I have read in these threads that there is not a file converter for MOTU's excellent, but abandoned notation program Mosaic. After extensive comparison of Sibelius & Finale, I decided to go with Sibelius in our lab at school. However, I have hundreds of Mosaic files written over the years, and we'll soon be purchasing G5's, which do not boot into OS 9, so we won't be able to use Mosaic anymore. I really don't have time to convert every file to SMF & re-open them in Sibelius.
Daniel has unfortunately mentioned that a converter doesn't exist and Sibelius has no intention of developing one. If there are others in need of this tool, maybe we can all appeal to the people at Sibelius to consider helping us, their customers.
If many people are in the same position & we let Sibelius know, maybe there will be hope of a converter.
I consider this to be an extremely reasonable request, one that I hope the folks at Sibelius will consider.
I can appreciate both your wish to have a convertor for your files, and that fact that the Sibelius folks have a lot of things to work on. Convertors tend to be very difficult and time consuming to do, especially if the file format is not published, and there tends to be a relatively small number of users who need such a thing. I was hoping for an Encore convertor for years, but have pretty much given up on it. (One *can* convert Encore files into Finale, and then take Finale files into Sibelius, but I am not aware of a Mosaic to anything convertor that currently exists).
If there is anything better than MIDI that you can convert Mosaic files to, there might be some mechanism of going through Finale at worst to get scores into Sibelius. Sib can convert Score, Finale and NIFF files. Finale can convert MusicXML and Encore files. I don't see anything, though, in a quick look around that converts Mosaic files. Even the Recordare folks (MusicXML, www.recordare.com), who are serious translators, don't have anything for Mosaic.
If you do have to take the MIDI route, be aware that there is at least a Convert Folder of MIDI Files plug-in in Sibelius that will convert an entire folder of MIDI files to Sibelius in a single pass. That might at least save a little time...
Good luck,
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Bob
Sib 3.1.3, Windows XP Pro, Kontakt Gold, 2 Ghz Pentium 4. 1 G RAM
Another thing to consider is using a scanning program. I found the other day that if you do a screenshot of a page of music into a graphics file, instead of scanning a paper copy, and then pass that file into the software that interprets music from scanned images, you can get fantastic results. Might be worth a try - but I don't know what Mosaic scores look like so I couldn't say if they'd scan well or badly.
Bernard, I'm afraid I can confirm that there is no likelihood of our ever doing a Mosaic converter. There are few Mosaic users left and (as Bob says) the huge time & cost of doing a converter would be prohibitive. Compared with the alternative of spending the time on developing Sibelius features, there's little doubt we would go for the latter option. Sorry.
But converting the files using MIDI files or other routes mentioned above is a reasonable solution and would be your best bet.
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Contact Sibelius technical help:
North/Central/South America: sibhelpUSA@sibelius.com / 925-280-2101
UK: sibhelpUK@sibelius.com / 020 7561 7997
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Thank you all for the thoughtul replies. I suppose that there aren't many former Mosaic users out there, or they would have responded. Maybe the Recordare folks or someone out there who has the need and the knowledge would consider working on a converter. In the meantime, I guess I could have students work on saving & converting SMF's. I will also try Neil's solution above-never thought of that. Finally, I think I'll contact Magic Dave at MOTU & see what they have to say about this.
Thanks to all again for your input,
Bernie Stellar
It is possible we could work on a Mosaic to MusicXML converter as a custom programming project. But this would be expensive, especially since there is no documentation that we know of for this file format. If you can get any file format documentation out of MOTU, that would be a great help. Please let us know anything that you find out from them!
From MusicXML, the file could then be converted to Finale ETF format and then to Sibelius.
If you are interested, please contact us via e-mail, or fill out our consulting project form at:
I used Mosaic and have a few files. I ended up just printing them out and using them as a score. Scanning has been extremely problematic not just with Mosaic, but published scores, so if you have a number of files, I would suggest the MIDI route, which I have been more successful with than Photoscore.
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Gary Levinson
Sibelius 3.1.1, 1GHZ Titanium Powerbook 512MB RAM, OS X.3.1
I also have a large number of Mosaic files and would be very interested in anything the MOTU folks have to say about their file format. I'm also willing to do some programming if need be.
Unfortunately, the folks at MOTU are STILL not even saying whether or not they're planning on upgrading Mosaic, and they'll most likely never release the file format information. Our school district has already spent quite a bit on lab packs of Sibelius 2 & 3, so it doesn't matter whether or not they upgrade Mosaic. I'd just like easy access to my files.
Magic Dave is forwarding my concerns to management-I'm not holding my breath.
Bernie Stellar
I am very much in the same boat. I started with ProComposer (MOTU's really bad notation software prior to Mosaic) and then used Mosaic for the next 10 years - equally arrangements numbering in the 1000's. I would kill for some way to convert all of that into Sibelius.
The biggest problem with converting via the MIDI route is what was probally one of the BEST things about Mosaic - the ability to have multiple MIDI channels assigned to different voices on the same staff without program changes. MIDI conversion will assign each voice to a separate staff leaving me with 5 - 16 times the number of staves.
Regarding MOTU's support of Mosaic...its a gonner! There will be no Mosaic software re-tooled for the OS X platform. Instead all efforts are in the DP arena. Mosaic 1.58 was the end of the road.
Heffe
Loving Sibelius!, but also missing some Mosaic features.
I'd be really happy if MOTU made it so that I could just open my Mosaic scores in OS 9 classic mode within OS X. No MIDI, no extra features, just a plain, straight up graphic notation program. That would allow me access to all my old scores without having to restart my machine. Plus, once I get a new computer, it is likely that the option to start up in OS 9 will no longer be available to me- then it really will be all over...
Mosaic was great!!! RIP, Mosaic...
-Andrew
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Andrew McKenna Lee
Mac G4 Dual 450, 1 GB RAM, OS 10.3.4
Sibelius 3.3.1, KG, Reason, Unity DS-1
http://www.andrewmckennalee.com
I am also holding about 1,000 Mosaic files in my Mac which I started about 20 years ago. I would love to be able to open them in OS X or even Classic 9, However, I stay in native OS 9 and seldom use OS X, simply because I need access to those old Mosaic files fairly often.
I have a lot of Mosaic files too. I have gradually replaced them with Finale and Sibelius. What are those MOTU people thinking anyway?! I wish they would pubish their format so somebody could make a translator. However, they probably won't.
Moona
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monareese.com
Sib 3.1.3, Mac G4, OS 10.3.4, Proteus/2, Roland SC50
2 cats
I loved Mosaic. I was sorry to hear that MOTU didn't upgrade it to Mac OS X. It was a powerful and easy to use program. I have tons of Mosaic stuff too. I hope a solution to this problem comes out eventually. I'd hate to lose all that material.
