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Is anyone having problems with forScore? Yesterday, I upgraded to the most recent version (which was released on June 30th) and now it crashes and won't stay open. (I'm using a new iPad with the latest iOS)

This is really ironic because I've had forScore for a long time, but this summer I decided to switch all my repertoire pieces, scales and sightreading to the iPad, so I've been playing from my iPad more than ever and now that I'm practically dependent on it for everything but brand new pieces, I can't use it! Also, I was thinking that if I decide to stay with reading from the iPad rather than paper scores, I would splurge and buy an air-turn, but not if I can't reliably use forScore!

(I won't lose any scores btw, I have backups of everything and most things I own both a paper and digital version of things, so that's not what I'm worried about)

Yikes. Make sure you check their site... they may have a customer service number or way to submit a trouble ticket online.

I rely on ForScore, on an older iPad and I haven't updated it in forever. I'd love to move to the new larger iPad at some point, but... not if it's not stable.

I did email their customer support, I'm waiting to hear back. I was hoping maybe someone here would have some experience mainly I just wanted some sympathy!

I have an iPad Pro but the 9 inch one (the big one is just too expensive!) anyway, I love it, and I love having all my music on my iPad. Even without the air-turn, I find it's easier to turn pages than with a physical book.

I'm hoping this is going to be a short-lived problem, and maybe connected to the newer iPad or something. I'll be sure to give an update.

I just checked and I have the latest ForScore version 9.4.2. I opened my scores and they look fine (phew~). I use iPad Pro 12".

I hope you get your files back :-(

I recall mailing them about a feature request--half-page turns--and they were responsive. Turns out that was a feature in development. So that's a good sign. Hope they get back to you.

Sorry you've had such a problem, ShiroKuro - disappointing and frustrating. I use ForScore 9.4.2 every day on my 12" iPad Pro (iOS 9.3.2) with AirTurn, and have had no problems so far (says she with fingers tightly crossed).

When I first started using the app almost two years ago I had a couple of technical questions which I sent to ForScore's customer support team. I had amazing service from Isaac Watson, so I'm sure they will solve the problem.

By the way, have you tried the usual - completely closing the app, and rebooting the iPad? Or reinstalling ForScore?

And I just copied this from forScore's support page:

"Repeated crashing when you launch forScore

If the app has started crashing repeatedly when you launch forScore, it’s possible a recently added or modified file is causing issues, either because it’s too large for your device to process or it contains data that is causing an error.

If you connect your device to your computer, you can use the iTunes File Sharing panel to delete the most recently added file(s) from forScore and then try re-launching the app to see if that clears out the error. If you’re able to see a page of a score before it crashes, try removing that file first. Once you’ve identified which file it might be, we can do some testing with it to see if we can identify why it’s causing issues."

Hope this is useful.

Tubbie, thanks you. I have all the files on my laptop as well, so I won't lose any music. But I've been doing a lot of writing on the scores, so I may lose anything I've annotated. And I've made several different set lists for myself so I can group pieces into those used for sightreading practice, those that are repertoire, scale work etc.

MarieJ, oh no! That must be it!

So I've been taking all my score books and making them into PDFs, entire books, and then putting them into forScore.

I have one scale book, the complete one with scales, arps and cadences, I wonder how many pages that is. For the Einaudi books I have, the Best Of is in one file, but Islands and .... What are the others called, Le Onde, In a Time Lapse, for some I made one file for the whole book, for two I separated it into 2 files but it's still huge. And I always set the resolution to 300dpi rather than 200, not color, but black and white. Still, I think those are large files, and of course possibly 10x larger, or more, than a file consisting of a single piece.

It would be very unfortunate if forScore can't handle these larger files.... For my sight reading practice, I would rather not have these as all individual pieces, it would be unwieldy. And the scale book, that's both for practice and reference, it needs to stay together as one book....

For pieces in my repertoire, I have them in there as individual pieces, because I've worked on the piece on paper, and then I make a PDF of the score with all my markings on it. So those are fine, but I have a much larger collection of other music that is just better organized if it can separated into individual books. Phooey!

I hope Mr. Watson gets in touch with me and has some good news, otherwise I am going to have to start lobbying them to make another update to handle larger files! What's the point of having a 128g iPad if I can't fill it up with massive PDF scores! I use iAnnotate for research, and I do the same thing, I take entire books, scan them as PDFs and put them on my iPad. Oh, and I render them first so that they're searchable as text. Those files are massive, iAnnotate works just fine. Come on forScore, you can do it too!! (>_<)

Oh, MarieJ btw, I have tried closing the app and rebooting the iPad, that didn't do anything. But I haven't tried reinstalling forScore. Won't I lose all the things I've created that way (annotated scores, set lists)?

Well anyway, before I try that, I'll try deleting some files through iTunes. Ugh, the page I can see when it crashes is the from the scale book, and that book isn't even half as long as some of my Einaudi books. I would hate to have to go through (on my laptop) and separate all those into individual pieces and then reload them into forScore. And I was going to make PDFs of all my collections of Christmas music and the Bach chorales book, those books are a good two inches thick!!

Ok I just sent the world's longest email to Mr. Isaac Watson.

MareiJ, thanks so much for your two comments!

I'll report back!

It *does* sound as if the size of some of your files is causing the crashes. The manual refers to this: "You can use virtually any PDF file with forScore, but not every file works perfectly. Very large files will not perform well with forScore (or any PDF reader on the iPad) due to the limits of the hardware itself, so if you’re scanning your own files you may need to try a few different settings before you find a good balance of quality and size."

So I suspect that reinstalling forScore isn't going to help in this case, (and as you say, you may well end up losing some of the things you've created).

I'm afraid my experience doesn't extend to really big files, so I can't suggest any way around this. I've only scanned in individual pieces, then organised them under 'library', 'genre', 'tag', 'label' etc. You definitely need the experts at forScore!

Good luck - and please let us all know how you get on.

FWIW, I have entire books scanned at 600 dpi - I checked and some are over 100 MB. I've never had a problem with ForScore choking on any of them (I keep the app and the ios updated, so I must be using the most current version).
iPad Pro 12.9"
Sorry you're having a problem, but I agree there must be a file that is crashing it (assuming you've done the usual re-booting, re-installing, etc.)

Marie, re this:


(Marie, this comment is directed at the manual, not at you!!) That might have been true a few years ago, but it shouldn't be true anymore. I have the smaller iPad Pro, 128g, it has the same hardware as the larger Pro. And the largest file (as far as I can tell without spending more than a minute) is maybe 30mb.

EP,


This gives me hope!

EP, do you do a lot of annotation? So far, I have mainly been doing the handwriting tool, and in a few pieces I've installed buttons (is that what they're called, can't remember) to jump for repeats or D.S. type markings, but that's about it. I hope that's not the problem.

If it's just one file, I could delete that. I wonder if I would have to rescan it, or if I could monkey with the file and re-upload it successfully.

BTW, EP, how to do you make your scans? Here's what I do.

I use the big (commercial) copy machine in my office, it's the same as the kind you'd see in a library. I set it to scan to PDF. Then I do all the settings myself. I choose "black and white text w/ line" for the type of document, I select the size (generally in the realm of A4), I set it to 300dpi (but yeah, 600 would be nicer!), and I give it a title. Then I have it emailed from the copy machine to my email address. (my emailed doesn't have a 10mb limit like some accounts used to)

Then after that I often do a little bit of editing in Adobe Pro before it's ready for forScore. I often have to rotate pages, and I may do some cropping. Then I save the file, and upload that file to my Dropbox account. Finally, I access Dropbox from my iPad, and select open in forScore.

So, I wonder if there's something I could do differently in this process.... Or maybe some file accidentally had some lock or security put on it....

Oh, one other source of recent scores is Piano Pronto, I've been buying scores from them for sightreading practice (which I highly recommend btw). But I don't remember what was the last score I looked at before the crash. However, the score that pops up now, before forScore crashes again, is a pdf I made myself (from the scale book, no annotations in this one yet). This is approx. 100 pages, 30mb. So not all that large....

Thanks for all the replies thus far everyone! I will definitely share updates and any resolutions. Because, as you can see, I'm kind of obsessed about this!

I checked again, and I have some files over 200 mb.
I have an epson scanner that will take large pages, scan them using the automatic document feeder (I have a stack paper cutter so if it's a bound book I simply cut off the spine).
The scanner only scans one side, so I flip the stack and scan the back sides, then use a shareware program (sorry, I'm not at home so I don't have the name of the program, but I think a lot of them will do this) to put the pages back in order (it does this automatically).
I scan directly to my computer, then upload to the iPad.
Then I punch the pages and coil bind the book and stick it back on the shelf.
BTW, I do annotate (mostly with the Apple Pencil), create links, etc. I can't imagine that being a problem.

EP, thanks for all the explanations!

Please let me know the name of the shareware when you have a minute, I don't think Adobe Pro can do what you're describing (though I may just not know about it??)

Anyway, it doesn't sound like you're doing anything important differently. I may just have a weird corrupted file somewhere.

Well, no, actually, the one potentially important difference is that you're scanning directly to your computer. I wonder if there are more chances for problems because I'm using this big copy machine that emails me the files, and for example, if that's how I got a corrupted file or something.

How do you get the files from computer to iPad? Using the lightning cable or using something like Dropbox, or emailing it to yourself?

I do have a printer at home that I could scan to computer with, but it would be much slower because of the set up (it's an HP all-in-one officejet), the office machine is very fast and good quality. Although, if i could scan at home and not having this crashing problem, I guess it would be worth it!

It's called pdfsam - you can find it at pdfsam.org

Also, if you have a bad file, you might try to open it in on your computer then print to pdf to create a new file. You can use Cute pdf (shareware) if you don't have a way to do that.

To get them to my iPad, I usually just put them on my cloud server (I have a Seagate Sdrive), then I can get them whenever I want them.
If I have a lot of files, I zip the whole works and use iTunes to send it to Goodreader on the iPad, which will unzip them in the same directory structure they have on your computer, then on the iPad I can copy them to ForScore. Otherwise, you can just use iTunes to send them directly to ForScore, but it can't handle zip files.

EP, thanks for the name! I do a lot with PDFs for work (I'm a teacher/researcher) so it looks like that shareware might do some things I could use for work too!

It's funny, because I have the pro version of Adobe, and it does a lot but I find there are often functions that I would think would be obvious, that it just doesn't do.

The suggestion to print to pdf is a good one! I will definitely try that. (I can do that from within Adobe pro).

I haven't used Goodreader for iPad, maybe I'll try that too.

Thanks again for all the suggestions and info!

Good luck, and let us know what you figure out.

With Forscore a hard reset of your ipad will often help. Just press the Home button en the on/off button together en hold for at least 10 seconds. No harm in trying.