Effect End Timing
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Hi PyroExec, welcome to the Finale 3D community! Thanks for posting and for including the screenshot, that gives us a lot of useful information and makes it much easier to understand what you’re seeing on your end.
To understand the difference you’re seeing, the first thing to know is that the timeline duration bars take into account not only the primary effect duration, but also the nominal duration of any sparks emitted by the primary effect. To illustrate this is practical terms, suppose you created the following two shell effects:
Effect 1) 3″ 2.00s Red Peony
Effect 2) 3″ 2.00s Charcoal Chrysanthemum
As you can see in the VDL above, both of these shells have a duration of exactly 2 seconds. This means that the time from burst to when the stars burn out will be 2 seconds for both shells. However, as you can see in the screenshot below, the shells have duration bars on the timeline that are very different. This is because while the Red Peony stars immediately disappear after 2 seconds, the trails of charcoal sparks left behind by the Charcoal Chrysanthemum stars continue to be visible and hang in the sky (even after the stars reached the end of their life). This is an example of how two effects with the same star duration can appear in the sky for different amounts of time. The effect window lists the primary duration, while the 3D simulation and duration bars indicate the full visible duration for an effect.
You are probably thinking, okay, so what does this have to do with my silver ground strobe? The answer has to do with how Finale 3D handles “Silver”. The Chinese frequently use “Silver” and “White” interchangeably when describing effects. However, in order to avoid ambiguity, Finale 3D has a distinct definition for each color. The key difference is that “Silver” gives an effect a trail of silver sparks, where as “White” does not. You’re not seeing this when your strobes are on the ground, but your “Silver Strobe” is actually giving off a tiny silver trail, like a tiny fountain of silver sparks. In the screenshot below, you can see I’ve elevated the positions in the air which makes the silver sparks easy to see. It’s the duration of these silver sparks that are making the duration bar longer, just like they do in the example with the red peony versus the charcoal chrysanthemum. To fix the issue, right click on your silver strobe, select Edit this item (VDL), and change your VDL to use the term “White” instead of “Silver”.
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