Update messed up my effects?
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Walker PyrotechnicsJoined: Dec 2021 Posts: 34 Location: Vicksburg, MI 
CharcoalI have updated to the most recent version, actually the last 3 versions, and a significant number of my created effects are messed up. This is especially true of swimming stars (go getters), falling leaves, zippered comets, and crossettes. Is there a way to get my old VDL back?
DrewFinaleJoined: Dec 2019 Posts: 468 Location: United States 
SilverNot to worry, your VDL hasn’t changed, it’s the way your VDL is being interpreted (i.e., parsed) by Finale 3D that has changed. There is a known bug with falling leaves in cakes. The bug was introduced in the June 20th beta release, and should be fixed in the next beta release. We’re not aware of bugs with other effects, but it’s possible given all the recent work in this area. To help us fix the effects, please send a show file with one of each broken effect on the timeline to support@finale3d.com. After you send the show file, you can get your effects working again just by rolling back to the release you were running before your updated.
Walker PyrotechnicsJoined: Dec 2021 Posts: 34 Location: Vicksburg, MI CharcoalDrewFinaleJoined: Dec 2019 Posts: 468 Location: United States SilverThanks for the heads up on these effects. I fixed up all the cakes you mentioned, go ahead and give them another try.
The root cause of the issue is a longstanding deficiency in VDL that we recently fixed. The deficiency was that the VDL term “Go Getter” was being translated to “Scattering”. In other words, in older releases of Finale 3D, anytime you typed “Go Getter”, it was being replaced with “Scattering”. This was no good because Go Getters and Scattering stars are not the same effect. Now that Go-Getters and Scattering are being treated as different effects, all I had to do to fix the cakes was replace “Scattering” with “Go Getter” in each cake’s VDL.
Walker PyrotechnicsJoined: Dec 2021 Posts: 34 Location: Vicksburg, MI Charcoal
Pyro_37110000Joined: Aug 2020 Posts: 5 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio, United States 
NewcomerWalker PyrotechnicsJoined: Dec 2021 Posts: 34 Location: Vicksburg, MI CharcoalHi Drew,
I found this out as well. Many are much more beautiful but many have been reinterpreted by the software and need to be checked. I assume that once you use the effect editor, all changes due to software interpretation are impossible?
Yeah, I now am still having issues getting any go-getter effects to look normal again. This also messed up a lot of the catalog effects, like the Dominator slices with Go-getters.
Walker PyrotechnicsJoined: Dec 2021 Posts: 34 Location: Vicksburg, MI CharcoalAnother issue I am having tonight: I am creating effects and they are not saving anywhere in my effects catalog. I have created a new effect and saved it in myeffects and in per-show effects and when I search for it, it is not there. I just downloaded the beta update this morning, and I am wondering if this is an issue with this latest release?
DrewFinaleJoined: Dec 2019 Posts: 468 Location: United States SilverAnother issue I am having tonight: I am creating effects and they are not saving anywhere in my effects catalog. I have created a new effect and saved it in myeffects and in per-show effects and when I search for it, it is not there. I just downloaded the beta update this morning, and I am wondering if this is an issue with this latest release?
I just did a couple quick tests and I wasn’t able to reproduce the issue in the 2023.07.21 beta release. In my first test, I created a new effect and added it to My Effects. When I clicked the enter button in the create effect dialog, the new item was added to My Effect and automatically highlighted. I also did a Sync with network to save the effect and everything worked normally. In my second test, I created a new effect and saved it to Per-show effects without any issues.
There might be something I’m doing differently than what you’re doing on your end. If you can give us some more details to help us reproduce the issue we’ll look into it right away.
DrewFinaleJoined: Dec 2019 Posts: 468 Location: United States SilverHi Drew,
I found this out as well. Many are much more beautiful but many have been reinterpreted by the software and need to be checked. I assume that once you use the effect editor, all changes due to software interpretation are impossible?
When you say, “many have been reinterpreted”, do you mean go-getter effects, or other kinds of effects? If you have other kinds of effects that aren’t working we are very interested in getting those fixed.
We’ve been working on VDL improvements for a long time. One of the reasons it has taken so long is that we’ve gone to painstaking lengths to try to make sure that existing effects don’t break. Go-getter effects are sort of an exception. We don’t have any way to keep go-getter effects from needing fix-up because go-getters never really existed before. Until recently, when you typed “Go-Getter”, it was translated to “Scattering”. That was no good because go-getter and scattering are not the same effect. So, on the plus side, now go-getters actually exist. The downside is you have to replace Scattering with Go-Getter in the VDL for your effects. It’s also totally fair to say that the new go-getters don’t look great yet. We’ll get them looking better as soon as we can.
You can think of using the Effect Editor sort of like going through a one-way door. Once you go through, there’s no going back. In other words, once you create a custom effects in the effect editor, it is no longer represented by VDL. After you create a custom effect, you can no longer use VDL to tweak the effect. Also, future VDL changes/improvements won’t change the appearance of the effect.
Pyro_37110000Joined: Aug 2020 Posts: 5 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio, United States Newcomer
Phil (Fire In the Sky Pyrotechnics)Joined: Aug 2022 Posts: 12 Location: Kissimmee, Florida NewcomerMy software is telling me that I am 12 days behind, so I downloaded the latest beta. When I moved the file to my archive it was already there. It seems the beta listed is listed as 2023-07-21. Yet the full release is listed as 2023-07-27. Was the 2023-07-27 version released as a beta?
DrewFinaleJoined: Dec 2019 Posts: 468 Location: United States SilverMy software is telling me that I am 12 days behind, so I downloaded the latest beta. When I moved the file to my archive it was already there. It seems the beta listed is listed as 2023-07-21. Yet the full release is listed as 2023-07-27. Was the 2023-07-27 version released as a beta?
Yes, the 2023.07.27 release was initially published as a beta before being promoted to a full release. You may have received a notification because a new beta release was published today (12 days after the last beta release).
PyrorororoJoined: Jan 2022 Posts: 19 Location: United States NewcomerThe custom effect editor seems to have changed significantly on recent releases. Is there an update to the guide showing which terms got consolidated? It seems like there used to be more twirl down menus, and now I’m getting disoriented on customizing some of these sparks.
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