capella-scan

Dispatch re-typing of sheet music to a nuisance of the past

Let capella-scan transform your sheet music quickly into a score that is ready for editing and printing!

What sounds like magic has become reality

capella-scan has put an end to the laborious task of typing out notes! At last, there is now a way of transposing printed notes and creating part extraction from a printed score without having to type out sheet music note-for-note.

How it works

capella-scan activates your scanner directly.

• You can use all scanners with Twain interface.
• The note and text recognition function is activated at a click. capella-scan has been developed to recognize notes including bar lines, accidentals, clefs etc. and to transform sheet music into capella or MusicXML files. The entire process takes only a few seconds.
• Text is recognized and handed over correctly to your notation program. Small adjustments can be done directly in capella-scan.

By opening the scanned file in capella notation software (available separately), you can print the file to your specifications. You will find that all the notation program's score editing functions are available for editing your new file. You can, of course, also produce part extraction or change the notes yourself - there are no editing restrictions whatsoever.

What can capella-scan do?

No problem for capella-scan!

• Lines at variable heights?
  capella-scan is also capable of recognizing lines at varying heights in the score.
• Your sheet music contains text?
  capella-scan distinguishes between text objects (titles, articulation symbols, lyrics) and chord or voice names. In capella, you will find everything in its correct place! This saves a lot of your time.
• Was the scan somewhat dirty?
  No reason to worry. capella-scan is capable of tolerating slightly slanted lines.
• Would you like to see the results of the recognition process right away - preferably superimposed onto the original itself?
  capella-scan plots the objects (notes etc.) that it has recognized directly into the scanned notes - and in color! So there's no need to spend extra time comparing and contrasting between two windows as is often the case for other note scanning programs.
• Would you like to avoid using the indirect route via the MusicXML format?
  capella-scan has been optimized for capella: Many of the score layout's properties such as vertical intervals, accolade brackets, the size of note lines etc. are passed on to capella by capella-scan. This means that you will not have to edit the layout afterwards.
• Would you like to use capella-scan in conjunction with your existing music program?
  Thanks to its MusicXML and MIDI export function, capella-scan provides you with contact to the outside world. Indeed, you can use capella-scan in conjunction with other software products.

Unique to capella-scan

Comfortable voice management
Music recognition programs have to work very hard when several voices appear in a single line. In actual fact, this is the point where many of the other programs on the market reach their limitations. Yet capella scan has been developed to accomplish its task even when faced with these difficult situations. Drawing on its excellent voice management system, capella-scan analyses and establishes the right connections and assigns all notes to their correct vertical and horizontal positions.

Text recognition in 100 languages
capella-scan uses the FineReader engine from ABBYY to recognize text. To this end, then, you will automatically benefit from the world's best OCR technology recognizing even gothic print. A large number of reviews have confirmed that this is the best text recognition program there is. capella-scan comes with over 100 dictionaries, which can be installed if and when you need them. capella-scan's text recognition system uses these dictionaries to check the recognized text for its plausibility.

Quarter rest or smudge?

capella-scan can recognize pitch and pitch length, rests, accidentals, keys, key signature and time signature. It also recognizes brackets and curly braces, distances between staves, slurs, ties, repeat boxes, articulation signs, staff size, cue notes and much more. Note recognition is a very demanding process that requires software to accomplish something that in principle is only possible with human experience. When is an undefined mark on the music sheet: a note, a quarter rest, or simply a smudge?

Of course you know that text recognition programs do not always work completely error-free. This applies for note recognition programs as well. Our experience shows that with many scores we achieve a 100% recognition. With more complex ones, still more than 97% are recognized. However, there are scores such as handwritten ones which will produce unsatisfactory results.

If the software does diagnose a quarter rest for a smudge, you can edit it out using the same capella-scan program. It comes equipped with intelligent tools for this very purpose. The whole process is very fast and takes only a few minutes for medium-sized scores, sometimes only seconds! Of course, you can always make changes later after exporting the file to capella (or Finale, Sibelius, Encore etc.).

All in all, you will find using this powerful note-recognition software extremely useful. Depending on how fast you work, typing out sheet music manually takes between 20 and 100 times longer than using capella-scan!

Feature List

Number of recognized staves per system: unlimited.
Uses mathematical morphology technology for lightning-fast and precise recognition of notes, accidentals, keys, bar lines, slurs, ties, repeat boxes, crescendo signs, dynamics, articulation signs, etc.
Directly scans your scores.
Graphic import: BMP, TIFF, PNG, GIF.
PDF and PostScript import: Recognize multi-page PDF scores! (GhostScript required)
Supports digital camera images: Just take a snapshot of your score and have capella-scan turn it into a MusicXML or capella file.
Recognizes small and large notes (cue notes, grace notes, normal notes), as well as small and large staves (piano score).
Plots recognized notes directly onto the sheet music.
Recognizes text, including Gothic print: Lyrics, title, headers, footers, musical symbols (f, p), crescendo, etc.
Over 100 dictionaries from Azerbaijanian to Zulu.
Recognizes information specially for capella's score layout.
Integrated player: plays back the recognition status - meaning you hear immediately when something is not as is should be.
Offers intelligent and intuitive help for the error correction process.
Manages poor score quality ("holey" staves).
Excellent voice management system even for very complex sheet music.
MusicXML export: Notation editors like Finale, Sibelius and others can read this international standard file format almost perfectly, including the complete score layout
MIDI export: capella-scan can be used in conjunction with all MIDI-compatible music programs.
Infinitely variable zoom function for lightning-fast navigation.
Ability to attach scanned sheets to existing capella score: creating larger scores.
Scans oversize scores and automatically connects page sections, even with disconnected systems.
Handles two column scores (song book pages).
Enables clear line allocation; also from systems scored differently.
Works with all common scanners (TWAIN 1 and 2) and reads notes in these formats: bmp, gif, jpg, png, tif, wmf
PDF manual (about 100 pages) included.