VocalEasel/Resources/Help/files.html
2008-07-13 21:15:29 +00:00

63 lines
3.1 KiB
HTML

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>VocalEasel: Opening and Saving Music Files</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Opening and Saving Music Files</h1>
<p>In addition to its native file format, which it saves in file bundles with a <tt>.vlsong</tt> extension, VocalEasel is capable of importing and creating a number of other file formats.</p>
<h2>Importing Music Files</h2>
<p>All available file formats are displayed with the <i>Open...</i> menu item.</p>
<p>Like much of the functionality of VocalEasel, file importing is fairly new and little tested. To make file reporting more comprehensive and reliable, please report any import problems as <a href="bugs.html">bugs</a>.</p>
<h3>MusicXML</h3>
<p>MusicXML&nbsp;&lt;<a href="http://musicxml.org">http://musicxml.org</a>&gt; is capable of representing a huge variety of sheet music, and VocalEasel only understands a small subset of this: A single melody, with an optional harmony and lyrics. Examples of this kind of MusicXML can be found at Wikifonia&nbsp;&lt;<a href="http://www.wikifonia.org">http://www.wikifonia.org</a>&gt;</p>
<h3>Band-in-a-Box</h3>
<p>VocalEasel should be capable of importing most Band-in-a-Box&nbsp;&lt;<a href="http://www.pgmusic.com">http://www.pgmusic.com</a>&gt; files, although not all styles may work correctly at this point.
</p>
<h3>Lilypond</h3>
<p>Lilypond&nbsp;&lt;<a href="http://www.lilypond.org">http://www.lilypond.org</a>&gt; is capable of representing a huge variety of sheet music, and has a rather general purpose input format with procedural elements that is not easy to parse. Therefore, VocalEasel is only capable of importing very simple Lilypond files.</p>
<h2>Export Formats</h2>
<p>To export a VocalEasel song in a different format, use the <i>Save a Copy As...</i> menu item and select the format from the popup menu. File exporting should be fairly reliable already.</p>
<h3>PDF</h3>
Saves graphical output in Adobe's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format">Portable Document Format</a>
<h3>MIDI</h3>
Saves music in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI">Musical Instrument Digital Interface</a> format.
<h3>MusicXML</h3>
Saves file in uncompressed, part-wise MusicXML 1.1 format.
<h3>Lilypond</h3>
Saves output in Lilypond format.
<h3>AIFF</h3>
Saves music in uncompressed AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) format, if for some reason you would prefer to have your playback track in the highest possible quality.
<h3>MP3</h3>
Saves music in 64 kbps <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3">MP3</a> format, which is much more compact than AIFF and generally has decent enough quality. To save to MP3 format, the <a href="http://lame.sourceforge.net">LAME</a> MP3 encoder needs to be installed on your Mac (VocalEasel will offer to guide you through the installation).
<h2>Importing VocalEasel Songs From Other Software</h2>
If necessary, it is possible to import VocalEasel songs into other programs even without running VocalEasel: The <tt>.vlsong</tt> bundle contains a file <tt>Song</tt> which is simply the song in uncompressed, part-wise MusicXML 1.1 format.
</body>
</html>