Hi bozie8823, you can bring in empty cues by making a spreadsheet with just two columns – see example below. This format will allow you to add as many empty cues as you like simply using copy/paste, you don’t need to seed the script window with anything in advance. You can actually bring in empty cues with just the eventTime column, but the…Read More

Hi Josh, the Cobra system has three semi-automatic firing modes, “Separate Scripts By Tracks”, “Step By Tracks”, and “Step By Events”. You can read more about the modes in our Cobra documentation here: https://finale3d.com/documentation/cobra-script-file-format/

Here’s a quick summary of the modes:

“Step By Events” – Use this mode to fire the…Read More

Hi NoéMaamar, reports (and labels) are extensively customizable in the Pro version of Finale 3D. It looks like your report is based on rows from the Script window. In that case, if you have Pro, you can customize the title of your report by going to the blue gear in the Script window > Edit report template > select your report. In the report…Read More

Have you tried creating the individual effects in the cake as single shots and arranging them on the timeline? Pretend for a moment that instead of a cake with fuse between each tube, this was a sequence of 100 single effects. If you can create the effects and script the sequence on your timeline, then all you have to do is select all 100 shots…Read More

Hi Walker Pyrotechnics, happy to help. To make this effect look really good, you definitely want to use the effect editor. As a base effect, I started with, White Strobe Peony w/Purple Peony w/Gold Palm Pistil. Then I jumped into the effect editor and started tweaking. I made a lot of tweaks but the most important change was to as just the number…Read More

Do you have a video of the cake?

Great answer, Dirk Enders – PyroOffice!

If you have the Pro version of Finale 3D, you can also customize your reports and labels from the blue gear menu in the Script window. For example, you could take a report that combines script rows that have the same address and change it to only combine the script rows that have the same address and…Read More

If the effect “Type” = “Flame”, you can edit the duration to be 2s and every instance of the effect in the show will be 2s.

If the effect “Type” = “SFX”, the duration of the effect will be adjustable, and each instance of the effect can have a unique duration.

Here’s a video…Read More

Yep, the last full release was in February. We’re in the final stages of testing and on the cusp of another full release, but still in beta at this moment.

You can manually enter a firing system address simply by typing in the ‘Rail’ and ‘Pin’ column of the script window. However, please keep in mind that empty cues are not included when you export your firing system script. If need a cue in your script for an effect that is not in your library, you will need to create a placeholder effect. The…Read More

If a cake fires L to R by default and would like it to fire in the opposite direction, you can just go to ‘Script > Angles > Rotate cakes 180 degrees’.

If a cake fires L to R by default and you would like it to fire from the center out, you will need to make a small change to the VDL. Before making any changes, I recommend making a copy of the…Read More

Not a stupid question, thanks for posting!

I think part of the confusion may stem from the fact that the “VDL” column doesn’t ultimately store the overall duration of cakes (and other effects). When you do ‘Effects > Create effect’, you can see that the full description of an effect is split into multiple fields, each of which are separate columns in the Effects window. Below is a…Read More

Hi Pyro_37130000, I just did a few experiments and wasn’t able to reproduce the behavior you described. Here are the steps that I took:

1) Create a spreadsheet with 3 columns, “Part Number”, “Description”, and “VDL”, as shown in the screenshot below.

2) Save the spreadsheet as a Text (.txt) file

3) In Finale 3D, import the file by…Read More

Hi Pyro_67840000, thanks for including the screenshot and a link to your show file, it is extremely helpful for troubleshooting.

I think at least part of the problem is that there are 39 items on the timeline after the end of your show. These items are also listed in the Script window. If these items are a mistake, then the easiest way to…Read More