site:forum.makemusic.com photoscore

 

SharpEye is the predecessor to PhotoScore Ultimate.  Neuratron purchased the SharpEye recognition software engine and incorporated it into their flagship product, but I don't think they made any improvement in its capabilities except for maybe in some textual object recognition.  SharpEye still outperforms any other music recognition software I have used.  Photoscore Ultimate can read PDF files, and makes the claim to read hand written scores.  I can verify it does a tolerable job on PDF's, but I have not had any hand written scores to try.  I would not expect too much.  Their companion product, AudioScore Ultimate, which claims to be able to score from an audio file, has a steep learning curve, at least for me when I tried it, not being an audio engineer.  I never got anything useful out of it, but maybe it's just me giving up too soon, I don't know.  I still think this technology is a pipe dream, but will someday become viable, but not yet.

 

I started out with music recognition software back when what is now SmartScore was called MIDIScan.  I had the usual limited success, where you had to spend more time correcting "recognition" errors than it was worth.  The evolution into SmartScore has made some improvements, but again, nothing to rave about.  I abandoned it when I found out about SharpEye.  I have tried out the SmartScore Pro X demo, but as usual, it had the same problems where you are usually better off starting from scratch rather than using music recognition software.  I cannot comment on the latest Smartscore Pro X2.

 

They all do a fair job with recognizing music from a clean, crisp, not too complicated original.  Sometimes this is all you need.  They all have editors where you can follow the original along with the results of the recognition process.  They all point out errors like the number of beats in a measure.  I find it easier to import into Finale and do any editing there.  Most of the time, the editors have GUI interfaces that are foreign and awkward to use for a seasoned Finale user.  Don't waste time trying to learn a new GUI and edit before importing into Finale.  All but the newer SmartScore require you to export the results of the recognition process into MusicXML and then import that into Finale.  MusicXML is now into version 3.0, but none of the recognition products I know of go beyond 2.0.  SharpEye goes to 1.1, but then again it does not attempt to recognize many of the objects supported by the newer MusicXML.  Photoscore Ultimate supports 2.0.

 

All this is my opinion, and, as they say, your mileage may vary.

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"Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about!"

 

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