Hello,  my name is Matt Green.  I am from Avilla Indiana.   I own and operate Camtor Pyrotechnics, since 2004.  My introduction to fireworks started at a young age, as most of you probably have as well.  In 2003 I began my journey into the professional side, completely by accident.  A group of friends were just trying to figure out a way to legally purchase professional fireworks, and I volunteered to look into the process.   One thing led to another, and my wife and I decided to go all in and create a professional firework display company.  It started with just one show for several years, then quickly grew.  Now we do 40 plus displays a year and have a crew of 70 +/- .   We do a good portion of the displays in northeastern Indiana.  We are continuing to grow, but now the challenge is finding new crew members that are qualified and have the desire to do what we do.  Many quickly realize that this business requires a lot of time.  The long hot days, and sometimes back to back days, are not for everyone.  As we have evolved as a company, I have realized the benefits of scripting programs like Finale3d.   This program has saved so much time when putting shows together, and with all the new style of compound cakes it is so helpful to have the control on timing.   I look forward to talking with you all and hearing your stories!   Kind regards, Matt

Feature Request: Provide more details about changes when syncing My Effects   Finale shows a high level overview of changes when syncing My Effects back to the cloud (x rows added/deleted/changed), and “Show details” doesn’t show anything additional, On more than one occasion, I’ve seen more changes than I expected, but there’s no way to know what those changes are. I DON’T think Finale is doing something funky, but I’d still really like to know more about the changes are before I hit Apply Changes.   II would like Finale to show the description fields for added/deleted rows and the description + changed fields for changed rows (bonus points for showing a diff with old/new values). In the absence of a diff or showing the changed fields, at least knowing the description field for changed rows would let me check to see if there are unexpected changes (or cancel and look at the data more deeply).   For additional bonus points, it would be great to have this info for fdb files as well.   Thanks for considering! Rich (Finale user since 2014)

Feature request: Enable an event to be the start point for measuring duration on the timeline   When you click/hold on a spot on the timeline without an event on it and drag the mouse, the UI shows the duration from where you clicked to wherever your mouse is. This can be fiddly when there are nearby events and you can’t select an event as a starting point. A typical situation (at least for me) is trying to measure the duration from an event to somewhere else on the timeline (often another event). My ask is to make it possible to have an event as the “start” point for measuring this duration.   Proposal: When one event is selected, show the duration at the mouse location as it moves along the timeline. Because events highlight when you mouse over them, this enables seeing precise timing between the two events plus arbitrary timing when not mousing over an event. This could be “turned on” by holding shift, control, etc. after selecting the first event so as not to clutter the UI. Steps: 1. Select first event, 2. Hold down shift/control/alt (no real preference) 3. Move mouse on timeline (including over another event) 4. Observe current time at mouse location with duration from selected event at bottom of timeline   An alternative that covers just the “between two events” scenario is to always show the duration when an initial event is selected and the mouse hovers over a second event. This is more cumbersome because it requires creating temporary events on the timeline if you’re trying to measure to a point that doesn’t already have one, but is also simpler for the user because doesn’t require doing anything beyond having at least one event selected and hovering over another event. Steps: 1. Select first event 2. Hover over a 2nd event 3. Observe current time at mouse location with duration from selected event at bottom of timeline Note: For either implementation, if multiple events are selected, I think it would only consider the outermost selected event as the “start”.   Thanks for considering! Rich (Finale user since 2014)

Greetings, I am Kirk and I just moved to Las Vegas few months back from Philadelphia. I specialize in Close Prox and Special FX. We have a full service event production company and FX division. Stay safe and if anyone is in the Vegas area lets connect.

Welcome to the Finale 3D forum!   As you discovered, Finale 3D currently has a hard limit of 120 seconds for cakes.   As a workaround, you’ll need to make the cake in two parts and then put them back-to-back on the timeline. In order to have the cake parts treated as a single effect for addressing purposes, you can select both parts of the cake on the timeline and go to Script > Chains > Combine as chain. This fuses cake parts together and ensures that only one rail and pin will be assigned when you address your show.

So, I am trying to make a cake that is 138s long.   When creating, the program won’t go past 120s.    How do I overcome this?

Hi Ultimate Fireworks, check out this tutorial from the Finale 3D Master Class series by Dirk Enders in Germany:  

The arced cursor is used when dragging effect trajectories in the simulation portion of the design window. I’m not sure what could cause this cursor to be displayed in the timeline. Try restarting Finale 3D and see if that resolves the issue.

I’m eager to hear if you had success by following the instructions in my previous post. Hope to hear from you soon.