first measure (more or less) disappeared

[mmike]

To inaugurate the new year and the new forum ....
I had a strange problem with the attached example ("strange"), which is supposed to look like the other one ("correct"). At some point something happened to the first measure, which seems to have been compressed to an infinitesimal width. No matter what I did to it, I could not resolve it. It's no problem, I did fix it by going back to an .asv file and inserting the first three measures, but I am really curious to find out what the problem actually might have been. Any ideas?
Happy New Year,
mm

[N Grossingink]

The first measure is defined as a pickup measure with a duration of 6 edu, which is a very short duration, hence the minimal width. Clearing the pickup clears up the problem, except for the dotted 1024th note, or whatever it is. Looks like it should be a quarter note?

N.

[mmike]

yes, a quarter note, as shown in the correct example. is there some short-cut for creating a pick-up measure that I might inadvertently have evoked? and what would change a quarter note to 1024th? weird, but thanks anyway

[N Grossingink]

As I mentioned, the pickup measure is set to a value of 6 edu. A quarter note is 1024 edu, so you can see how unreasonable this is. This suggests to me that the file was somehow "tainted" by some other process. This reminds me of some of the weird errors that I've read occur when printed music is scanned and imported into Finale.

N.

[miker]

Yes. Pickups are a problem with scanning. They do show up in the scan as duration errors, and there is a way to correct it in SmartScore Pro, but the correction is not at all intuitive. I leave them, and correct them easily in Finale.

As I've said many times, the better you know both programs, the easier it is to decide when and where to make corrections.

[mmike]

I'm sure you're right about scanning being problematic, but there was no scanning involved here whatsoever. It was all originally entered via a MIDI keyboard. Somehow I must have at some point done something weird to cause this. It's never happened before (and may never do so again). I was just curious to find out what might have done it. But to have pinned it down to a strange pickup measure having been created somehow, that was good sleuthing. Would never have thought of that.