Hey there, Phil! I think your question touches on exactly what the contest is about — 😀 to see how different people handle creating sims for the various effects using the VDL system, knowing that the effects won’t always be completely accurate, that VDL is limited, and that peoples’ knowledge and experience with the system varies wildly, to see what methods and syntax people use to create the most accurate and useful sims.   To get the delayed effect you’re describing, you could try experimenting with the VDL effect adjustment terms related to duration, like “long”, etc. For example, “Long Red Peony to Crackling Flowers” will delay the crackling flowers part of the effect.   For single effects, you can also specify exact duration of the stars in seconds by just adding that to the VDL description. For example, “4s Red Peony to Crackling Flowers” will give you ~4 seconds of the “Red Peony” part of the effect before transitioning to the “Crackling Flowers” part. Keep in mind that if you want to specify an exact duration like this for an effect within a cake VDL (rather than a single shot effect), you will need to include the term “DUR” to specify your duration for that effect (like “4s DUR Red Peony to Crackling Flowers”). Otherwise, if you just include “4s” alone, Finale will see that as the overall cake duration. See more about this on the VDL timing adjustment terms page.

I have looked over the latest VDL documentation and I still cannot find a descriptive term that tells the VDL to delay the second defined effect.  VDL like red peony to crackle flower, fires the crackle flower much too soon to accurately depict some the cake effects.

  Pyro_1990000 wrote: How did you get on with getting an API I am building my own software to feed to the market that does all our tracking aswell as all our permits shipping etc and an api into finale would work wonders     Would appreciate it a lot.

  Pyro_269620000 wrote: For example, if you were creating the effects individually to get the desired look, timing, etc. Then highlight/select them all to “combine as cake effect.” under the effects tab. Is that allowed? Thanks Yes, in fact, the completed full VDL for each cake is what you need to submit for the contest. VDL for individual effects from within cakes (i.e. individual cake shots) can’t be submitted.    

For example, if you were creating the effects individually to get the desired look, timing, etc. Then highlight/select them all to “combine as cake effect.” under the effects tab. Is that allowed? Thanks

Circling back with a forum post to help anyone who may run into this issue in the future…   The problem with the show is that the camera exposure duration was not set to 0. You can tell because when the show is paused, the effects appear like as would in a long-exposure photo. This probably happened inadvertently when using the ‘Create photo’ feature. To fix the issue, go to ‘Window (menu) > Per-show settings window’, find the ‘cameraExposureDuration’ setting and change the value to 0.   We occasionally get reports of this issue, but we’ve never been able to reproduce it. If you find a way to consistently get it to happen, please let me know so we can try to fix the root cause.

  Pyro_269620000 wrote: Good Morning!   Are we allowed to combine effects to make the cake? The VDL does get lengthy. Thanks, C   Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean by ‘combine effects’, can you give me an example?

Good Morning!   Are we allowed to combine effects to make the cake?  The VDL does get lengthy.  Thanks, C

You mentioned the issue only occurs on a couple recently designed shows. In that case, it seems likely that the problem may be show-file specific, not release-version-specific. To determine if the problem is a recent Finale 3D release or the show file itself, try installing an older release and see if you’re able to reproduce the issue. If the playback is glitchy when you roll back, the problem is most likely something in the show. If you find the show file is the culprit, send it to support@finale3d.com and we’ll troubleshoot.

Hi all anyone else having massive glitching when playing back your shows it is only on a couple of newly designed shows. I have checked setting and all is good so wondering if there is an issue from the last update