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jbmelby
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 39

Posted 11/17/2007 3:54 PM (GMT -5)

I have a large orchestral piece that was created in a very old version of Finale (v 3.7.2). Because of memory and speed problems with the computers of those days, I had to break the piece down into two sections. Now, I would like to combine those into one large file. My problem is this:

I have a great many places in the score in which I have large tuplets that cross the bar line. I accomplished this in v 3.7.2 by simply adding the tuplet in the first measure, which left extra notes hanging over at the end of the measure after I checked "Leave the measure alone", and then setting the length of both measures to the same value, selecting spacing by time signature, and everything was fine.

When I open and save each of the two sections in Finale 2008, this spacing is preserved in each file. So far, so good. BUT . . . when I append the second file to the end of the first file using the merge feature, the over-the-bar-line tuplets are hopelessly screwed up because Finale attempts to straighten out what it regards as notational errors, and subsequent measures in the relevant staves consequently are rhythmically skewed. Since the merge function essentially does the same thing as simply copying the music of the second file into empty measures that I place at the end of the first file, that doesn't work either.

Is there any way that I can do this without handling each such item individually, which would result in my having to re-enter nearly half the piece? Is there some item in the Finale preferences that can be set to allow this sort of thing? (At the risk of incurring the ire of some members of this forum, I'll mention parenthetically that Sibelius handles this sort of thing quite nicely; but my score is so complex that it is virtually impossible to convert to Sibelius-compatible files.)

acciuga
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2006
Total Posts : 746

Posted 11/17/2007 4:12 PM (GMT -5)

If you are merging files which all have the same number/order of staves, you may be better-off just using the old-fashioned copy and insert commands. Add a new measure to the end of the first score segment and select it in all staves. Then copy all staves of the 2nd segment, move back to first segment and do an Insert while the edit filter is set to ALL. Continue sim. Just a suggestion.

POST EDIT: Of course, you will not be retaining any page layout for the 2nd segment of the score and will need to re-do this.

-Rick Giovinazzo
Mac-Dual 2.5 GHz PPC G5; 1.5 GB DDR SDRAM; OSX 10.4.10
ATI Radeon 9600; Dell 2405FPW 24" monitor (landscape); Dell 2407WFP 24" monitor (portrait)

Post Edited (acciuga) : 11/17/2007 2:28:36 PM (GMT-6)

Jetcopy
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2000
Total Posts : 4795

Posted 11/17/2007 4:15 PM (GMT -5)

As you guessed, this really isn't a Score Merger problem. This is just a side effect of the work-around you used in these files. I'm not sure if any of these suggestions will help, but here's a few things to try.

In 2008, in your speedy/simple entry options, make sure "check for extra notes" is unchecked. You don't want Finale asking you to delete these triplets everytime you go into these measures. Also make sure that automatic spacing and automatic update layout are turned off.

After doing this, if you open each file individually in 08, have they retained all of your editing? If so, try the merge again.

If nothing helps, it might be best to leave these in seperate files. You can always print these to a PDF and combine the PDFs into a single file.

JT

G4 Powerbook, OSX 10.4.8, 1.67 GHz, 1.5 GB ram

jbmelby
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 39

Posted 11/17/2007 4:45 PM (GMT -5)

Thanks, both of you, for your suggestions—but unfortunately, they didn't help. I could, of course, combine two PDFs, but what I was hoping to do was to get the two sections combined into one file in order to extract parts more easily. I'll keep trying, but I'm not very optimistic.

SF
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 1555

Posted 11/17/2007 9:08 PM (GMT -5)

What I would recommend is to do the merge and let the spacing fall where it may.

Then if you have TGTools and Robert Patterson's plug-ins you should be able to replicate the tuplet and spacing information by opening the second file, highlight the entire piece, go to TGTools>Modify>Transfer and transfer measure attributes and spacing to the combined file. Then go to Robert Patterson's "Mass Copy" plug-in and highlight the entire 2nd file again and set the parameters to Tuplets and Note positioning adjustments, set the second files measures as the source and then go to the combined file and paste the information into the file using Mass Copy. Everything should look the same.

If you have any trouble with this let me know. I do this kind of thing all of the time and it's a breeze and a life saver.

SF

Post Edited (SF) : 11/17/2007 7:47:30 PM (GMT-6)

SF
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 1555

Posted 11/17/2007 9:44 PM (GMT -5)

BTW: If you don't have the full versions of TGTools or Robert Patterson's plug-ins you can try them out to 30 days.

TGTools.de
www.robertgpatterson.com/-fininfo/finmain.html

I'm not at my computer so I hope my quick descriptions made sense.

SF

jbmelby
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 39

Posted 11/18/2007 12:19 AM (GMT -5)

Thanks very much, all of you. I just got back from a Boston Symphony concert with the premiere of Elliott Carter's new horn concerto (written when he was 98!; he'll be 99 in a couple of weeks and he's working on a new piece for next season, and he was at the concert) and it's nearly midnight, so I'll try it tomorrow.

John Melby
Emeritus Professor of Music
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

http://www.johnmelby.com

Jeff Hamburg
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2004
Total Posts : 1383

Posted 11/18/2007 4:16 AM (GMT -5)

Hello John!

Don't know if you remember me, but I was a student at U of I around 1975-8 and had a few classes of yours, including one on serialism. Glad to see you are still doing well. When I saw a post by JBMelby, I immediately thought of you and lo and behold...

Kind regards,

Jeff Hamburg

G5 dual 1.8mhz, OS 10.4.10, Finale 2.0.1 --->2008, 3.5 gb ram, 23" Cinema Display, Radeon X800XT, EWQLSO Silver, Silver XP, M-Audio Audiophile Firewire, Kontakt2, M-Audio Keystation88es

jbmelby
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 39

Posted 11/18/2007 10:54 AM (GMT -5)

Jeff—

Indeed I do remember you. Where are you and what are you doing?

JM

John Melby
Emeritus Professor of Music
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

http://www.johnmelby.com

jbmelby
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 39

Posted 11/18/2007 11:31 AM (GMT -5)

SF—

Thanks for your suggestions. I've tried to implement them, but I've run into other annoying problems:

I'm running Finale 2008 on Leopard, and when I went to follow your suggestions, I noticed that my plug-ins menu was not visible. I was able to correct this by rebuilding my launch services database.

(BTW, the command given in the Finale FAQ for doing this is incorrect where Leopard is concerned, since the path has changed. For anyone interested in doing this in Leopard, the command is now

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

This is all one command, even though it appears on more than one line.)

So, following the suggestion in the FAQ, I trashed the Plug-ins folder, I rebuilt the database, and I reinstalled the Plug-ins folder. After that, the folder was visible—but even though I had the full TGTools package and the Patterson plug-ins in the Plug-ins folder, neither showed up. I repaired permissions and rebuilt the directory, all to no avail. And now, to top it off, my plug-ins menu has disappeared again.

This is all very reminiscent of the problems that I had with the earlier Finale versions of about fifteen years ago, which were without a doubt the buggiest programs that it has ever been my misfortune to encounter. And I'm realizing anew how glad I am that I chose to switch to Sibelius several years ago.

I'm going to CC this to Finale Tech Support. In the meantime, if you or anyone else can suggest a way out of this mess, I'd be most appreciative.

Thanks again,
John Melby
Emeritus Professor of Music
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

http://www.johnmelby.com

BvdPress
Registered Member

Date Joined Nov 2001
Total Posts : 1006

Posted 11/18/2007 12:41 PM (GMT -5)

jbmelby said...

This is all very reminiscent of the problems that I had with the earlier Finale versions of about fifteen years ago, which were without a doubt the buggiest programs that it has ever been my misfortune to encounter. And I'm realizing anew how glad I am that I chose to switch to Sibelius several years ago.

WOuld dumping the files into XML and then importing into Sibelius be an option? Not sure it would help, but you might some interesting results!

jbmelby
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 39

Posted 11/18/2007 1:07 PM (GMT -5)

I'd already thought of that. However, the XML file is so large that Sibelius chokes upon trying to open it.

SF
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 1555

Posted 11/18/2007 4:12 PM (GMT -5)

John said...
...I'm realizing anew how glad I am that I chose to switch to Sibelius several years ago.

It will be interesting to see how well Sibelius can handle it's files after they are 11 years old like your 3.7.2 files. How does it handle the old Acorn files?

I've heard a few problems with Finale on Lepoard but not many, except the crash on Quit. Although it's easy to blame MakeMusic I would have to say with all of the problems coming to surface regarding Leopard it's probably best to stay away from it until Apple has ironed out the bugs.

Good luck,
SF

jbmelby
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 39

Posted 11/18/2007 5:13 PM (GMT -5)

Well, I fixed it by reverting to Finale 2007 and copying and inserting the second file at the end of the first. All of my formatting was preserved. The plug-ins menu is there, and everything works like a charm.

John Melby
Emeritus Professor of Music
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

http://www.johnmelby.com

Mac Pro, Mac OS 10.5.1, Sibelius 5.1, Finale 2008, Pro Tools M-Powered 7.4, M-Audio Firewire 410

jbmelby
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 39

Posted 11/18/2007 5:33 PM (GMT -5)

SF said...
I've heard a few problems with Finale on Lepoard but not many, except the crash on Quit. Although it's easy to blame MakeMusic I would have to say with all of the problems coming to surface regarding Leopard it's probably best to stay away from it until Apple has ironed out the bugs.

That may be true—but it does seem a little odd that everything seems to straighten out when I revert to the previous version of Finale. The only anomaly that I've seen with both 2007 and 2008 is the crash notice upon quit. I've had very good results so far with Leopard, aside from a few minor things that one has to expect with a new version of the OS. As always, YMMV.

Mike Rosen
himself

Date Joined Feb 2006
Total Posts : 14146

Posted 11/18/2007 5:57 PM (GMT -5)

jbmelby said...

Just an observation, and intending to cast no aspersions on the posters quoted above...

I find it interesting that users seem to expect and excuse problems with a new OS, but go completely ballistic when a new version of an application is flawed.

Mike Rosen

www.specialmillwork.com

WebLackey for the Seattle SeaChordsmen

www.seachordsmen.org

PrintMusic 2006 on the PC: Simple Entry, QWERTY keyboard. That's my system, and I'm stickin' to it.

Nightingale on the Ol' Macintosh

Favorite reference: Essential Dictionary of Music Notation, Gerou & Lusk, 1996

"As a musician, he's a damn fine woodworker."

jbmelby
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 39

Posted 11/18/2007 8:12 PM (GMT -5)

Mike Rosen said...
I find it interesting that users seem to expect and excuse problems with a new OS, but go completely ballistic when a new version of an application is flawed.

Agreed. But I'd hardly call any post in this thread "going ballistic."

SF
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2001
Total Posts : 1555

Posted 11/18/2007 10:48 PM (GMT -5)

Hello Mike,

I hate to divert from the original thread...
I am one of those people who occasionally "go ballistic" about the app. but I have also got a lot riding on it. 100% of my livelihood and my clients' businesses rely on Finale. In some cases I am the only voice my clients have due to their lack of knowledge of the inner workings and history of Finale. They just know something is wrong. Not to mention the fact that there are so many old, outstanding issues not being addressed that it appears that MM is not listening. Over time as they add more bugs into the mix and don't fix the older bugs you start to get pretty fed up with the customer service and it comes out a little strong on the forums at times. I have issues with the OS but this is not the correct forum to address those issues. And frankly, most of the issues with Apple are addressed in a relatively quick fashion which is not the case with some of the problems still outstanding within Finale.

If Apple went away and the OS were gone, I would switch to Windows. I prefer the Mac interface but I wouldn't loose business and my clients wouldn't go under by switching operating systems. If Finale goes down in quality control with each release thousands of files can be infected with the "flaw of the day" and be extremely costly to correct and re-correct when they finally fix the flaw two versions later. Worse yet is if Finale dies then a large number of companies are going to have to switch to a different notation package and be forced to create new engravings. Yes this would be a boon for engravers but would hurt the publishing industry.

The app. drives our businesses not the OS.

I realize you said you were not referring to the posters and I never took it that way but I thought I would give you my take on the situation.

Now back to the topic at hand...how's it going John?

John said...
Well, I fixed it by reverting to Finale 2007 and copying and inserting the second file at the end of the first. All of my formatting was preserved. The plug-ins menu is there, and everything works like a charm.

For my own info:
Are you saying that the file came over perfectly formatted in 2007?
Did you have to use the plugins to get the formatting correct?
If you did it in 2007 are you saying that 2008 gave you different results?

Thanks,
SF

Mike Rosen
himself

Date Joined Feb 2006
Total Posts : 14146

Posted 11/19/2007 12:49 AM (GMT -5)

Mike Rosen said...
I find it interesting that users seem to expect and excuse problems with a new OS, but go completely ballistic when a new version of an application is flawed.

I was speaking in general terms; yes, this thread is polite and to the point. Would that they all were...

Yes, SF, MM should fix the bugs, particularly the long-standing ones, and the new ones which interfere with productivity, immediately. There is no excuse for forcing users to wait for a major update, when a number of minor ones would keep so many people happy. My point is simply that p***ing and moaning doesn't appear to get them fixed any faster, and if the new version doesn't work, go back to an older one that does, until the new one is fixed.

Go back to your original discussion, and my apologies for appearing to hijack your thread. It was unintentional.

Mike Rosen

www.specialmillwork.com

WebLackey for the Seattle SeaChordsmen

www.seachordsmen.org

PrintMusic 2006 on the PC: Simple Entry, QWERTY keyboard. That's my system, and I'm stickin' to it.

Nightingale on the Ol' Macintosh

Favorite reference: Essential Dictionary of Music Notation, Gerou & Lusk, 1996

"As a musician, he's a damn fine woodworker."

jbmelby
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 39

Posted 11/19/2007 8:36 AM (GMT -5)

SF said...
For my own info:
Are you saying that the file came over perfectly formatted in 2007?
Did you have to use the plugins to get the formatting correct?
If you did it in 2007 are you saying that 2008 gave you different results?

Yes, everything worked in 2007 without the use of plug-ins. In 2008, things were badly skewed rhythmically. I was unable to use plug-ins in 2008 because the plug-ins menu did a disappearing act. Robert Piéchaud, who wrote Finale/ScoreMerger, is looking into the problem to see if it can be fixed.

Dr. Wiggy
Early music: modern methods

Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 12628

Posted 11/19/2007 9:11 AM (GMT -5)

The problem with the plug-ins folder in 2008 can be reapired with a utility such as FileBuddy. You need to set the package/bundle flag.
This can also be done with the CLI command SetFile, if you have installed the Developers' Tools. There have been several threads about this.

jbmelby, From your sig block you are running Leopard with M-audio hardware. How's that working for you? M-Audio have yet to provide drivers for Leopard, and that's the one thing thats holding me back from upgrading.

Finale 2008, 2Ghz iMac, M-Audio Audiophile USB
Ancient Groove Music
www.ancientgroove.co.uk

jbmelby
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 39

Posted 11/19/2007 10:15 AM (GMT -5)

Wiggy said...
jbmelby, From your sig block you are running Leopard with M-audio hardware. How's that working for you? M-Audio have yet to provide drivers for Leopard, and that's the one thing thats holding me back from upgrading.

I'm running Pro Tools M-Powered 7.4 with the M-Audio Firewire 410 using driver version 1.8.2, and so far I've had not a single problem. Occasionally when I open a program with audio output after running Pro Tools, I get distorted sound and have to go into the M-Audio driver preference pane and toggle the sync from internal to external and back again to reset it, but that has nothing to do with Leopard—it happened with Tiger, too. And BTW, PTMP 7.3.x runs fine with Leopard also.

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