Improve PDF import system

PDF Import is highly experimental.
SharpEye is said to be pretty good at converting PDFs into MusicXML, which MuseScore then can import easily. It is not for free though.

One particular thing that bothers me about the PDF import system is that the style settings it applies are nothing at all like MuseScore's normal ones.

Can you be more specific? Which style setitng in particular is not the default? You didn't by chance override the default style for either new or imported scores in Edit / Preferences, did you?

No, I'm talking about things like text in Lucida Grande instead of FreeSerif, and the staff space set to 2.023mm instead of 1.764.

Are these settings in the MusicXML file that Audiveris is creating, perhaps? Can you post it? Normally, default style settings *should* be applied when importing MusicXML files, although there are also preference settings to control some aspects of this.

How should I know? https://musescore.com/import downloads directly as MSCZ files. You'll see the same thing if you try it.

Audiveris and MuseScore tries to get the spatium from the PDF, that's why you get 2.023mm. I'm not sure for Lucida but I will take a look why it happens. My first guess is that Audiveris outputs this in MusicXML. Btw, this is not related to the top post and is better suited for another post.

Regarding the top post, the version of Java is irrelevant. The latest version of Audiveris is indeed from 2013 but a lot of old tools are working great... The PDF import feature works better if you use a clean scan, in 300DPI.

It's hard to say this is unrelated, since the OP wasn't very specific, but my apologies. Indeed, I see that the staff space usually more or less approximates the distance in the PDF.

I might add that it also tends to make the initial vertical frame unusually tall, and sets the "Last system fill threshold" in in the General Style to 30%.

30% *is* the default for that option when creating new scores from scratch. Certain templates might override this, but the default is 30%.

My bad, sorry.

The OP was talking about Java and Audiveris, but they have nothing to do with MuseScore. Since the discussion appears to have moved on to the Import PDF feature on MuseScore.com I thought I would add that a relatively easy improvement would be to remove *all* style, formatting and layout information from the score so that we just get the notes and text in MuseScore's default formatting. At present the OMR engine tries to work out things like font and font-size, and adds formatting like system-breaks etc, but this actually makes the job of tidying it up harder. I think most users use PDF import in an attempt to save entering notes manually and are not interested in making the file look *exactly* like the original scan. (In fact most users probably do it just to listen to the file and aren't interested in what it looks like at all!)

I just found MuseScore. I have a song for my marching band that is out of print and I can't find an audio recording of this arrangement anywhere. I saw this could import PDF's so I was hoping I could import each part then play all of them recording the song for others to use with practicing.

When I go to the import web page I am asked to upload my pdf and that I'll get an email when it has finished processing letting me if it was good or bad. I like that I'll get one either way, but how long does it take? It's been 6 hours and I still don't have an email. I tried uploading a pdf again and I got the same message, it uploaded fine and now I have to wait.

I honestly don't mind waiting, but it would be nice to know how long it will take. Hours? Days? Weeks? Never?

Hi Richard, welcome to MuseScore!

I've never got an email from the PDF import facility when I have used it, even though it says it will email. (It's an experimental feature so that's probably why it was overlooked.) In any case, the conversion should only take a few minutes (even if it fails) so if you log back in to MuseScore.com and go to PDF import you should see your file there, or a message saying that the import was unsuccessful. You should see a list of files you uploaded and next to each one it will either say "Processing" (not done yet), "Unsuccessful" (failed) or else it worked and there will be a link to download the MSCZ file.

P.S. the Issue Tracker (where we are now) is only really for reporting bugs. If you have any more questions then it's best to ask questions in the forum.

Thanks for the info about this section of the website, I thought it was the forum.

I logged back in to MuseScore.com, went to the PDF Converter section and there's nothing there, just the info about the service and a button to upload a pdf. I'm on Windows 8.1 using FireFox. Maybe there's a browser issue?

I'll jump to the forums for my questions from now. Thanks!