[Samuel_Austin]

hello !

There is something I certainly misunderstood: when I want to batch import multiple song sheets in jpg file format, after the importation, all the file are concatenated in a single song. How I can do to batch import jpg files with the result of creating one new song for each jpg file.
I don't have the problem with pdf ...

I do have 650 jpg sheet, if I have to import them one by one .. I'll going to run crazy.

Thanks for your help !

[Zubersoft]

With image based songs, you must put the files for each song in separate folders. Otherwise, I don't know where one song ends and another begins. I could guess based on how you named the files, but this is extremely error prone, especially if you weren't consistent with how you named every file. Sorry that this isn't spelled out anywhere. I'm still trying to find time to finish the documentation updates.

[Samuel_Austin]

Hello !

With image based songs, you must put the files for each song in separate folders.

Ho lala ! 650 song jpg sheet, 650 folder ! Better to import them one by one.
Finally I batch converted all the files from jpg to pdf and make a batch import into MS. All works great. Thank you for your response anyway.

[bumblebee]

With image based songs, you must put the files for each song in separate folders. Otherwise, I don't know where one song ends and another begins...

I was thinking one way around this would be for MS to have a new specified folder, where the contents are only one page songs (or could include PDFs where only one piece (title) is in each PDF) and where the title of the song is the file name.
Just an idea.

[Zubersoft]

I can definitely add a checkbox with an option to treat each file as an individual song if this will be useful to anyone.

[bumblebee]

Maybe if you specify multiple pages of a piece to have the same file name with appended number, so:
xxxx01.jpg
xxxx02.jpg
etc.
where the multiple pages are merged into a single song with the title 'xxxx'

If not, then they are individual pieces with title from file name.

If the batch import then puts them into an Import 'collection' then further editing on just these pieces could be done (perhaps this happens anyway as a Last import?)

Thinking further (although I am not sure how useful this will be) the file name could contain the key, etc. separated by a dot in a specified order, so a piece could be populated with the other data:
xxx01.G.Flute.Bach.jpg
(a 'z' could be used where a field is to be blank)
(I currently do not use the companion app, so something like this might be useful - Mac users, people not near computers, teachers preparing pieces for students etc.)

[Zubersoft]

I definitely could add support for grouping files with identical prefixes but different numbers, and could even take this further to allow specifying metadata, but I would really need to feedback from enough users to justify the time spent on it. If 5-10 people told me they would take advantage of this, then that seems worth it to me. Otherwise, it seems simple enough to just split files up into folders if you need to use image files, versus having to through them all and rename each file appropriately. I'm definitely open to the idea if enough users would use it though.

[bumblebee]

For anyone interested, I use a mixture of PDF and jpg files for single page pieces (mainly lead sheets/chords) but for multiple pages (classical) I create them as a single multi-paged PDF so I do not have to find/add/organize all the pages within MS.
Also (vector) PDF files created directly from Finale or Sibelius (and others) are very small files (if space is limited and you have hundreds of pages to import.)

[jeffn1]

Do most people just keep the songs as pdf's? I would lean toward that (that is the way I have handled them in my current using (windows XP and Charttrax).

[Harry_M]

Do most people just keep the songs as pdf's? I would lean toward that (that is the way I have handled them in my current using (windows XP and Charttrax).

I have all my songs as pdfs - they are often smaller, multipage and more compatible. Even if I scan a new song as jpg, I first print it as pdf.

[jeffn1]

Do most people just keep the songs as pdf's? I would lean toward that (that is the way I have handled them in my current using (windows XP and Charttrax).

I have all my songs as pdfs - they are often smaller, multipage and more compatible. Even if I scan a new song as jpg, I first print it as pdf.

Thanks, that is the way I will do. I will just keep each individual song (usually not too many pages) in pdf formart.

This will avoid adding extra complexity (at the sacrifice of some flexibility in terms of using big documents (real books) and being able to place pages out of order).

[nicola]

I can definitely add a checkbox with an option to treat each file as an individual song if this will be useful to anyone.

Dear Mr Zuberman,

I just boughy your program, that I find indeed outstanding, but I am a little disappointed for the fact that i cannot batch import jpg files.
I keep my jpgs in separate folders named as the song title.
Unfortunately, as others have reported, when i batch all these songs, the program creates one song for every jpg and not one song for directory.
Have you or someone else found a solution to this problem? As you surely understand it's quite annoying having to import hundreds of songs one by one.
Thank you very much.
Nicola

[Zubersoft]

Hello Nicola,

The current batch import logic looks for similarly named files, and groups those into songs. For example, if I had a song named "ABC", and my jpgs were named "ABC1.jpg, ABC2.jpg, ABC3.jpg" and so on, they would all be grouped into one song. How are you naming your jpgs in the separate folders? If you use a pattern and need to convert them all to match what MobileSheets does, I would be happy to write a little script/program that you could execute to update all the filenames to match the folder names plus numbers.

Mike