Music OCR Review

Music OCR Review

I’m not a reviewer, I’m an engineer.  However, one of my ‘careers’ is a composer/artist.  As such, I want to make sure that the software I use is actually good.  Everybody defines good in a different way, but if I’m going to use some software, I don’t want to have to relearn it each time I open it up.

I’m not a musician, but I am a composer/arranger.  It takes me a long time to play a piece (not a lot of practice), so when I am tackling a project, I’m looking to start by inputting a midi file.  There are occasions where I cannot start with my own composition or a web-found midi file, but I do have the sheet music.  The next step is to look for a Music-scanning program.  There are a few around, but, in general, not a lot of reviews.  If you read the websites, every program is ‘award-winning’ and “has the best recognition”.  Which, of course, is marketing. 

I use Vuescan because I have a Canon 4200F scanner.  It’s over 20 years old and still works like a charm.  I tried a newer Canon scanner and immediately sent it back.  I do not like software that tells me what resolution I have to scan with.  Plus the USB was poorly implemented and required me to go through most of my USB ports before I found one where it would not quit halfway through the scan.  Then the scan had artifacts.

Since I’m beginning to do my Christmas album (starting again), I have a Christmas Fakebook with some 100-odd songs.  These are simple one instrument staffs (meant for singing).  These make a good start for arranging because you don’t get stuck with someone else’s idea of an arrangement.  I’m starting with Gesu Bambino.  It has one or two oddities that could catch an OCR off-guard.  There is one section of grace notes and the repeat begins after the first note.

At the end of this article, I will present a matrix with a 0-10 scale (10 best) for those Music OCR areas that are important to me.  Just to note, if I couldn’t test a function due to demo restrictions, that rates an automatic zero.

The test system:  I7-4770K, 3.5GHz (stock), Asus Maximus VII Hero Motherboard, Roland A-49 Midi controller, ALVA Nanoface Audio Interface, GeForce 750 Video card with 3 monitors, Canon Canoscan 4200f running with Vuescan.

General Observations

I believe that choirmasters, conductors and music teachers are used to putting up with all kinds of crap from software.  And, pretty much, that’s what they get.  The mildest thing I can say about all these Music OCR programs is that the interface is non-intuitive.  I know from my own day job that when you work on something day after day, it always seems like the best way to do things.  You have to have the ability to approach your interface from a naïve point of view.  Most users of these programs will use them for a week or two every quarter.  In that amount of time, it becomes a learning experience every time to get back to it.  All these programs have user interfaces that range from bad to horrible.  Not one has taken the steps to name things intuitively (as a whole, there are individual commands in each one that make sense) or make the workflow intuitive.  They all include reams of pages of a user quick-start.  My take is that if your ‘quick-start’ is 20 pages, you’re doing something wrong.

Sharpeye

Sharpeye installed easily and quickly.  I cringed when I saw the install program because it looks like Windows for Workgroups 3.1.  The installer is not newer than XP.  Like most of these programs, when started, you are presented with an interface that tells you nothing about the workflow.  Here the user interface was also XP vintage.  Then the fun began.  I clicked the button to scan and Vuescan opened up. 

When Vuescan opened up, I proceeded to try and scan an image.  It didn’t seem to work right.  Sharpeye just gave me rotating circles on both windows.  As some point I did manage to get an image into it, but it was screwed up.  The right hand 2 inches of the score were transposed to the left side.

The interface was completely non-intuitive.  I decided that I would have to scan an image and open it into Sharpeye to see how the engine worked.  Vuescan, opened on its own, refused to save an image.  Apparently Sharpeye had done a good job of sabotaging it, so I had to reboot.  Vuescan worked perfectly as long as Sharpeye was not open.

I scanned a tif image and opened it into Sharpeye.  At least Sharpeye has a button labeled ‘Read’.  As an image, I was using a page out of a Christmas fake book, the song being ‘Gesu Bambino’.  I would have to rate the read as excellent and I was also able to export a midi file that played perfectly.

One thing to note is that Sharpeye did properly see my midi input and output devices.

Conclusion:  User and Scanner interfaces suck.  Music OCR is excellent.

Photoscore

Here again we have an XP vintage installer.  Visually the interface is more modern, but still cryptic.  It is worlds away from intuitive.  There is a ‘Scan Pages’ button, so I clicked on that.  Amazingly, it began to access my scanner and scanned a page.  Then it scanned the page again.  Then it scanned the page again.  I thought it would stop, but not a chance.  I escaped out of the scanning and immediately was presented with a pop-up that declared that Photoscore was now unstable and quickly save my work.  I decided to see how unstable and tried to get the program to read any of the 6 times it scanned the same page.  Each page presented an error ranging from ‘There’s nothing there’ to ‘Liszt Engine failed’.  I restarted Photoscore and, as soon as I clicked on one of the scanned images, I got the Unstable error again. 

Again, having to back-pedal, I restarted Photoscore and imported the tif I had used with Sharpeye.  It read the image in and I was presented with what looked like a photocopy of the score.  Not having a clue as to what to do next, I opened the Play drop-down and nothing happened.  I tried this a couple of times, then went in search for the preferences.  First, there is no tab for Midi.  You have to go to the Advanced Tab (since when is Midi ‘advanced’?) and there I found out that Photoscore had detected my controller as an output device.  Once changed to the Microsoft Synth, I got music.  The OCR was perfect.  Then I searched in vain for the output of a midi file.  The closest I found was ‘Save As’ but I couldn’t tell what I could save as, because I got the ‘limited functionality’ pop-up.

Conclusion:  Scanner interface is crap.  User interface is crap.  Music OCR is excellent.

The only note on this one is that while I know the reason for the limited functionality, I refuse to buy a pig-in-a-poke.  So if I can’t test the functionality I need, then I cannot recommend this software.

I further can’t recommend this software as it is produced by a German software company.  Every German software company I have encountered has the same attitude.  Our software is perfect and if you have a problem, it’s your problem.  So you can expect to be treated like you’re a dumbass and not worth their time.  So far none of them have proved me wrong.

Capella Scan & Play

Another German software company and another non-recommendation.  They don’t really have a demo version except that you can install the software and run it without a key.  The demo limits on this program are more draconian.  It will only play the first couple of notes from each line, so you have no idea whether the OCR worked or not.  Again, saving is disabled, so you have no idea how good they convert to midi.  On the plus side, it does work with Vuescan.

Conclusion:  Scanner interface is Good.  User interface is mediocre.  Music OCR is looks good visually, only half credit since you can’t hear it.

Not Recommended.

Smartscore X2

My first experience ever with Music OCR was with an earlier version of Smartscore.  At that time, the conversion (yes, we are converting from sheet music to digital format, that’s the proper word, not ‘Read’ or ‘Recognition’), was bad.  It missed several very clear notes.  That was done from a PDF.  I did not check the scanning feature.

Smartscore does the preliminary/final scan dance.  At least with Vuescan, it doesn’t always work.  I scanned an image and got the rotating circle for a long time.  To get an image, you have to wait a certain amount of time, then cancel.  Then your image appears.  You hope.  After the image is acquired, you hit the ‘Recog’ button—intuitive, isn’t it (it isn’t) and you are presented with a split screen with the scan above and the ‘Recog’ below.  One thing I noticed is that Smartscore is very random with its errors.  You can rescan the same image several times and each time it gives you different errors.  Well, let me put it this way, in the ‘Recog’ window, some of the measures will be pink, which I’m assuming at this point is a potential error.  If you don’t like where the pink is, just scan again and it will change.  You don’t even have to readjust the paper in the scanner!

Playback in Smartscore is uneven.  At times it seems that it revaluates the notes as something longer.  Although I do have to praise them that at least I got to hear the whole page.

Here again, saving is locked out, so I did not get a chance to find out how well the generated midi works outside of Smartscore.  This earns Smartscore an instant ‘Not Recommended’.

Audiveris

The only thing this program has going for it, is that it is freeware.  The conversion is pretty good, although at this point I can’t tell as it has ceased to work.  Audiveris requires Java to run, so if you are concerned about security, stay away.  Another negative is that Audiveris only exports MusicXML files.  Since Sonar Platinum cannot import them, it’s useless to me.  And I don’t feel like tacking on another conversion program just to get to where I want.  As far as I know, MusicXML is a very niche format only used by Music OCR programs.  And don’t tell me it’s ‘universal’---it’s not.  Only a handful of programs use it and while the idea is good, since it includes dynamics as well as notes, if you can play with a DAW, you’re not universal.

OpenOMR

This is a GNU license program and was written back in 2006 for a dissertation.  It requires Java and the start is a 200 character command line entry, so I just didn’t bother.

Gamera

You may see this touted as a Music OCR.  It isn’t.  It’s a toolkit for removing staff lines.

Vivaldi Scan

This software is touted as ‘easy to use’.  We’ll see.  The install did not go well, it halted telling me that an uninstall or an install had not been completed.  If that is the case, then Smartscore did not remove itself properly.

Reboot.

Same error on install.  I noted that the version of Vivaldi Scan was 2003a, so the installer is way out of date.  Chalk up a big fat zero for this one.

Tried an alternate download site, same version.  The developer’s website leads to a forbidden page.  This one is no longer maintained.

Midi Connections Scan

Again a demo version.  Note that on the install, they forgot to translate the German into English.  See what I mean about German software companies.  It did install and then refused to work.  It would not work with Vuescan.  It complained about needing 400 to 600 dpi scans in B&W, but then defaults to 255 colors.  Although it says that it needs a tif file, it refused to load a tif with the ‘detailed’ error of ‘Not Loaded!’.  I refuse to play these types of games.  Avoid this one.

Just for completeness, the user interface is Windows 3.1 and while I don’t care if the program happens to work, here it just adds aggravation.

PDFtoMusic Pro

Did not install this one as it does not work on scans.  It will extract music information from a music PDF.  While I can scan to PDF, it’s still an image and will not work with this program.

Box Score:

Program	Install	User Intf	Workflow	Scanner	Vuescan	OCR	Playback	Midi Output	Notes
Sharpeye	8	7	4	0	0	8	9	9	Unable to scan
Photoscore	9	5	4	0	5	9	9	0	Unstable, unable to scan
Capella Scan & Play	9	5	6	5	8	5	0	0	Scans but unable to evaluate due to demo limits
Smartscore X2	9	7	5	3	5	9	5	0	Uneven playback
Audiveris	8	5	3	5	5	7	5	0	Only MusicXML output, scanning problems
Vivaldi Scan	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	Did not install
Midi Connections Scan	9	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	Refused to work at all.

So the bottom line is that I can’t recommend anything.  Every program has problems.  Vivaldi Scan will not work unless you roll back to Windows 2000.  Photoscore is right out due to stability problems.  Midi Connections Scan is right out as well.  Audiveris may work for you, but with no midi out, it’s useless to me.  If I could test the midi output on Capella & Smartscore, they may work for me.

As it is, it looks like my best best is Sharpeye, but I would have to scan first then import it into the program.  Less than ideal, but workable.

That said, I do invite any of these developers to change my mind.  I’m willing to admit I’m wrong when I’m wrong.  But no, I won’t buy a new scanner just to work with your multi-hundred dollar program.  If you care to ask, even the updated Canon drivers for the 4200 no longer work.  Something changed in Win7 that broke the driver.

Remember that I didn’t do anything but try your demo programs on my system.  The system I would use them on.  I’m not a reviewer, I’m not a software hacker.  I’m just someone who needs a damn program that works.  Prove it to me!

How to annoy your customers -- Native Instruments version

There seems to be a feeling, especially these days, among companies, that, if they have a good product that many people want, they can treat their customers as badly as they want.  In the mid-80’s, I went looking to buy a new car.  At that time, Honda was making a name as a reliable car and many people wanted one.  This was also the time where the import of cars was being restricted in favor of domestic cars.  In short, the American car was not being improved, you just almost had to buy one or wait a long time.  It was in this atmosphere that I walked into a Honda dealer to notice that there was a new line item on the sticker.  It was labeled ‘EDP’ and was a range from $500 to $3000.  It took a while to get the salesman to admit it, but ‘EDP’ stood for Extra Dealer Profit.  Simply, because everybody wanted one, they were going to get as much money as they could.

This brings us to Native Instruments.  They are a German company that creates quality software for music production.  Their emphasis is on sampling, and, despite an obsession with a myriad versions of the piano sound, do put out some interesting stuff.  My favorite has always been Reaktor and I’m growing to enjoy Kinetic Metal.

Native Instruments sells a package of all their software sound constructions called Komplete or Komplete Ultimate.  Never mind how something can be ‘komplete’ without including everything.  Last year I had bought Komplete Ultimate 9 and it was an arduous 8 hour install time.  There’s a lot of stuff there and there were a lot of updates.

So 2015 rolls around and I get a good offer for an update to Komplete Ultimate 10.  Normally I don’t readily do that, but the deal was that good.  The trouble started when I began to install it.

Now, in the time I have been using Native Instrument products, I have noticed that the interfaces seem to be designed to be purposely non-intuitive.  Options are not where you think they should be, named differently or even absent.  I know there will be those who disagree with me.  But moving from other products where I’ve had no problem working with them without training, you definitely need to have the manual ready when dealing with Native Instruments.  And sometimes that doesn’t even help.

Three weeks ago, I decided to install the upgrade and almost immediately things began to go wrong.  The installer (this is for PC, not Mac) resembled a Win 3.1 installer.  Yeah, really.  Well, I set everything to install onto C: when the installer refused due to insufficient space.  Now remember, this is an upgrade, it should have been able to detect that what I had installed already.  Nope, it didn’t.  So, since I had the option, I changed the destination to E: and let it go.  Now the fun begins.  First, it throws an error on one of the applications. It can’t find it and doesn’t allow me to tell it where it is.  All I get is an ‘OK’ button.  I hit ‘OK’ and after a couple of minutes, it can’t find another application.  Same scenario, no options other than ‘OK’.  At this point I figured that this isn’t going to work and that I’ll cancel the installation.  No dice there either, the ‘Cancel’ button is greyed out.  So now I have to wait four hours until the install finishes to see what the damages are.

Note that to this point I haven’t done anything other than use the installer’s options.

Four hours go by and I survey what happened.  Despite the errors, all the applications work, but there is another problem.  Now I have the same content (instrument samples, etc) on both C: and E:.  This should be simple, I’ll just go to add/remove programs and uninstall the old stuff.

Ha-ha, not in your life.  The installer did me a big favor by over-writing the old uninstall files, so now all I have are the uninstalls for the new stuff.

This is what happens when a world-class software house uses a bargain basement installer.  Or could it be that they didn’t configure it correctly?

I’m not proud, so I decide to ask their support for help.  Note that I have contacted Native Instruments support in the past, but support has always been glacially slow or, a couple times, non-existent.  Yes, a couple of times I have contacted Native Instruments support and NEVER got an answer.

So I send an email, list what happened in detail, preface it with a plea to please read the whole email and clearly express my questions at the end.  I asked them how I can uninstall the duplicate content and how can I find where two applications didn’t get updated (the errors).  And, yes, I did make a big mistake.  I actually told them where their installer needed to be improved.

My experience is that you never, ever, tell a German software (or hardware) developer that there might be something wrong.  Because it doesn’t matter what happened—YOU are wrong.

Email sent, I sat down and waited.  Of course, I got the auto-reply that said it may take a couple of days to get back to me, depending on my request.  Basically it meant, don’t expect us to reply at all.

Eight days later, with no reply, I send another email stating that I’ve gone over a week without a reply.

That did the trick, I got a reply.  Of course it was the standard reply with links on how to update my operating system, a link to a Microsoft Fix-it to recover missing uninstall files and a link to Native Instruments on how to install content on an external drive.

As you notice, they are immediately calling me an idiot and essentially telling me to go away.  Nor was there any indication that they realized that they hadn’t answered me for a week.  You’ll also notice that they barely got anywhere near my questions.  I tried the Fix-it, it didn’t work and looked over the content installation, which did not help but almost exactly matched what I did.

I told them the results and asked them where to start.

I get a quick reply back on what to do if I have trouble re-installing.

Huh?

Nothing has been mentioned so far as to uninstalling anything.  Unless I get some detailed instructions, I’m not uninstalling anything because the apps installed over the old stuff, meaning, that if I uninstall, I’ll still have content I can’t uninstall and all my apps will be gone.

That’s where I am.  I replied about not knowing what to do at this point.  Since I sent it on a Thursday, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that I didn’t get any answer on Friday.  We’ll see on Monday.

So there you have it.  A software installer that screws up my system, blame placed on the customer and little to no help.  That’s quality customer service with a capital ‘K’.

How to Piss Off Your Customers: Farmers Insurance Version

Farmers Insurance certainly knows who to hire to make commercials.  After that, they fall flat on their face and also try the same tired schemes to trick people into getting their insurance.

This time of year, I have to pay my yearly to the insurance company for home and car.  This particular year, and, note that we haven’t had a claim in about 5 years, our yearly went up by about $350.00.  That’s a pretty big rise to swallow, especially when you’ve done nothing to warrant it.  I was told that all insurance companies are raising their rates due to the losses they’ve had to pay over the past year.

Excuse me?  Aren’t insurance companies supposed to pay out on claims?  Isn’t there money set aside just in case there are claims to be paid?  Insurance was the first form of legalized gambling.  Every year, the insurance company bets that you won’t have a claim.  If you do, then, sorry the insurance company made a bad bet.  So next year, it seems perfectly reasonable to raise your rate, because you are a more risky proposition.  But what about someone else?  Is it reasonable that your rates get raised because the guy down the street ran a red light and caused a 15 car accident?  Doesn’t make sense, does it?  But this is exactly what insurance companies do.  They don’t look at your track record, they look at the whole area.  So, if you live in an area where there’s been a lot of accidents, you’re screwed.

First, let’s dispose of that garbage phrase that gets trotted out all the time:  Insurance does not protect you.  Your house burns down whether you have insurance or not.  That guy rear-ends you whether you have insurance or not.  Insurance is not protection.  Your house, car, bodily parts still get damaged.  Insurance is just there to pay you to ease the pain of financial recovery.  They are betting on you not getting hurt.  Put your insurance policy between you and the fire and all that happens is that the paper gets burned up first, before you.

If you really think about it, Insurance is just a legalized scam.  They suck large amounts of money out of you on a monthly/quarterly/yearly basis.  In return you get a piece of paper that tells you that they might pay you some money if something happens.  Nope, sorry, you are not protected in case something happens.  They just pay you money.  If you’re lucky, you can recover some semblance of what your life used to be like.

Anyways, since my insurance bill went up, it’s time to look around to see if anything is better.  Now there is one thing that people forget:  Commercials are expensive and have to be paid for.  Where do you think the money comes from to make the commercials?  Your premiums.  If a company runs a lot of commercials, what do you think happens to your premium?  Yes, it goes up.

That notwithstanding, I decide to check three major insurance companies:  State Farm, Allstate and Farmers.  I told the local independent agency, through which I have been getting insurance, that I consider it an exercise in futility.  I didn’t realize how bad until I tried the Farmers website.

First, kudos to State Farm and Allstate.  They both made it easy to find an agent, so that I could get a quote on both home and auto.  I already knew that I would not be able to do that through the website.  The management of insurance companies is too stupid to realize that people would want to tag the two together because they offer a discount.  On the websites, you can choose either auto or home, not both.  Nor do they explain how to get the tag-team discount.  So I went directly to the local agent.  And, even better, the Allstate agent himself took my information, he didn’t shunt me over to a clerk.

Then we come to Farmers.  

Of course, on the website, they do just like everybody else, you can choose either home or auto and no discount explanation.  Then I find out that they ‘offer’ auto insurance through 21th Century.  Red lights went off ‘NO DISCOUNT APPROACHING!’  Still, I persevere.  I put in my zip code and try to find an agent.  Bingo!  I get the map of California (only on the other side of the country) and a big green button telling me to find our insurance information here.  I try a couple of more times from different webpages, with the same result, then finally click the green button.  Bang!  Right back to the start page.  How brilliant!

So I bite the bullet and put in my info for auto insurance, sure that something will tell me how to do the right maneuvers.  Wrong.  I get to the end, and, despite the fact that I had already inputted the amount that I’m paying now, just for auto, I get a quote for $200 more than that.  This is really, really stupid.  But wait, they didn’t quote yearly, they quote 6 months.  Unlike who they think they are getting, I can multiply by two.  The fact that they quoted 6 months, showing a lower price, means they were trying to trick me into thinking it was lower.  It’s similar to a bait and switch routine, they’re hoping the victim doesn’t notice that the yearly is greater.

I leave the page in disgust, but it ain’t over yet.  I immediately get a call from a 21^st Century secretary who tells me to hang on and she’ll put me through to an agent!  Doesn’t that make me feel like shit, the freaking agent can’t even call me himself.  I’m primed now and when the agent comes on, I let him have it.

“Hi, ____, I heard you’re looking for a great rate on auto insurance,” he begins.

“Well, I’m not getting one here, the rate you quoted is $200 more than I’m paying now…”  I begin.  I unroll all my displeasure with the website (and this call) onto him.  I expect him at some point to say something like, ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that, let’s look at the details to see where we can save more money.”  That would have been adequate.  This guy is not adequate.  He makes meaningless noises that indicate that he was expecting to just going to take an address to send a bill.  I hang up on him.

As you notice, they’re using all the marginally legal tactics to get someone to sign up quick.  First there’s the cost misdirection, then the attempt at personal pressure.

Farmers!  Your website sucks!  And your alliance with 21^st Century sucks.  Leave the lame comedy in the commercials, huh?