[dallaskruse]

I'm not sure how many people use PDF charts vs ChordPro charts.

All my charts are made in Finale and currently there's no way to have MSP populate Tempo and/or Key metadata.

In a perfect world, Finale could add metadata tags such as "TEMPO" and "KEY SIGNATURE" and MSP could grab that metadata and add it to the database file so that when I import new charts, I don't have to go in and manually do this.

Currently, Finale cannot automatically add a metadata other than author and copyright info. I can add metadata in Acrobat but it's moot as MSP doesn't grab incoming metadata from PDF's.

Would anyone else find this useful?

[BRX]

I'm waiting for Mike to finish his two big updates (sync and annotation). Then I'll start to pester him again for ABC support.

The interesting thing for Finale, Sibelius, MuseScore and whatever users is, that this would include MusicXML support so one can export
sheets to MusicXML from the notation program and have this natively displayed in MSP (with transposing and imported metadata like key, signature, creators).

OK, the display won't be 1:1 compared to the original PDF or notation file, but what I'm seeing exported as MusicXML and imported into ABC programs is pretty good and can 
easily be edited.

(Yes, I've become a big ABC fan in the past months and kind of started pestering now anyway. Will you join me? :-) )

[dallaskruse]

This is interesting. I'm wondering what the best way to implement Tempo and Key into MSP from programs like Finale, Sibelius, etc

[BRX]

The beauty of ABC is that it is a ASCII syntax (like chordpro). You can write your charts without any additional software simply with an text editor.

And there are some great (free) programs to turn this ASCII charts into PDF sheets or PS or SVG with all kinds of notation "bells".

If you can put key, tempo and so on into Finale, Sibelius and export it to MusicXML (I think all those notation programs can) it would show up in the converted ABC file
in the header simply as

%abc-2.1

X:1
T:Untitled1
C:Unknown composer
M:4/4
L:1/4
K:C

That's the minimum header 
T=Title
C=Composer
M=Meter
Ltandard length of a not
K:key

so it should be no problem to read this metadata for the MSP database.

Just to peak your interest.

[dallaskruse]

The beauty of ABC is that it is a ASCII syntax (like chordpro). You can write your charts without any additional software simply with an text editor.

And there are some great (free) programs to turn this ASCII charts into PDF sheets or PS or SVG with all kinds of notation "bells".

If you can put key, tempo and so on into Finale, Sibelius and export it to MusicXML (I think all those notation programs can) it would show up in the converted ABC file
in the header simply as

%abc-2.1

X:1
T:Untitled1
C:Unknown composer
M:4/4
L:1/4
K:C

That's the minimum header 
T=Title
C=Composer
M=Meter
Ltandard length of a not
K:key

so it should be no problem to read this metadata for the MSP database.

Just to peak your interest.

I'm a lowly musician ... I don't understand how or what this is  

[dallaskruse]

the initial request was because I use 8 tablets at a time for my band situation.

When I add a new song, I have to go into each tablet and add tempo and key information of the songs individually on each tablet. 

It gets very time consuming.

[Zubersoft]

I do plan on adding support for reading the metadata out of the PDFs. I haven't decided yet if I will do this automatically, or if it will require a separate action in the song editor (so that you can selectively choose when to import the metadata, and which metadata fields you want). I may support both - an option to automatically import the metadata, as well as a way to manually do it in the song editor for those that are more selective about the metadata that is used.

Mike

[dallaskruse]

I do plan on adding support for reading the metadata out of the PDFs. I haven't decided yet if I will do this automatically, or if it will require a separate action in the song editor (so that you can selectively choose when to import the metadata, and which metadata fields you want). I may support both - an option to automatically import the metadata, as well as a way to manually do it in the song editor for those that are more selective about the metadata that is used.

Mike

great!!
now we just have to find a way for Finale/Sibelius/etc to print PDF's with a Tempo/Key metadata tag(s).

[itsme]

PDFs have editable properties like title, author, keywords and so on. MSP could read metadata from these property fields.
What about re-using ChordPro tags? If {key:, {composer: ... are found in e.g. the PDFs keywords field, MSP metadata could be populated. That could be a very flexible solution.
And it's completely independent from Finale or Sibelius, any PDF could carry its metadata. You have to write it down once anyway, if in Finale or in the PDF makes little difference.

[itsme]

@dallaskruse: I read in your post
"I use 8 tablets at a time for my band situation. When I add a new song, I have to go into each tablet and add tempo and key information of the songs individually on each tablet."
If the main question is how to add identical metadata to all the tablets: Why not writing the metadata into a CSV file and using CSV import instead of "Import Local File"? If you describe your workflow in detail and post an example I might be able to propose how to improve it.
The original intention of CSV import is importing several songs at once from a multi-song PDF like a fakebook. But it also works fine when the PDF contains only one song.

[dallaskruse]

@dallaskruse: I read in your post
"I use 8 tablets at a time for my band situation. When I add a new song, I have to go into each tablet and add tempo and key information of the songs individually on each tablet."
If the main question is how to add identical metadata to all the tablets: Why not writing the metadata into a CSV file and using CSV import instead of "Import Local File"? If you describe your workflow in detail and post an example I might be able to propose how to improve it.
The original intention of CSV import is importing several songs at once from a multi-song PDF like a fakebook. But it also works fine when the PDF contains only one song.

Thanks for the reply.

TBH I'm brand new to PC/Android. I'm still figuring out the ins/outs.

Here's my process start to finish

I have 9 tablets. Each band member gets a tablet. Each tablet is permanently assigned to Piano or Bass or Drums...so ONLY piano charts on the piano tablet, only drums for drums, et al.

I write a chart in Finale. Some are 1 page, some are 2 or 3 pages. (I currently have about 500 songs that equal to about 2k+ pages for my entire library).

I print PDF's from within Finale. I get about 8 files per song (Piano, Bass, guitar, drums, sax, bone, trumpet, vox).

IMPORTANT: the songs, when printed, have different file names (i.e. "Stand By Me (D) - Chart - Piano" and "Stand By Me (D) - Chart - Drums"). Each part is labeled by their instrument.

I upload those charts to a DropBox folder.

I go 1 by 1 and grab a tablet and import the new charts to each tablet. Then I'll go into MSP and assign Key/Tempo to the songs.

Very often I'm updating charts for new arrangements or bettering the layout. I'll upload the charts in the Dropbox and import them into MSP using the IMPORT feature.

I spent the last 3 days going in 1 by 1 for each tablet and song and adding Tempo and Key information. Took many many hours but I got it done.

I'm wondering if theres ANY way for MSP to grab Key/Tempo information from the imported PDF so I don't have to do it by hand?


I was doing some research on this forum about CSV files but I don't really understand the concept. 

I do have a master list of all our songs in a spreadsheet with the key and tempo listed if that helps in any way.

[jhanna]

I wrote some Java code that populates metadata into PDF files so for each file, there's info about the artist and genre.  There's an app called ForScore that reads this metadata when you import the PDF file.  I'm hoping that MobileSheets Pro can be enhanced to do the same as it's a lot of work to enter all that information on every tablet.

[Zubersoft]

Adding support for PDF metadata is absolutely on my list of things to do.

Mike

[dallaskruse]

I wrote some Java code that populates metadata into PDF files so for each file, there's info about the artist and genre.  There's an app called ForScore that reads this metadata when you import the PDF file.  I'm hoping that MobileSheets Pro can be enhanced to do the same as it's a lot of work to enter all that information on every tablet.

How did you do this?
When printing in Finale, one can add metadata
Title
Author
Subject
Keywords


I'm trying to figure out how to add metadata to a PDF. Are metadata and "tags" the same thing?