File Formats
Music notation can be stored in a variety of formats. We offer the
information below to all interested but especially to those who wish to
import music notation from various sources into the Lime notation editor
that comes with the
GOODFEEL Braille Music Translator
from Dancing Dots.
The ultimate goal is to provide blind musicians with an accessible version
of a music score which they can learn by reviewing with
Lime Aloud
and GOODFEEL.
Numerous options for notation interchange and music OCR are described below.
Please
e-mail us if you have suggestions or corrections.
Image File Format Features
TIFF
BMP (Bitmap)
PDF
Music File Format Features
NIFF
MusicXML
MIDI
- Many free MIDI music files are available on the Internet.
- Can be made and read by most music programs
- Not designed for notation.
Programs and their File Formats
SharpEye
SharpEye only reads single-page TIFF and BMP files.
SharpEye reads these image files and converts them to NIFF (currently best for
Lime),
MusicXML and MIDI.
Lime
Lime is a music notation editor that can import NIFF,
MusicXML and MIDI files.
Lime's NIFF importer is currently better than its
MusicXML and
MIDI importer.
More information about Lime and MusicXML can be found at
Lime's MusicXML Import.
GOODFEEL
GOODFEEL
is a braille music translator that can read Lime and MIDI files.
PhotoScore Ultimate
PhotoScore Ultimate
will convert PDF documents to NIFF and
MusicXML which Lime can
import. Users of JAWS for Windows and other screen readers can independently
use PhotoScore Ultimate to open a PDF and convert it to other formats but its music
editing features are not accessible.
PDFtoMusic Pro
PDFtoMusic Pro will convert PDF documents to
MusicXML files which can be
imported into Lime but results vary. PDFtoMusic has no NIFF export. Lime 9's
NIFF import is generally more accurate than its
MusicXML import so at this
point we recommend PhotoScore Ultimate. Future releases of Lime will have an improved
MusicXML import.
Microsoft Office Document Image Writer
The Microsoft Office Document Image Writer that comes with Microsoft Office will allow you to
print (PDFs or anything) to TIFF files that SharpEye can read.
This may be convenient and cheap if you already have it but you MUST "print" each page
separately to a separate file for SharpEye.
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop Elements (or any Photoshop product) will convert PDF to
TIF using the Save As... function. A lot of new computers sold have
Photoshop Elements as part of the OEM load-in package.
Or, if you don't have Elements, OpenOffice might be able to handle that.
Not sure about accessibility, but it's powerful and free: www.openoffice.org
- Andy
Peernet
You can convert PDFs and almost any image file to
TIFF files (for SharpEye) using
software from peernet.com. Peernet's TIFF Image Printer will allow you to
"print" to an image file from any program and this basically gives every
program the ability to export their documents to TIFF files.
Read our
instructions for using Peernet's TIFF Image Printer.
A free trial version is available but it will introduce errors since it adds
a watermark to the page.
See Peernet.
Don't create multi-page TIFF files for SharpEye to read as it cannot process
such files.
Finale
Finale 2005 and later can export its notation files to MusicXML.
Enhanced exporting to MusicXML is possible with the
Dolet plug-in from Recordare.
Dancing Dots has often successfully imported MusicXML exported from Finale
into Lime and subsequently converted it to the equivalent brailled music
with GOODFEEL.
Sibelius
Sibelius files may be exported to MusicXML using the
Dolet plug-in from Recordare.
Dancing Dots has successfully imported MusicXML files exported from Sibelius
into Lime and subsequently converted it to the equivalent brailled music
with GOODFEEL but generally more work is required than with Finale (see above).
Newer versions of Sibelius allow you to export your music to Graphics (use bitmap TIFF) files.
You may need an image file converter (see Peernet) for older versions of Sibelius.
Contact Information
Dancing Dots
1754 Quarry Lane
Suite DD, Phoenixville, PA 19460
Voice: 610 783-6692, Fax: 610 500-5072
E-mail: e-mail us
Home Page: https://dancingdots.com
Last updated: 11/8/2010