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Importation of NIFF files

Subjects covered:

• What is a NIFF file ?
• Import a NIFF file in Pizzicato

What is a NIFF file ? [Professional]

We have seen that a MIDI file contains all information to reproduce the playing of a score. On the other hand, the MIDI file does not contain any information about the graphism of a score, its page setup, the number of measures per system, the exact layout of the contents of measures,… Two music softwares exchanging MIDI files thus lose all graphic information in the transfer. The problem of creating a more general interchange file format for a score thus arose. The NIFF file format was one of the solutions proposed by the collaboration of several music software publishers.

NIFF is the abbreviation of Notation Interchange File Format. This format theoretically allows the exchange of scores between various music softwares. With version 3, Pizzicato can read the contents of such a file and adapt it to the Pizzicato format so you can use the score with Pizzicato.

In view of the fact that few music notation softwares export their musical scores in NIFF format but that many of them import these files, in practice the exchange of scores between softwares remains quite limited, except for the music scanning softwares which made a standard in exporting their files in NIFF. This file format is thus used mainly for the exchange of scores between music scanning softwares and music notation softwares.

A music scanning software allows to scan an already printed score and to recognize many of the musical symbols with the purpose of being able to use, transpose and modify a score that exists only in paper form. It is the equivalent of an OCR software (Optical Character Recognition) but for music. Such a software exports its results in NIFF format, readable by many music software.

With version 3 of Pizzicato, you can henceforth use this possibility via a scanning software. To prepare the NIFF file import function, we have bought and tested two scanning softwares: SharpEye (from Visiv) and SmartScore, Songbook Edition (from Musitek). Regarding the recognition quality level, we found out that SharpEye is more subtle and generally recognizes more than SmartScore. Regarding the user interface, SharpEye is more rudimentary. But since Pizzicato lets you make the corrections in the recognized score, this aspect is negligible and we thus advise the use of SharpEye in addition to Pizzicato. With regard to SharpEye, there is currently no Mac version, as opposed to SmartScore. The Mac users thus do not have the choice.

You may download an evaluation version of SharpEye on the site of the editor:

http://www.visiv.co.uk/dload.htm

Once installed, this version may be used freely during one month. You can thus carry out your tests and import them in Pizzicato during one month. Download version 2, which is more complete and effective.

With regard to SmartScore, you may download the demonstration versions on the site of the editor:

http://www.musitek.com/downloads.html

The demonstration versions of SmartScore may be used with no time limit, but without saving the results. You can thus test the recognition of your scores but you will not be able to export them in NIFF files and to import them in Pizzicato as long as you don't buy the product.

Import a NIFF file in Pizzicato [Professional]

The NIFF file importation is done through the menu File, Import NIFF file... An open dialog lets you select the file with the ".NIF" extension. Once the file is selected, click on Open... and the following dialog box appears:

With this dialog you may select some automatic actions that make it more easy to adapt the file to the Pizzicato format and avoid some additional treatments of the score:

• An option allows to horizontally align systems on the page, within the margins of the Pizzicato page. It avoids the inequalities due to scanning or to a badly framed score for instance.

• An option allows to adapt the dimensions of the Pizzicato page as well as the value of printing zoom according to the contents of the page. It thus allows to adapt the printing zoom according to the size of the original page, taking into account the possible scale factor introduced by scanning.

• The next option allows to fix the note beams so that Pizzicato does not automatically adjust them in the event of modification or justification of the score. The notes remain grouped in the way they are in the original score.

• The next option does the same regarding the note stem direction: the original direction is maintained. These four options are checked by default.

• The following option allows to import the name displayed in front of the staves. It is unchecked by default because this name is often not found in a NIFF file coming from the two above mentioned softwares or when it is, a generic name is provided and useless to import.

• The last option allows to justify the contents of each measure after the file importation.

It should be stated that currently there seems to be no music software that recognizes the content of a printed score perfectly, with a 100 % result (except of course for simple scores). As soon as the score becomes somewhat more complex, a certain percentage of the symbols are no more recognized and thus are missing in the score imported in Pizzicato. The missing symbols are very random. They can be a note right in the middle of a series of recognized notes, an accidental, a nuance symbol, a clef, a time signature,...anything possible.

The two above mentioned scanning softwares contain tools to correct these missing symbols and to add symbols on a graphic level. The advantage is that they display the original scanned score in parallel, which allows to review the score and compare it to the original to correct the errors.

Once the score has been imported in Pizzicato, you can use all the Pizzicato tools to modify it, transpose it, add accompaniment to it…

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