Hello Robbie!  I'm listening; the MMD is my morning literature every day.

Yes, we run a scanning system to read rolls.  In our opinion this is the
best way, because you can read any system which exists, and also when the
roll you read never will play again on an instrument because of it's damage.

You only have to make an "optical scale stick" (this means you have to
tell the computer how many holes, how wide the holes, and the distance
between the holes).  When you transcribe the information of a roll, it is
not important in the first step that the machine knows what the holes are
for --  you only have to know where the holes are located on the roll.

This information can be punched with our machine to make new rolls.  We
run a single-hole puncher so that we can also punch every existing system
without big tooling and adjustment costs.  To change our punching machine
from one system to another takes approximately four hours (including the
time to "fill" the machine with new paper, which is normally the most
work).

The next step is to convert the transcribed information into MIDI
information.  Therefore you have to tell the computer which line keeps
which information.  This is also in the program already, but I never
tried it because I never worked with MIDI before and don't know which is
a good MIDI program and which not.

This is the next step I have to try, but the program only runs on one
of our computers (it is a DOS program and it has problems if there is
Windows 95 on the computer).  We also need the computer for the punching
machine,  which is mostly very busy, but sooner or later I have to find
a "time leak" to make it work.

Maybe our system is a good basis for a standard to preserve rolls: you
only need a special camera, a lamp, and a computer with at least 16 MB Ram
(on which Windows 95 is not installed!).

Again greetings from the romantic part of the Rhine.

Joerg Wendel
Mechanical Musicboxes Manufactory GmbH
65385 Ruedesheim, Germany

 [ Thanks for writing, Joerg; that's a fine overview.  Could you please
 [ tell us more about the camera: is it a "page scanner", a "line scanner",
 [ or a "point scanner"?  Does the computer program store the image of
 [ the music roll in gray-scale?  Can you edit the pixels?  -- Robbie