DrewFinale I was able to recreate the bug… here’s the VDL that is causing the bug: 1.2″ 15.00s 49 Shot 50 Degrees (a) Cake Very Long Long Slightly Dense Very Small Very Dim Kamuro Ear w/ Sparse Very Dim Very Small Blue Ear Z Shape Fan, 7 Rows, Row 7 (aaaaaaa/FNR/0.5)   Changed to this: 1.2″ 15.00s 49 Shot 50 Degrees (a) Very Long Long Slightly Dense Very Small Very Dim Kamuro Ear w/ Sparse Very Dim Very Small Blue Ear Cake Z Shape Fan, 7 Rows, Row 7 (aaaaaaa/FNR/0.5)   Both have the angles panned 90° when looking at the “Front” in Lite.   I’ll video here in a little bit if needed still but here’s the screenshot of the Pan:

At a quick glance, I don’t think there’s a supported path. Ignite lets you make a script in their app or via the free show designer (skinned cobra show creator).  However, there’s no import options that I see outside of using the 4 digit code to get data back and forth between the website and your local app.   If you felt ambitious, you could see if this ultimately just syncs a typical cobra’ish’ CSV to the local device and there’s no front end UI to touch it. You could then try to move the CSV into the right location if you exported it from Finale3D, but I think you’d be clearly down the unsupported “do so at your own risk” path.  That’s assuming they even have a human readable file.  If they do, it might break in the future if they decide to encrypt it or store it in some proprietary format.

Hey Curtis B, Finale 3D can’t currently export to Ignite because the Ignite system doesn’t have a defined script file format. If a script file format is defined by the manufacturer in the future, or if an API is made available, then we can support it. You could certainly design a show in Finale 3D that you plan to shoot with Ignite, but I think you would have to manually port the show over to the Ignite ecosystem.

Has ignite integration been introduced into Finale 3D yet? If not, has anyone utilized Finale to script a show for the Ignite firing system?

It would be nice to have a dedicated interface for creating effects…   When you click on “Create Effect” or “Edit Effect in VDL window” it would pull up a unique interface that would allow the user to make changes and see them real time. It would be similar to the effects editor window but instead of an entire timeline and full blown visual window, it would size the visual window to the specific size of the effect you are making and the timeline would only be as big as needed for your effect. Another attribute of this would be to return the “play” cursor to the beginning of the timeline so you could see your effect in its entirety without having to press the “beginning” button.   Another VDL term I would like to see would be the terms Soft and Loud to either decrease or increase the noise of salutes so you don’t have to go into the effects editor to increase or reduce the noise of the break. This would also be helpful when designing new product that has a silent break (like horsetails, falling leaves, etc.) so you can finely tune the VDL without having to go into the effects editor.   Another feature that would be nice would be to have the ability to create multiple “My Effects” databases so you can have various different personal catalogues saved. For instance, if you have product from years 2020, 2023, and 2024 but they all have various PFT, then it would be nice to have databases to account for this. Another instance this would be useful for would be different shooting sites. Some sites require more PFT due to the proximity of sound and pyro to the crowd where others can get by with little to no PFT. You could utilize a “Create Effect Database” under your profile this way and customize the name for each database you create.

DrewFinale the main reason I created a cake from several “cakes” for this effect was due to the nature of how the term “Above” was working. It didn’t seem like it wanted to the gold glittering above the green strobe no matter how I tried. I wound up utilizing the “HTM” term for each part of the effect and then combined those effects as a cake. I then spread those “cakes” on a timeline and specified their degrees because the specific effect has a blank space from about -10° to 10° when you look at the actual video.   I think the only way to make this cake properly is to use Exact Syntax (not effects editor) as due to the blank space in the middle. Maybe I’m missing something but I don’t think you could create 2 “fans” that fire at the same time using the cake descriptors of FNL/FNR.

Two comments:   1) I built out a “Community Library” Google Sheets document last year, but it fell by the wayside with other priorities. I’d be willing to give ownership to a set of others if there’s interest in trying to maintain it.  Maybe I was too ambitious about the goal of tracking more metadata than VDL. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tsA5V5laZCikZh0EsxEjJMLMiOl1NZ9eaapP13lCIlg/edit?usp=sharing   2) Could we get a poll setup about which product catalogs users want prioritized for Cake/VDL creation?  I saw some debate in the Nov 2023 Cakes thread on this as well. I think there’s regional preference for sure, but have no clue how it shakes out across the entire user base.  Brothers cakes are very popular (available?) in the WI area.  

Can we split the syncing of My Effects from all the other network operations that happen when we “Sync with Network”?  99% of the time, I just want to save My Effects to the cloud and move on. The extra time rechecking all the inventory catalogs I subscribed to is unnecessary and slows me down. It could save a bit of traffic to your servers too!.  Just something like “Save My Effects”.

Can we get an enhancement to suppress the “Success!” window that pops up after every effect edited? I don’t recall ever seeing an error, but even if there is something that could wrong, I’d suggest the UI should only show when this exception state happens.  Otherwise, it’s just another dialog box I’m regularly dismissing and not reading.

I noticed something this year that I didn’t see last year related to sequences. When I select many individual effects in my timeline and try to sequence them (hotkey H), I find that my last effects are sometimes shuffled into the middle of the string of other effects. This is the primary way I would make my cakes in the past with individual effects and then to get the timing right, select the various groups I built and set the time.  I can get something close by using the stretch duration option, but why is sequencing changing the order of my effects?   it’s not super obvious here, but in the before, effect 22 becomes effect 16 after sequencing.  Is this in some way expected?   I do have a fin file that shows