Does anyone have any recommendations for a good scanner? I don't need the absolute top of the line, but I don't mind spending about $250 or so for a really good one.
What features should I look for? I'd like to be able to
use Finale to scan music in for Smartmusic playback, and also
just to have a good scanner that'd scan photos well.
I am using Windows XP, SP2...
Thanks!
"scan music in for Smartmusic playback" isn't as easy as it sounds.
First you have you scan the music in, which means that the music scanning software will make its best guess about the dots and lines and stuff, and put that into an intermediary file which Finale will import and then make its best guess before turning it into notation on your monitor.
Then you have to go through and check each note/rest/accidental/expression/whatever out and make certain it is correct.
Then you have to assign all the voices you want on each staff, and THEN save as a SmartMusic file for playing with the SmartMusic program.
Music scanning is still in its infancy, with accuracy rates on perfect originals somewhere around 85%, and for less than perfect originals (say old dog-eared music which was originally hand-engraved) it can be lower than 50%.
So buy the scanner because you want a scanner, not specifically for Finale use.
But don't expect to go Scan, Import, Save-as-SmartMusic, open-Smartmusic-and-play in just a few clicks.
-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
