Hi All, now that the PyroJam competition is over (congrats to the winners, looking forward to being there in person), I wanted to share some of my thought on using Finale 3D, now that I finally got them down on paper. This was really my first time seriously using Finale and first and foremost, I found it a great piece of software to use. It is very user friendly and intuitive. However, being the good engineer, I have a few fixes and improvements I’d like to see. Please take these with a grain of salt since I am a true novice and may not have found some of these in the software. Also, these comments are limited to scripting as I didn’t do anything with addressing, site layout, or rack design and are based on version 2024.02.23-18f9290b1.   Fixes: – In the script window, when setting a filter for cue count, it only shows the first 999 cues. It should go all the way to the end of the show. – In the script window “Part Number” is available to be used as a filter. However, it is not available in the effect window. This would be very handy to have in the effect window as well. – In the “Render Settings”, all the settings seem to save between session of using Finale, except “Particle Limit”. Please consider having “Particle Limit” save between sessions. – Similar to other Windows applications, pressing Ctrl the dragging an item or items will copy them in the timeline or in the render window. However, unlike other windows applications, you cannot drag the item(s) then press Ctrl to copy. Please fix so that order of operation doesn’t matter.   Improvements: – Sometimes, I found I was accidentally opening a window (example, the fan window) and wanted to get out of it right away using the keyboard. I found myself hitting ESC to close the window, but that doesn’t work. I would suggest having ESC assigned as the cancel button. – Being used to the Windows standard redo of Crtl-Y, it took a while to get used to Ctrl-Shift-Z for redo, I would suggest adding Crtl-Y as redo. – It would be nice to have the ability to adjust playback speed in the simulation and not just when generating a video to help fine tune timing. – A few times I just wanted to see what a single cue looked like. An isolated window that showed just a preview of the selected cue might be helpful. – Several times I created an effect on one side of the layout but wanted to quickly mirror it to the other side using the same timing and effects, just the opposite angles. A mirror function would be really handy instead of manually having to set the other side up.   Really Cool Idea: – Any thoughts about integrating VR headsets (like Oculus) into Finale 3D? I think that would be totally amazing to watch a simulation in a fully immersive 3D environment!!!   Thanks for listening, Tim

Thanks…just thinking out loud here…it would be nice if each entry into My Effects had an immutable ID/index field that was used on the back end to allow part changes like this without having to to bulk replacements in existing shows.  Probably more difficult than I’m expecting but … 🙂     Thanks   J

Yes, it’s as simple as Ctrl+A (Select all), Ctrl+C (Copy), paste in Excel, do cleanup. When you’re to bring everything back, delete everything in My Effects, copy/paste from Excel, and ‘Sync with network’ to save.   You’re instinct to be concerned about in-progress shows is totally justified. The script events are linked to the effect definitions in the ‘Per-show effects’ collection. Updating My Effects won’t “break” shows. However, if you want the shows to reflect the new part numbers, you’ll need to replace items that have obsolete part numbers with the equivalent new items. By contrast, if you were to change part numbers directly in ‘Per-show effects’, this would break the links to the script events (not good).

I need to do a huge cleanup of part numbers/description in ‘My Effects’ to align with a much more usable schema.  Is it as simple as export the entire contents of ‘My Effects’ as XLSX, make all the edits (Part Number, Description, etc.), delete everything from ‘My Effects’ in Finale and copy/paste in everything from the XSLX?  Want to make sure I’m not missing something here. And I’d assume it’s best to do this with no actual shows open.  I’m a bit paranoid so probably overthinking this….   Additional question just popped into my head that is a bit scary…if part numbers change is this going to break shows already partially created with the old numbers ?

Not that it’s difficult to convert inches to mm, but having the option in the Physical Specifications for racks to change to imperial measurements would be nice as well as a rack weight field (useful for verifying total equipment load on a trailer/barge/floating dock)

Thanks

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.