Hello Pyro_86840000,   If your show has an asterisk after the title within Finale 3D (like the screenshot shown), it’s because the show has changes that haven’t been saved yet. The asterisk is an indicator of unsaved changes in the file. Is this what you mean or are you referring to an asterisk somewhere else?  

what does the asterisk at the end of my show title mean?  Only appears on one of my saved shows.

Hey Kristine Ernzen, cake timing is specified in a couple different places within the VDL. The total duration for the cake, such as “20s”, will appear near the beginning of the full VDL. Additionally, for cakes that have timing changes (i.e. faster and slower portions), the timing is defined later in the VDL for each row of the cake. For a deep dive on cake VDL descriptions, check out the Cake descriptions documentation article in the Help Center.   Depending on the complexity of the firing pattern for your cake, you may be able to adjust the duration and timing for each row by editing the VDL. If that doesn’t seem practical, you can break apart the cake, adjust the timing, then recombine the cake. Here are the steps:   1) Select the line for the cake in the effects window 2) Go to the Effects menu and select Break apart cake > From item in effects window (this opens a new show with the cakes shots on the timeline) 3) Adjust the timing of the shots on the timeline as needed. For example, you could select all the shots and do ‘Script (menu) > Time adjustments > Stretch duration‘ to lengthen or shorten the cake 4) Put the cake back together by selecting all the shots, then going to Effects > Combine as cake effect

I would like a “Totals” row in the script and effects window tables and include those in the print/export table views. I can get the info via the “Count” number in the design window, but I’d like to also include data in the printed/exported blueprints.

Good evening! I’m not sure if this is the right thread to ask this question but…..  I’ve created some effects in Finale that I am now trying to “edit” such as change the timing.  The original “cake” that I created was longer than what it needed to be so I’m attempting to change the timing from 90s to 36s but so far I have been unsuccessful.  I go into the VDL and change the seconds but when I save the changes nothing has actually changed.   Do I just need to create a whole new cake with the new timing?   Thanks!!

Great question, and one that I know will garner different opinions from designer to designer because the preferred approach depends as much on artistic preference as it does on other factors.   For my part, I’m a firm believer in aligning single shot effect times (represented by “blips” on the timeline) with the points in the music where you want the effects to visually appear. If there is a delay between the firing system ignition and the appearance of an effect in real life, then I would account for this time as Prefire (PFT). My reasoning is that this is both the most efficient approach based on Finale 3D’s effect-time-centric scripting paradigm, and because I’ve found it yields good real-world results.   To get the best real-world results, I think there’s absolutely no substitute for testing. If you want accurate timing, you just have to know your product and your firing system. So, then the question becomes, how do you conduct a test? One way to do this is by creating a beep track, scripting single shots with 0 PFT perfectly aligned with the beeps, then shooting the show with time code just like as if it were any other pyromusical. To measure the timing, record a video that captures the single shots at launch and the audible beeps from a close-by sound system.   The logic is that since the single shots were aligned precisely with the beeps in the script, any delay between the deeps and appearance of the single shots in the video can be accurately measured. This delay is the prefire time.   If you do a test like this, you might be surprised to find that even though firing systems apply power to e-matches instantaneously, it still takes a little time for an effect to be ignited and visible above the tube. In real life, you might even find that it “feels” better if the item appears slightly early which simply means you would want to use a slightly longer prefire. In Finale 3D, there is no delay, effects appear truly instantaneously, and it doesn’t “feel” good when they appear early, that’s why any single shot prefire less than 0.5s is treated as a delay before simulation.

My question relates to pft’s of simulation vs. real world firing of single shots. Since “Prefire < 0.5 defines delay before simulation,” in the animation of a ss with a pft of 0.2, for instance, we don’t see anything happening until the effect time. I believe that most firing systems fire instantaneously, so in the real world, we are going to see the item before we see it in the sim.   My question then to those of you who may have studied this is, is it better to use a small pft for single shots and align the blip exactly where you want it, or, for a better visual idea of what one can expect to see, to set the pft to 0.0, and back up the item on the timeline?   The reason for this: in many shows I’ve designed, I wonder why some shots just don’t seem to be timed as well as I expected. They looked great in simulation but not at the show.   Thanks

Thank you very much for your reply Neil. It’s exactly what I was looking for! Have a nice day!

Hello Pyro_88670000,   Sometimes MP3 files show artifacts like this when imported into Finale 3D due to the way the files are encoded and decoded, so this probably isn’t your fault or because you did anything wrong.   Here’s a post that addresses the MP3 issues and describes how to solve them: https://finale3d.com/groups/english/forum/topic/mp3-audio-issues-popping-clicking-static-when-importing-songs-into-finale-3d/

Hello everyone,   I’m writing to you because I can’t find the solution to my problem. If it has already been asked, I apologize for not finding it. When I import a soundtrack designed with Audacity, I get white noise (what I call graying) at the beginning of my soundtrack and throughout the mix (between each track).       Do you have any idea where this might have come from?   Thank you very much! 🙂