NEURATRON SUPPORT

Unexpected Behaviour - Reading

Questions and Answers

I own a Mac and have installed PhotoScore 4, when I Read numbers and currency symbols are displayed in the place of notes?

The best solution is to upgrade to v4.1. Alternatively, open PhotoScore's preferences, choose the 'Reading' pane and click on the 'Advanced...' button next to the 'Text' check box. Choose a language other than the one you want to read text in (for example, if you normally have English selected, choose German). Then reselect the language you want to read text in (in our example, English), click Close and then OK. The next time you read a page the text should be read correctly.

Why are large letters drawn in the photoscored output instead of notes, or why can't I see any noteheads on notes?

This problem occurs if the PhotoScore font file is not installed correctly, or it has become corrupted.

Windows; Download the relevant font from the link below, restart your computer and then copy it into the Fonts folder inside Control Panel.

Mac OS; Download the relevant font from the link below, and copy it into your computer's Fonts folder. If this does not fix the problem, try installing the font to your User's Fonts folder.

PhotoScore Ultimate font (Windows/Mac)

PhotoScore Professional/AudioScore font (Windows)

PhotoScore Professional/AudioScore font (Mac)

PhotoScore displays numbers where my text should be.

If you are using a Mac, please delete the current PhotoScore preferences file from your computer (a file called com.neuratron.photoscore in the Library folder) and next time you run PhotoScore text should be recognised correctly.

PhotoScore reads incredibly slowly and my hard disk is very active during reading. Why is this?

This problem is likely to occur when using PhotoScore for Windows® and usually means that there is not very much free memory available. It is recommended that your computer has at least 128MB of RAM for the best performance, and 192MB if Windows 2000/XP® is being used. If this problem occurs, you could try ensuring that as few other programs as possible are running on your machine, to help free up memory.

Why do I get poor results from a clear piece of music?

The following may help to improve the accuracy:

1) Line the page up in the scanner as straight as possible.

2) Check that Make scans level is selected in the Scanning tab of the PhotoScore preferences.

3) When scanning from books, try to keep the page being scanned as flat as possible. This will help prevent dark shadows (from where the page curves) interfering with music on the page, which can cause recognition problems.

4) If the scanned score contains little or no appoggiatura or cue notes (small noteheads), try switching Appoggiatura and cue notes off in the Reading tab of the PhotoScore preferences.

5) If you have exhausted all other options, try switching Advanced rhythm and tuplet correction off in the Reading tab of the PhotoScore preferences. NOTE: This feature generally significantly improves accuracy and is required for tuplet recognition. However, it occasionally causes omission of rests, dots and flags.

If using the TWAIN scanning interface (or PhotoScore 1, 2, or 3):

6) In general, ensure you are scanning in 256 shades of gray - also called 'b/w photo', 'grayscale' or '8-bit gray'. However, with some scanners you may achieve better results by scanning in 2 colors - also called 'b/w drawing', or '1-bit gray' - and manually adjusting the brightness setting so that there are no broken lines or smudged objects.

7) If you are scanning in grayscale, but find that the image is ending up too light (e.g. lines are broken) or too dark (e.g. objects are merging together), try scanning in black & white (also called 'b/w drawing', '2 colors', or '1-bit') and adjusting the brightness of the image.

8) Make sure you are scanning at an appropriate resolution (between 200 and 400dpi) - see right for details of resolutions for different staff sizes. Scanning at resolutions both too low and too high can dramatically affect results.

9) Ensure that the Scaling feature is not turned on (if it exists), or is set to 100%. Otherwise the image could be scanned into PhotoScore at an inappropriate resolution.