How can I extract text (text only) from a PDF of sheet music?

07
2014-07
  • Samuel

    I have a PDF book of sheet music that I need to extract the text from. I don't need to extract the musical notes or anything, just the verses of the text.

    I can't select one line of text by itself – it always selects other parts of the page. Copying the whole page together puts everything out of order. There are also hyphens between syllables that I'd like to remove.

    This is the first song in the PDF: http://bradshawfamily.net/~samuel/zzz/34832_kek_h1.pdf

    • Answers
  • nixda

    1. My first thought was to copy&paste the whole text into notepad++ and do some regex actions to filter only valid characters. That failed because the lines are messed up after pasting them.

    2. Second thought: Use a online OCR like onlineocr.net or ocrconvert.com That wasn't as bad as I expected. Still you have to delete some misinterpretations

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      Click for full example


    • Related Question

    Transferring Music from iPod to iTunes?
  • TeeOh

    Is there a way for me to transfer music from my iPod to my iTunes? Say, if I accidentally deleted some music on my computer but I have the files on my iPod?


    • Related Answers
  • Kevin Worthington

    If you put your iPod into Disk Mode, you can drag all the files to your music folder on your computer, and then let iTunes sort it out. Just make sure you check "Keep iTunes music folder organized."

    I hope this helps.

  • Rusty Monkey

    Putting your iPod in Disk mode will work for iPods other than the iPod Touch. For the iPod Touch and iPhone, you'll need to use a tool that is capable of reading the iPod Touch/iPhone database.

    One such tool is MediaMonkey -- the free version can handle this. Here are the instructions.

    Disclosure: I work on MediaMonkey, but happen to feel that it's the best tool for the job.

  • slhck

    On Windows, you can use iDump to extract songs from the iPod then throw them into iTunes.

    This program will allow you transfer your songs from your iPod to a PC, iDump does come wrapped in installer but you can simply drop the .exe in the root directory on your iPod and run it from there.

    On OS X there is expod:

    expod is a small utility for getting songs off your iPod. iTunes does a fantastic job of copying music onto an iPod, but lacks the ability to go the other way. With expod you can copy any or all of your songs (or videos) off your iPod, using whatever file naming convention you like.

    … and podUp, both free as well:

    podUp is an application which copies all your music files from your iPod to a folder of your choosing, without having anything to do with iTunes.

  • shrmn

    On Windows I use SharePod

    On Mac I use expod

    And just in case anyone asks, both works with iPhones and iPod Touches (I personally tried up to firmware version 3.1.3)

  • Jouni K. Seppänen

    For the Mac there's a shareware app called Senuti that probably does exactly the same thing as the free apps, but has nice instructional videos on the web site, and possibly a more Appleish user interface.