key.

Right-clicking (or Shift + click) on the toolbar changes its appearance.



Drawer


If your document contains several pages, the last icon opens and closes the drawer. A drawer is a secondary window, linked to the main one, that shows a general preview of the document. Click a thumbnail to jump directly to the selected page.
If errors have been found, a warning sign is displayed, specifying the number of errors detected on this page.




Saving files

When amendments have been applied to the document, as for instance a change in the instruments, volume, or music symbols recognition, you can save these changes so that they will be preserved when loading the file again later.
PDFtoMusic lets you choose beween two modes that can be set up from general preferences.

1- Save changes in the Adobe PDF file itself

Data is preserved in the Adobe PDF file. A backup copy of this file is performed. This doesn't affect the way this PDF file is displayed by other programs.

The advantage to this mode is that, when you send the file to somebody else, your changes are carried along.

2- Save changes in a separate file

The original Adobe PDF file is not modified, and the data are stored in a separate file, created in the "Correction" subfolder of your user file space.

Please note that, in this mode, you can still generate a PDF file in which your amendments are embedded by using the "File > Save as..." menu option.

General setup


This dialog box enables you 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.

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.

 

Batch processing

When you ask PDFtoMusic to process a set of PDF documents through the "Batch processing" option, some alerts can be displayed during the processing. When this option is active, these alert boxes will close automatically after a few seconds, so that the processing is not stopped and can continue to its end.

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.

Amendments


No recognition algorithm can be 100% reliable. In the event you encounter translation errors, PDFtoMusic offers some tools to help you fix them.

Fonts
Symbols
Staves and systems


Fonts

PDFToMusic extracts character fonts from the PDF document, in order to "read" the music sheet. However, when a PDF document is created, fonts are not stored as is in the file, but transformed. First, to shrink the file size, only used characters are embedded.The name of the font is also often encoded. Moreover, no clue is provided that would enable PDFtoMusic to distinguish it without fail.

Some portions of text can be written with a default font (Times, Courier, ...), directly managed by the PDF format. In such cases, the font is not included in the PDF file and won't appear in the recognized font list.
 
In a first step, PDFtoMusic tries to extract a consistent font name, and searches for it in its known font name database. If the name is found, the font is considered as "forced, application". You can't change this status.

If the first step gets nowhere, PDFtoMusic applies dedicated algorithms to distinguish between text and music fonts. Fonts are then marked as "Text, auto", or "Music, auto". You can change this status through the "Correction > Fonts" menu option and, for instance, change a text font to music font. 

Tip: double-clicking a character on the PDF document opens this window with the matching font selected.

 
 
 
This change can be limited to the document or applied to all documents.
 
 
 
If limited to the document, only the current document will be affected by this change.
If applied to all documents, each time the font name will be found again in a PDF file, its state will be forced. Of course, this option has to be used wisely. You therefore create your own database of the fonts that are the most frequently found.  
 
Please note that these changes can be stored in the PDF document, and kept from one use of this file to another, or if you send the document to another user.
In this last case, the font name database of the recipient won't be altered.
 
Once fonts have been marked as music or text, they are processed accordingly by PDFtoMusic.
 
Music fonts are optically analyzed, character by character, in order to guess the meaning of each of them.
 
For text fonts, the operation is a bit different. PDFtoMusic uses first the Unicode data from the PDF file. In most of the cases, the result is consistent. However, some PDF files don't provide accurate Unicode data. It's rather easy to realize: recognized text is completely different from the original one.

Here is for instance what you see in PDFtoMusic:




And once the result is loaded in a music notation software:




PDFtoMusic offers a solution to this problem by making "Text font, with optical recognition" editable. Once a font is marked as such, if it appears that there are errors in the default optical recognition (some characters are very close to each other: I and 1, O and 0, etc), you can remap the associated keystroke for any character. To do so, click on the character preview, and then press the key on your keyboard which you would like associated with that particular character symbol. From this point, the result of the recognition is changed.

The characters you modify appear in a different color on the preview.
Amendments to the recognition are stored in a database, so that when a strictly identical character is found later in another document, it will be amended automatically. PDFtoMusic "learns" in order to ease your work.

To input a Unicode character which can't be entered directly from your keyboard, like for instance, Greek or Hebrew, let the command key (Apple key on MacOS, Ctrl key on Windows) depressed, while entering the Unicode value of the character (in hexadecimal).
For instance, Command+0394 will define the capital greek delta.
A summary of Unicode values can be found here: http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~tomw/java/unicode.html
 
Finally, some fonts don't include either music symbols or digits and letters, but graphics. Examples of this would be accordion register indicators, guitar chord diagrams, embellishments, etc.
In these cases, you can specify that the font has to be processed as graphics.
The miscellaneous characters of this font will then be considered to be graphics, and exported accordingly in the result file.



Once imported into Harmony Assistant, it gives:


Symbol correction

When moving the mouse pointer over a music symbol, its color changes:

 

 
Right-clicking opens the contextual menu related to this object.

   
 

 
In this menu, you can change the object settings. This is very useful, for example, when PDFtoMusic interprets a particular object incorrectly.



Staves and systems

A music score is made of several pages. Each page shows staff lines, joined in systems by a vertical line on the left.
There can be therefore several systems in each page.

When a performer doesn't play anything during several bars, the matching staff is often omitted in the system.
PDFtoMusic applies complex algorithms to "follow" staves from one system to another, and bring the parts together.
You can amend this result through "Correction > Staves and systems".



In this mode, the score is displayed in gray, while systems are shown as a blue vertical bar and numbered: S1, S2, etc.

Between each system, a glue tube enables you to merge systems.
Between each staff, a pair of scissors enables you to split the system.

Click the icon to apply the operation.

If you need to apply the same operation to the whole page, the whole document, or to the same place on all pages, right-click the icon and select the operation mode from the contextual menu.

Each part is marked with a letter, possibly followed by its name between brackets.
If you applied a change, the part name is displayed in green.
Clicking the blue arrow in the staff opens the contextual menu for relating the staff to the part:




- Automatic computation:
Cancels an applied change, so that the link between staff and part is computed by PDFtoMusic again.

- Exclude from computation:
The staff will be ignored. It enables you to remove a staff for computation, so that it isn't exported.

- Part list:
Choose in this list the part to which the staff has to be related.

- Create new part:
Creates a new part and relates the staff to it.

If the error you fix has occurred on all pages, right-clicking the staff name opens a contextual menu, enabling to apply the staves arrangement of the current page to all the other pages of the document.

Expert mode


Expert settings allow the user to override the automated settings of PDFtoMusic Pro up in order to improve recognition of one or several documents.

You'll intervene directly on the internal algorithms of PDFtoMusic Pro.
By default, PDFtoMusic Pro is set to mean values, that work well for most of the PDF files. But for some specific files, these settings can lead to errors, that you can fix from here.
This needs a good knowledge about how PDFtoMusic Pro processes PDF files. Please only change one value at a time, and apply slight changes.

But don't panic, you can restore the default values at any time by clicking the "Factory" button.

These settings are applied when the PDF document is loaded, so they don't affect the documents already in memory.

The miscellaneous sections are provided in a precise order: the sequence used by PDFtoMusic to analyze a document.
For instance, concatenation of characters to build words is performed before analyzing words.

For each section, a complexity level is provided, from low to high.
Before applying changes to a section of high complexity level, please reflect deeply...

Editing settings

The first time you ask for expert mode settings, you are asked for a confirmation.
Then you see this dialog box:





At the left of this window is the menu of various expert mode options. Each section is described in detail later in this chapter. If a value from a section has changed from the default value, a star icon is displayed before the section name.
On the right, sliders that enable to change a value. Double-clicking the numeric value edits its value as  a text. If the value is different from default, the offset is displayed on the right.

At the bottom, several buttons:

• Default
Defines current expert settings as the default values for PDFtoMusic Pro calculation. To be used with great care.

• Factory
Resets expert settings to their original value for the current section only, or for all sections.

• Load
Loads an expert setting definition file, previously saved through the "Save" option. This affects all sections.

• Save
Save all expert settings in a definition file. This enables you to create predefined sets of parameters.

• << and >>
Switches from one section to another, you can also click in the section list.

Please note that if you change one or several expert settings, when running PDFtoMusic Pro, an alert will be displayed to alert you that you'll process PDF files with different parameters than the default.

In the same way, when you send an e-mail to the technical support (Internet menu), all the parameters that have been changed are attached, so that we can work on your files with the same settings as yours.

Horiz. & vert. lines

Complexity : high

Horizontal and vertical lines are an essential element, and the first step in analysis.
They form staff lines, barlines and note stems that constitute the document's backbone.
Line analysis is performed before staff seeking, so units are pixels.
If some staves appear to be missing after analysis, altering these settings could help.
A score excerpt
 What PDFtoMusic Pro detects

• Horizontal imprecision for line merging (in pixels)
When lines are actually made of several small lines end to end, increasing this value will enable a more tolerant merging of these lines.

• Vertical imprecision for line merging (in pixels)
Some thick lines are actually made of several thick lines, drawn on top of each other. Increasing this value will enable a more tolerant merging of these lines.

• Minimum line size for dust removal (in pixels)
Small useless lines are sometimes found, which can be removed with this setting.

Staves

Complexity : high

Once horizontal lines have been detected, PDFtoMusic Pro will try to determine staves: a set of more or less equidistant horizontal lines, with end positions rather close.
Once staves have been extracted, the document general unit is known: the "line space", i.e. the distance between two horizontal lines in the same staff.
Detected horizontal and vertical lines
 Detected staff lines

• Horizontal imprecision for staff lines connection (in pixels)
Maximum tolerance for merging two lines drawn end to end into a single one.

• Vertical imprecision for staff lines (in pixels)
Maximum tolerance for merging two lines drawn on top of each other in a single, thicker one.

• Maximum line thickness (in pixels)
Enables to remove too thick lines. If you see, on your document, undetected staves with rather thick staff lines, increase this value.

• Maximum line space (ratio of the page height)
Lines which are too far apart in your document can be removed with this option. If staves with rather outspread staff lines go undetected, as can occur in tablature, increase this value.
Be careful, too much tolerance will detect staves where there are none.

• Minimum horizontal size for staff lines (ratio of the page width)
Lines which are too short can be removed with this option. For instance, one or two measures, or even a whole paragraph of underlined text might be  drawn as an embellishment, and do not match the actual content of the score. Or, for instance, a whole paragraph of underlined text

• Line space imprecision (in line spaces)
This value sets the calculation tolerance when searching for equidistant horizontal lines. On some PDF files generated with a low resolution, horizontal lines of a staff are not regularly spaced.

Slanted lines

Complexity: average

Slanted lines are mainly used to draw beams, hairpins or tuplet groupings.
A score excerpt
 In red, what PDFtoMusic detects

• Imprecision for slope comparison
Increasing this value will enable slanted lines with more different slopes but drawn end to end to be merged together.

• Horizontal imprecision for line merging (in line spaces)
• Vertical imprecision for line merging (in line spaces)
Increasing these values will allow two lines of similar slope on top of each other to be merged together in order to make a thicker line.

• Vertical distance for line end comparison (in line spaces)
Increasing this value will enable slanted lines that are not perfectly end to end to be merged together in order to make a longer line.

• Thickness imprecision for slanted line merging (in line spaces)
Prevents slanted lines from merging if they meet all the above requirements but their thickness is different.


• Dust removal on slanted lines: Minimum allowed size (in line spaces)
Small useless lines are sometimes found, which can be removed with this setting.

Systems & groups

Complexity: average

Staves have now been found, as well as slanted lines. PDFtoMusic Pro will aggregate staves into staff groups. Vertical lines or brace and bracket symbols located in the left margin are extracted.
A score excerpt
 What PDFtoMusic Pro extracts:
A three staves system.
The two bottom staves are grouped into a single part by the brace.

• Horizontal imprecision for system seeking (in line spaces)
In some documents, the grouping symbol is either far from the left end of the staff, or within the staff area. This setting determines the maximum distance in line spaces.
If this value is zero, each staff becomes an independent system.

• Vertical imprecision for system seeking (in line spaces)
The maximum distance between the end of the grouping symbol and the top or bottom of the staff.

Barlines

Complexity: average

Once staves have been grouped together, PDFtoMusic Pro will locate vertical lines that start at the top of the system or staff, and end at the bottom of the system or staff, in order to extract barlines.


 a) thick barline
b) thin barline
c) double thin barline

• Minimum thickness for a thick barline (in line spaces)
Specifies at what point a barline should be defined as thick.
If, for instance, repeat barlines are not recognized, decrease this value.
Conversely, if too many bold barlines are recognized, increase this value.

• Minimum distance between two thin bars (in line spaces)
Sometimes, a barline is drawn several time at the end of the measure in the PDF file. Increasing this value will replace double barlines with single ones.

• Minimum measure width (ratio of the staff height)
Measures are supposed to contain symbols, so they should be wide enough. But some measures can be narrow (upbeat for instance). Decrease this value if several narrow measures are merged into one.

Clef

Complexity: low

Once staves have been grouped together, and measures detected, PDFtoMusic Pro will begin to interpret the individual symbols. It starts with clefs.

• Minimum height for a clef symbol (in line spaces)
Minimal symbol height to consider it as a valid clef.

• Minimum height of a 8 or 15 over clef  (in line spaces)
Minimum height for considering a clef octave offset (8va, 8vb, 15ma...) as valid.

• Maximum height of a 8 or 15 over clef  (in line spaces)
Maximum height for considering a clef octave offset (8va, 8vb, 15ma...) as valid.


Time signature

Complexity: low

Unabbreviated time signatures can easily be taken for miscellaneous numbers like tuplets or fingering.
The following settings allow time signatures to be more accurately interpreted in these cases.

• Vertical parting position between time signature numerator and denominator (ratio)
Determines how much line spacing is allowed between the numerator and denominator to be considered part of the same time signature object. This is expressed as a percentage (ratio) of the character height.

• Minimum size for time signature numbers  (in line spaces)
Numbers (digits) below this size threshold are not considered to be part of the time signature.

• Maximum horizontal shift between time signature digits (in line spaces)
When numbers are made of several digits, this setting defines the maximum horizontal distance between them.

Notes

Complexity: low

It's now time to detect notes that are drawn on the staff...

• Maximum size of a grace note head (in line spaces)
Adjusts discrepancies between grace note and regular note size.
Notes are always bigger than grace notes on the same document.

However, this difference is sometimes small. If grace notes are mistaken for notes, decrease this value.




• Maximum distance from the flag to the note (in line spaces)
Flags which are too far from the notehead can be removed.

See also: "Dots" section.

Ledger lines

Complexity: low

Some notes are drawn outside the staff line area. To relate them to the right staff, but also to show clearly their degree, small horizontal lines are drawn between the notehead and the staff.



• Maximum size of a ledger line (in line spaces)
Ledger lines wider than the specified value will be ignored.

• Maximum horizontal distance between notehead and the ledger line (in line spaces)
• Maximum vertical distance between notehead and the ledger line (in line spaces)
The notehead is supposed to be more or less centered on the ledger line. These settings enable to adjust this tolerance.

Accidentals

Complexity: low

Accidentals are related to notes. However, when a key change occurs, similar symbols are displayed before notes but are defining the new key value. Changing these settings can lead PDFtoMusic to consider note accidentals as a key change, or vice versa.


• Maximum vertical distance between accidental and notehead (in line spaces)
If the accidental is verticaly too far from the notehead center, it's not taken into account. This setting has rarely to be adjusted. (a)

• Maximum horizontal distance between the right of the accidental and the left of the notehead (in line spaces)
When notes are in a chord, the accidental may have to be shifted left in order to avoid overlapping. Increasing this value will tend to relate the accidental to the note instead of a key change. However, more complex algorithms try to keep consistency in the results provided by this setting (b)

Special cases can be solved by adjusting this value, as in this example:


Where accidentals are drawn far away from the noteheads.


• Maximum horizontal distance between accidentals and notes in chord (in line spaces)
In the same way, in a chord, accidental placement follows a logical scheme. Increasing this value will make PDFtoMusic Pro search for accidentals farther from the noteheads (c).

Stems

Complexity: low

Finding proper stems is crucial because it determines both note duration and chords.
Indeed, the note will be linked to beams and flags through its stem.


• Maximum horizontal distance between the notehead and the stem (in line spaces)
Vertical lines drawn too far from the notehead won't be taken into account. (a)

• Maximum thickness of a stem (in line spaces)
Vertical lines thicker than this value won't be taken into account. (b)

• Minimum size of a stem (in line spaces)
Smaller vertical lines won't be taken into account. In certain documents, notes are drawn with very short stems. It will then be necessary to decrease this value. (c)

• Minimum size of a grace note stem (in line spaces)
Smaller vertical lines won't be considered as grace note stems.

• Maximum size of a stem (in line spaces)
Longer vertical lines won't be taken into account. (c)

Rests

Complexity: low

The main problem with rests is to recognize whole rests. It is indeed a very basic shape (a rectangle) that can be confused with an horizontal beam or a tenuto symbol for instance. The following settings will help to differentiate.

• Minimum width of a whole rest  (in line spaces)
• Maximum width of a whole rest  (in line spaces)
Too wide, or not wide enough rectangles are not considered.

• Minimum height of a whole rest  (in line spaces)
• Maximum height of a whole rest  (in line spaces)
Too thick, or not thick enough rectangles are not considered.

• Maximum vertical distance from the rest to the staff area (in line spaces)
Most of the time, the vertical height of rests is in the staff area. However, particularly when the staff is made of several voices, the rest is shifted up or down in order to avoid ovelapping with other symb This value sets the maximum offset from the rest to the upper or lower bound of the staff.


Tuplets

Complexity: low

Tuplets can apply to notes and rests. They are generally drawn above or below a beam. They can be drawn using a bracket that specifies the notes to apply the tuplet to.
Tuplets can be confused with fingering notation.
Tuplet seeking can be deactivated through the "Correction" menu, for the whole document.



• Maximum horizontal distance between the number and the middle of the beam (in line spaces)
When the tuplet is related to a group of beamed notes, the tuplet number is centered on the beam. This value defines the maximum offset from this ideal value. (a)

• Maximum vertical distance between a tuplet and the line (in line spaces)
The tuplet number is usally close to the beam. This value defines the the maximum offset from this ideal value. (b)

• For thin lines broken by a tuplet value, Maximum horizontal distance between the line end and the note (in line spaces)
Sometimes, the tuplet is drawn with a bracket that encloses notes. This value defines the maximum gap between the number and the line end (c)

• Maximum horizontal distance for connecting broken tuplet lines (in line spaces)
When the tuplet number is drawn over the line, this line is broken. This value defines the maximum width of the gap (d)

• Minimum height for tuplet text (in line spaces)
• Maximum height for tuplet text (in line spaces)
These bounds of tuplet character height help to differentiate between a tuplet and a fingering.


• For discriminating between a tuplet and a fingering ornament, ratio between the number of  text objects that can make a well placed tuplet and the number of text objects that can make a tuplet
The possible confusion level between tuplet and fingering is calculated, and if too high (big proportion of possible misplaced tuplets), we'll suppose that tuplets are all drawn with a bracket.

Dots

Complexity: low

Dots can be drawn after the notehead to alter its duration, or they can be staccato or repeat barline elements.

• Minimal size of a dot (in line space)
Dust (small meaningless dots) can be removed with this setting.

• Maximum size of a dot, to discriminate it from a grace note head (in line spaces)
Removes all unidentified dots below a certain size.
Increasing this value can affect the double-whole rest recognition.

• Maximum vertical distance between the notehead and the dot (in line spaces)
The duration dot related to a notehead to make a dotted note value can be shifted vertically. If a duration dot is not taken into account, increase this value slightly.

• Maximum horizontal distance between the notehead and the dot (in line spaces)
Defines the maximum horizontal distance for a dot to be considered as being related to a notehead.

• Maximum distance between the dot and the repeat bar (in line spaces)
If a repeat barline is taken for a piece start or end barline, increase this value.

Ornaments

Complexity: average

PDFtoMusic has some settings to manually compensate for graphical similarities, such as the shape of tenuto ornaments and whole rests.




• Minimum horizontal size for a tenuto (in line spaces) (b)
• Maximum horizontal size for a tenuto (in line spaces)
• Minimum vertical size for a tenuto (in line spaces) (a)
A tenuto is a small horizontal line usually drawn above the notehead. Many kinds of horizontal lines can appear on a score. These values can be adjusted to locate tenuti between the horizontal lines that haven't yet been processed as staff lines or ledger lines.

• Maximum horizontal distance between ornament and note (in line spaces) (c)
• Maximum vertical distance between ornament and note (in line spaces) (d)
Ornaments are generally placed near the note they are related to. These values define the maximum tolerated distance.

• Minimum horizontal size of an ornament (in line spaces)
Some very small shapes can be taken for ornaments. This value removes very small shapes that can be taken for ornaments.

Fingering


Complexity: average

Fingerings are numerical values from 0 to 5 that define the finger of the performer that has to be used to play the note.
They can be easily confused with tuplets.
To know the height of a character on the page, hold the mouse pointer over the object for one second.

• Fingering character minimum height (in line spaces)
• Fingering character maximum height (in line spaces)
Adjusting fingering character height bounding values can, in some cases, help to differenciate between a tuplet and a fingering.

Slur

Complexity: low

Slurs and ties are always related to two notes: the source note and the target note.
For each shape likely to be a slur, PDFtoMusic Pro will search for matching notes. Possibly, if a line end occurs in the middle of a slur, the target not will be searched for in the matching staff of the next system..

• Maximum horizontal distance between the slur end and the notehead (in line spaces)
• Maximum vertical distance between the slur end and the notehead (in line spaces)
Maximum distance between the notehead and the slur end. It only affects the rough search of notes related to the slur.

• Minimum slur height (in line spaces)
Defines the amount of arc a slur must have in order not to be considered a horizontal line.

• Imprecision for slur seeking (in line spaces)
Fine setting for finding the note to be related to the slur.

• Vertical imprecision for connecting slurs from a system to another (in line spaces)
When a slur is broken by the end of the page, a second slur is searched for in the equivalent staff of the next system. This value defines the vertical tolerance for finding the second slur.
 
• Imprecision for merging two overlapping slurs (in line spaces)
In some files, several slurs are drawn at the same place. In order to reduce them to only one slur, an area comparison is performed, with this tolerance.

• Ratio of two-part slurs (mirror) occurrence
In some files, slurs are drawn in two parts, one for the first half, then one (mirorred) for the second part. An analysis is performed for determining whether the file follows this way of displaying slurs.
If the number of end to end slurs compared to the number of separated slurs is greater than the ratio, slurs are considered to be mirrored.


Tie

Complexity: low

Slurs have been extracted, PDFtoMusic Pro now tries to find which of them are actually ties.
This needs the note height to be compared, as well as a rather short distance between the notehead and the tie end:

• Maximal horizontal distance between the tie end and the note head (in line spaces)
• Maximal horizontal distance between the tie end and the note head (in line spaces)


Beam

Complexity: average

Horizontal and slanted lines that have not been processed yet will be analyzed in order to see whether they connect to note stems and are thick enough. They will consitute the beams..



• Horizontal imprecision between stem position and beam (in line spaces)
Adjusts how far from the note stem the beam is allowed to appear before it is no longer considered a beam grouping. This value enables to adjust this tolerance (a).
Note that PDFtoMusic may interpret tenuto ornaments as beams if this value is increased.

• Horizontal imprecision between stem position and beam for tremolo (in line spaces)
For tremolos, the beam doesn't connect to the stem (b)

• Vertical imprecision between stem position and beam (in line spaces)
In the same way, vertically the stem end has to be close to the beam (c)

 • Minimum thickness of the beam (in line spaces)
Horizontal and slanted lines will be considered as beams only if their thickness is above this value (d)

• Maximal thickness of the beam (in line spaces)
Horizontal and slanted lines will be considered as beams only if their thickness is below this value (d)

• Minimal distance between beam and notehead (in line spaces)
Beams have to be far enough from the notehead (e)

• Tolerance for multiple beam slope comparison
When a beam is made of several lines, they have to be more or less parallel. This value is the tolerance between these beam slopes.

Fonts

Complexity: low

• Ratio between characters on the staves and the total number of characters for considering a font as a music font
In order to know whether a font is used for drawing music symbols or text, the way the font characters are spread on the page is analyzed.
The number of characters drawn inside the staff areas is counted, as well as the number of characters outside these areas.
This ratio is compared to the value of this parameter, and the font type determined.

Please note that this result can be changed after the fact by manually editing the font type ("Correction" menu)



Characters


Complexity: low

Characters that have not been yet processed as music symbols will be analyzed in order to form words.

• Maximum vertical distance between a character and the word it belongs to (in percent of the word height)

Defines the imprecision in the word base line. The greater value, the more characters located on slightly different line will be considered as belonging to the same word.
Especially useful for for superscripted letters, as in chord suffixes like "C7", where the "7" is shifted up.

• Maximum horizontal distance between the end of a word and a character for concatenation (as a ratio of the word height)

With a greater value, characters farther apart vertically will be considered as belonging to the same word.
If this value is too high, lyrics related to the staff might merge into a single word.
More important: on tablatures, cell numbers can be erroneous. For instance, a 3 followed by another 3 on the same string will give "33"

• Maximum horizontal distance between the end of the word and the musical symbol for tempo markings  (in percent of the word height)

Enables to merge the tempo text indication and the musical one, made of a note followed by an "equal" symbol and the tempo value.

• Minimal distance between two identical characters (in percent of the character height)

In some files, each character is drawn several time, -almost- at the same place. This parameter enables to remove these identical characters when another one has already been drawn.


Words

Complexity: low

Characters have been grouped into words. These words will constitute word lines, and these lines analyzed to determine whether they are lyrics, or chord names.
Bar numbers, staff or staff group names are extracted.

•Vertical imprecision for creating word lines (as a ratio of the word height)
Defines vertical tolerance for creating word lines.
 
• Maximum horizontal distance between measure start and its number (in line spaces)
• Maximum vertical distance between measure start and its number (in line spaces)
This defines maximum distances for measure number seeking.

• Maximum vertical distance between the staff and its name (in line spaces)
Staff name is supposed to be vertically centered on the staff line area. This parameter defines the tolerance.


Lyrics

Complexity: low

Word lines that are not chord name lines will be analyzed to extract lyric lines. A lyric line is always located under its matching staff.

• Ratio for discrimination between dash and underline
Horizontal lines in a lyric line are considered as dashes or underline (melisma). The vertical position of the line, in proportion of the line height, differenciates between them.

• Ratio between the number of words and the number of notes in a staff line, theoretically 1.
Enables not considering some words as lyrics, if greater than the limit.

Sometimes, text lines, drawn under a staff are not lyric lines, but for instance, the page footer. The words that can be related to a note are counted, in proportion with those which can't. If this ratio is below the provided value, the line won't be considered as a lyric line.

• Maximum distance between the first line of lyrics and the bottom of the staff (in line spaces)
If the first word line is too far from the bottom of the staff, it is not considered as a lyric line.

• Maximum vertical distance between lyrics lines  (in multiple of the line height)
When searching music with several lyric verses, this setting determines the maximum distance to consider between verses.


• Matching ratio between notes for shared lyrics
When a lyric line is located between two parts, notes in the two staves are compared, and a matching ratio between them is computed. If the result is greater than this parameter value, lyrics are considered as shared between the two staves.


Paragraphs

Complexity: low

Words that have not been yet processed as lyrics, chord names, staff names, etc, will be grouped into paragraphs and exported as free text.
First, words will be aggregated into word lines, then the lines vertically merged into paragraphs.

• Maximum horizontal distance for merging text in lines (as a multiple of the font size)
Maximum distance between two words on the same line.

• Maximum horizontal distance for adding a space in line (as a multiple of the font size)
If the distance between two words on a same line is greater than this value, a space character will be inserted between them.
 
• Maximum horizontal distance for merging lines in a paragraph (as a multiple of the font size)
Maximum horizontal offset between two lines in a same paragraph. It is applied to the left and the right of the lines (paragraphs can be justified)

• Maximum vertical distance for merging lines in a paragraph (as a multiple of the font size)
Maximum vertical distance between two lines of a same paragraph.

Multiple bars

Complexity: low

Multi-rest measures are drawn as a symbol at the center of the measure, and a number above.


• Minimum height of the multi-rest number (in line spaces)
The number has to be tall enough (a)

• Maximum offset between the multi-rest number and the measure center (in line spaces)
The number has to be more or less centered in the measure (b)

• Maximum distance between the multi-rest number and the staff (in line spaces)
The number has to be drawn above the staff, but not too far (c)

Parts / Endings

Complexity: low

Part indicators define portions of the score that are played only at some times.


• Maximum thickness of a part line (in line spaces)
Vertical or horizontal lines thinner than this value will be ignored (a)

• Minimum height of the vertical line (in line spaces)
Vertical lines at the beginning and the end have to be tall enough (b)

• Minimum length of the horizontal line (in line spaces)
The line that joins the beginning and the end can be broken, we define here its minimum length (c)

• Imprecision for connecting vertical and horizontal lines (in line spaces)
Vertical and horizontal lines are interpreted as part of the same (ending) bracket only if they are within this tolerance.

• Minimum height of numbers (in line spaces)
Numbers have to be big enough (d)

• Minimum height of dot (in line spaces)
The dot between numbers, if present, must be big enough. If it is not, it will be removed, in order to avoid confusion with a staccato, for instance.


Crescendo / decrescendo

Complexity: low

Slanted lines that have not been considered yet as beams are analyzed in order to determine whether they connect by one of their ends. Depending on the result, they are either considered as crescendo, decrescendo or marcato.



• Horizontal imprecision for seeking the two lines of the symbol (in line spaces)
• Vertical imprecision for seeking the two lines of the symbol (in line spaces)
Lines have to connect with enough accuracy (a & b)

• Minimum size for a decrescendo. If smaller, the decrescendo will be changed into a marcato (in line spaces)
Decrescendo has to be wide enough, otherwise it is considered as a marcato (c)

• Comparison of crescendo line size (as a ratio of the reference size)
Lines must be of about the same length (d)

Octave offset

Complexity: low

Octave shift symbols (8va, 8vb, 15ma, 15mb) are followed by a line, dashed or not, that shows which notes are affected.



• Horizontal imprecision for seeking line on the right of the symbol (in line spaces)
The line must not start too far from the symbol (a)

• Vertical imprecision for seeking line on the right of the symbol (in line spaces)
Line has to be more or less vertically centered on the symbol (b)

• Discrimination between a line drawn with dashes and a line with dashed attributes (in line spaces)
Maximum distance between dashes when the line is drawn dashed (c)

Pictures

Complexity: low

In a PDF file, pictures can either be decorative or draw the shape of a music symbol.

• Maximum size of pictures to be processed as music symbols (in pixels)
Bigger pictures will be considered as decorative.

• Minimum size of pictures to be exported in the result (in pixels)
Smaller pictures will be ignored and won't be exported in the result file.

What's new ?


Version 1.1 / September 8, 2008


New
  1. Packed MusicXML format (.mxl) is now managed
  2. Correction Menu : item to allow bracket to create groups
  3. Correction Menu : item to ignore the clefs vertical offset
  4. Management of implied tuplets
  5. Now possible to export in MusicXML 2.0 format (global setup)
Improvements
  1. Better management of drum staves
  2. Opening a PDF file from the desktop doesn't load the last documents
  3. Shift + mousewheel changes display scale
Fixes
  1. Confusion between tuplets and part start
  2. Chord diagrams management
  3. Confusion on drum staves
  4. Memory crash when deleting a change made to the document

Version 1.0.4 / April 24th, 2007


New
  1. A correction can now be applied to a group of symbols.
    Right-click to define a selection area. Symbols in this area appear as selected. Right-click on any symbol in this selection area and select a correction to apply: it will be applied to all the symbols of the same kind in the selection area.
Improvements
  1. Better memory management for page graphic cache. Enables to manage bigger PDF files.
Fixes
  1. Seeking of the staff related to chord diagrams


Version 1.0.3 / April 3rd, 2007


Improvements
  1. Optimization of processing time
  2. Better management for chord name written on shifted lines.
  3. Better management of grace notes
  4. Accented characters made of two parts
  5. Recognition of guitar chord diagrams drawn with an emty grid character and a set of dots
  6. Recognition of some key changes
  7. Parenthesis around an accidental or a notehead, when drawn with a text font
  8. Font OCR database updated.
  9. Macintosh: Multi-screen management
Fixes
  1. Recognition and export of the Aiken FaSoLa notation
  2. Management of Adobe Type 1 fonts
  3. Applying a change on a document with a guitar chord diagram
  4. Recognition of horizontal beams, when overlapping a staff line
  5. Problem when a chord name was "Re"
  6. PDFtoMusic Pro: empty pictures are no more exported in MusicXML
  7. MacTel: keyboard management

Version 1.0.2 / February 21st, 2007


Improvements
  1. Possible to change note duration AND add or subtract a dot.
  2. Crossed grace notes management
  3. New keyboard shortcuts for display scale, 200% scale
  4. Dynamics merging ensure that the result is logical, for instance to avoid merging "mf" and "sfz"
  5. New full screen and drawer management
  6. Font OCR database updated.
  7. PDFtoMusic Pro: New setting for the expert mode: maximum beam thickness.
Fixes
  1. Tenuti recognition
  2. Ties within slurs
  3. Breve rest recognition
  4. Tempi display, edit and export
  5. Beamed notes with double stems
  6. Stem direction in chords
  7. Framed text could interfere with part numbers

Version 1.0.1 /  February 8th, 2007


Improvements
  1. When defining a new kind of tuplet, it's added to the tuplet value list.
  2. .myr files are now packed.
  3. "How to create PDF files with Mac OS 9" chapter added to the manual.
  4. "How to create PDF files with Linux" chapter added to the manual.
  5. Improvement in bar number seeking.
  6. Time signature detection has been improved.
  7. Improvement of paragraph recognition for free text objects.
  8. Font OCR database updated.
  9. .myr export: default instruments for the metronome are automatically created.
  10. PDFtoMusic Pro: After changing expert mode settings, possible to compute all the open documents again.
  11. PDFtoMusic Pro: In batch export, it's now possible to define the amendments to computation settings that will be applied to each and every processed file.
  12. PDFtoMusic Pro: When editing expert settings, when at least one item has been changed from the reference value, the matching topic name is highlighted in the list, and the offset from the current value to the reference is also displayed.

Fixes
  1. Miscellaneous problems in general settings.
  2. Problem that could occur when trying to edit or play a non-vector document (scanned page or not a music score)
  3. Infinite loop when selecting a user tuplet
  4. Exported page selection in other formats than MusicXML
  5. Double barlines at end of bar could be not well recognized.
  6. File kind detection according to its extension when exporting
  7. Chord names and text related to the staff could be not exported in .myr format
  8. Output device related to the instrument when exporting in .myr format
  9. Alert about bar numbering when applying correction on systems
  10. Windows: files with accented characters in their name are now properly managed.
  11. Windows : default value of the selector when selecting a folder.
  12. PDFtoMusic Pro: dynamic size when exporting in MusicXML format
  13. PDFtoMusic Pro: "slash notation" export in MusicXML format

Version 1.0.0 / February 1st, 2007


Very first public version.

Limits



Non processed elements

- Text or page rotation
- Circled fingerings or string numbers
- implied tuplet notation
- Different time signature at the same time position

Unregistered version

The unregistered version of PDFtoMusic will only play the first page of a document, and can export only one page at a time.

Explanatory text appears on each exported page processed with the demo version.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some frequently asked questions