[dalrmi]

Hi, how do you import the songs into MSP ?

Which method is better in terms of usability, perfomances speed, etc. ?

I'd like to know different points of view.

Just a thought....

[Skip]

I don't have any multi-song pdf's so I do one song [making a pdf then importing] at a time, ones I play or played. I don't make multi song pdf's since they would need to be disassembled later anyway. I also don't have that many to import [less than 500 so far].
It seems to me it's a trade off based on how many songs or versions you have or use and time available. Several thousand, generic, some possibly never played, in a few files to import with a bit of work separating them with bookmarks or other procedure when needed/used vs separate, specific, songs with the individual work up front, before importing. I suppose it all boils down to doing the individual song adjustments up front or later as needed.

[Harper]

I'm with Skip.

I add tunes one at a time so I can enter all the metadata for that song immediately when I upload it.  I did this even when I first set up MS even tho I had a couple thousand songs to be uploaded.  I don't know if it took longer in the long run than importing one large PDF and breaking out all the songs later.  It just seemed cleaner to me to do it that way.

[jeffn1]

IMHO it is much better to have each songs as a separate pdf. If they are already separated, it is a no brainer to keep them each as separate "songs" in MS.

The tougher issue arises if if you have an electronic book, like a real book. In that case, it could be a fair amount of work to create separate pdfs.

I think Graeme and others have posted on optimal way to do this.

But, I think if you are willing to put in the time up front to separate each song, you are better off.

[Harper]

I have done the multi-song electronic book many many times.  I use something like Acrobat 8 standard which allows me to easily extract the individual pages and save them to a new filename.  Pretty simple and quick.
A physical book is a different matter. Lots of scanning

[jeffn1]

But, if you are scanning a physical book, it is almost as much work to scan the full book in a single pdf as scanning it in as separate songs. (For example, if you do it as a single pdf a and you mess up one page, might need to start again from the beginning).

So, if you are scanning a physical Real Book, maybe might as well do a separate pdf for each song. (Or maybe only scan in the songs you play and then add others later).

It is true, there is more work naming each song that way, but it is a difficult to deal with a large single book in MS. On the other hand, I know there are some people use a pdf Realbooks in MS. I have read some posts where there were some difficulties (indexing, loading etc.), but, maybe that is the exception, and maybe it does work for most people.

I am curious to hear from more people who input large books as a single pdf.

[GraemeJ]

I have never bought in to the idea of one huge file and bookmarks. My vote is to keep each chart as a separate PDF file. It might require a little more work, but you can scale each one to fit your screen size and any other modifications you might like.

That way, it's easy to annotate, make a second copy (for whatever reason) and share with someone else.

Plus, in the worst-case scenario, you won't lose everything at once.

[itsme]

I use both ways. Songs I regularly play with my bands are one file per song. Usually not scanned but exported from WinWord, OpenOffice, Finale or MuseScore via PDFCreator or ChordPro.
Additionally I have some Fakebooks on the tablet as big PDFs, one PDF per book. For each of these books I create as a starter two songs in MSP, one for the table of contents and one containing the whole book. And I have two Excel xls files also copied to my tablet. One containing the tables of contents of all Fakebooks that are on the tablet, one containing the TOC of all my Fakebooks, including those that are not on the tablet. They are maintained in a database and exported from there when required.
In case I want to play a song from a Fakebook regularly, I add it as a song into my MSP library with the respective page order set. NOT via bookmarks! Those songs from complete Fakebooks can be used in MSP exactly the same way as the "one file per song" songs. Cropping, annotations, meta data, setlists ... everything. Any Fakebook exists only once on the tablet, no copies are created when they are reused multiple times. And I did not find any performance issues so far. Great work, Mike, well done.

[dalrmi]

Hi everybody, I'm glad to see this is a real thing to think in MSP, anyway I see that it's better to use one song per PDF file.

One question: if I add, i.e., the preludes of Chopin (Op. 28) as single PDFs (so 24 files) how will you manage the index (or TOC) page ?

I'm thinking to create a collection about this to put it together, does this make sense ?

[akoster]

I work pretty much the same way as Itsme. I just leave the files the way I get them. I have one file that's 1100 pages with over 850 songs, other songs that are multiple files per song. I see no difference in performance either way.

[jeffn1]

Hi everybody, I'm glad to see this is a real thing to think in MSP, anyway I see that it's better to use one song per PDF file.

One question: if I add, i.e., the preludes of Chopin (Op. 28) as single PDFs (so 24 files) how will you manage the index (or TOC) page ?

I'm thinking to create a collection about this to put it together, does this make sense ?

I think MS itself would act as an index/TOC.  You could create a setlist or collection called Preludes of Chopin Book with 24 songs.  A set list might be preferable if you want to control the order.

But, if you wanted to, you could pull out select pieces from this book for a recital, etc and create a different specific setlist for that recital (or course, the setlist can include a mixture pieces from preludes of Chopin, as well as other compositions).

Anyway, that is how I might approach it.

[akoster]

I work pretty much the same way as Itsme. I just leave the files the way I get them. I have one file that's 1100 pages with over 850 songs, other songs that are multiple files per song. I see no difference in performance either way.

[Vibraphon]

I think I'm using another way:

• I would rename the multipage pdf to Chopin_OP28_.pdf.
  
• Then I use the green mobilesheets companion on the desktop PC with #File #Convert PDF to Images. The PNG-files will automatically be named as Chopin_OP28_001.png,  Chopin_OP28_002.png, and so on.
  
• Copy all PNG-Files to a new folder on the tablet.
  
• Use Batch-Import from MSP, activate "Titel aus Dateinamen schätzen - Appreciate titles from filenames", select new folder, fill in all metadata for the song
  
• Start import
  

The results are:

• All sheets will automatically be imported to one song name "Chopin OP28".
  
• The sheets order in the song is according to the files number = page numbers
  
• You have only one Song in your MSP Index.
  
• You can use hyperlinks to jumb anywhere in the song.
  

To my oppinion this is the best way to prepare multipage songs.

[Harper]

A collection would work. But for myself, I'd simply set it up as an specific album in the meta data when uploading each of the files.  Then you can search on the album and see all the songs together. And best of all, very little extra work!

[cesibley]

One file per song, setlist to combine them in order for performance.