Product Overview: Capella-scan
Capella-scan, developed by capella-software AG, is a sophisticated music Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software designed to digitize and edit printed music scores with high precision and efficiency.
What Capella-scan Does
Capella-scan enables users to scan or import sheet music from various sources, including scanners, digital cameras, and existing image files (such as TIFF, BMP, PDF, and more). The software utilizes advanced mathematical morphology technology and the Tesseract 4 OCR engine to accurately recognize and convert the scanned sheet music into editable digital notation. This process includes identifying complex musical elements such as notes, accidentals, keys, bar lines, slurs, ties, repeat boxes, crescendo signs, dynamics, and articulation signs.
Key Features and Functionality
- Advanced Recognition Capabilities: Capella-scan can recognize a wide range of musical symbols, including small and large notes (cue notes, grace notes), multiple voices, lyrics, and various musical symbols. It also supports the recognition of text in different languages, including Gothic print.
- Multi-Format Import: The software allows users to import scores from different file formats, including BMP, TIFF, PNG, GIF, PDF, and PostScript. It can even handle digital camera images and multi-page PDF scores.
- Integrated Player and Error Correction: Capella-scan includes an integrated player that provides immediate audio feedback on the recognized score, helping users identify and correct any errors. The software offers intelligent and intuitive help for the error correction process, making it easier to refine the digitized score.
- Export Options: Capella-scan supports various export formats, including Capella, CapXML, MIDI, MusicXML, Wave, and MP3. This allows users to work with the digitized scores in other professional music notation software like Finale, Sibelius, or Encore.
- Image Optimization and Handling: The software automatically optimizes the scanned images for brightness and resolution, and it can handle poor score quality, such as “holey” staffs. It also supports oversized scores up to A3 format and can connect page sections even with interrupted systems.
- User-Friendly Interface: Capella-scan features an infinitely variable zoom function for lightning-fast navigation and allows users to attach scanned sheets to existing Capella scores, creating larger scores. It also enables clear stave line allocation and handles two-column scores (song book pages).
- Voice Management: The software has an excellent voice management system, even for very complex sheet music, ensuring that multiple voices and instruments are accurately recognized and represented.
Additional Benefits
- Live Export Preview: Corrections made to the score are immediately visible, streamlining the editing process.
- Dictionaries and Language Support: Capella-scan includes dictionaries for the most important languages and allows additional dictionaries to be downloaded.
- PDF Manual: A comprehensive PDF manual is available for download, providing detailed instructions and support.
In summary, Capella-scan is a powerful tool for musicians and composers, offering a seamless way to digitize, edit, and enhance sheet music. Its advanced recognition capabilities, versatile import and export options, and user-friendly interface make it an indispensable asset for anyone working with musical scores.