Finale Forum

When I click Show Active Layer Only (to show just layer 1), the spacing on the notes in many bars (treble) becomes ruined.

And if you go back and unclick Show Active Layer Only (hoping that finale might fix what it just ruined), the spacing on the notes in many bars (treble) remains ruined.

I asked MM about this, and their answer was...to say anything but to admit that this is a bug.

Does anyone here have any practical solutions?

Thanks.
Mac

Turn off Automatic Music Spacing (Finale Menu > Preferences > Edit). Does that do the trick?

The problem is that when you have "Show Active Layer Only" checked, any respacing Finale does as a matter of course does not take into consideration notes that are not visible.

Auto Spacing is only needed when you enter music, to space it so it looks correct. My advice would be to turn Auto Spacing OFF and Save Preferences so that every time you start Finale it will be disabled and your music will not change as you make changes and edits. You can run spacing manually if you need to - select the entire file or a small region and hit "4" on the keyboard. When you want to enter a piece from the beginning, turn Auto Spacing ON in the preferences; turn OFF when you're done.

N.

PS - To fix spacing on a file, show all layers and respace as above.

No, this happens with Layer 1 notes.
It has nothing to do with spacing of notes in another layer being hidden when hiding a layer.


Yes, if you turn off Automatic Spacing, then do Show Active Layer Only, it does not mess up the notes, but as a rule, I have Automatic Spacing on.

This is a bug, unless I am missing something here.

Select All and then press 4 and you'll see measures where you've done manual spacing being respaced in the same way as when you return from Show Active Layer only to showing all layers, so N is exactly right. If you want to leave Automatic Music Spacing on in general, turn it off when you do Show Active Layer.

Throwing away your manual edits when you respace is not great, but that's how Finale works, I'm afraid.

I never did any manual edits.

This document was made from a tiff import from smart score.

The spacing gets messed up IF you do Show Active Layer Only.

Sounds like Smart Score made "manual" edits.

Which measure in particular do you think is messed up when you return to showing all layers? I see little changes, say mm. 32-39, but I don't know that it's "messed up."

With "Automatic Spacing" on (which should NOT be a problem), when you do Show Active layer Only, bars 5 and 7 and 8 (for starters) (treble) are spaced so that notes are actually on top of each other (in the same bar).

See new upload for what this looks like.

OK, I saw what you were talking about. With AMS turned on, Show Active Layer Only does cause notes to shift, even if there are no notes in other layers. Turn AMS off, and it has no affect.

My suggestion: After the notes are in, turn AMS off. You no longer need it. Select the score, and tap the 4 key, to respace the overlapping notes.

It should not happen, but it does. You've found another bug. Move on.

This isn't a bug if you've asked the program to automatically re-space - it's doing what you asked. It is however really annoying if you FORGET that setting (which takes a fair few steps to un-select) and hide or show active layers, ruining careful manual repositioning throughout the score.

It shouldn't be too hard for MM to implement an additional option alongside Automatic Re-spacing:
DO NOT RE-SPACE ON HIDE/SHOW LAYERS

It must be either a Macintosh or a F25 bug, because it doesn't happen for me. There are slight differences from respacing as I say (e.g. m. 2, left hand), but mm. 5, 7, and 8 aren't affected at all!

If I would have known that you imported this music into Finale and not entered it using Finale's entry tools, my first suggestion would have been to manually run music spacing to make sure Finale properly "sees" what's there. Your problem is not a bug in Finale. It's a shortcoming of the various 3rd party methods to import notation into Finale - MIDI, XML, the various scanning and Stealware applications.

N.

Besides turning off Automatic Music Spacing (but leaving Automatic Update Layout ON at all times!), I would also make sure in cases like these that you have your Document Options/Music Spacing/Manual Positioning set to 'Clear' before doing any manual spacing of your own. Then at least you can be reasonably sure that Finale has a more or less clean plate from which to work, although N's point about importing music via scanning and stealware applications is well-taken.

motet wrote:It must be either a Macintosh or a F25 bug, because it doesn't happen for me. There are slight differences from respacing as I say (e.g. m. 2, left hand), but mm. 5, 7, and 8 aren't affected at all!

This "feature" is new to v25. When they developed the new 64bit version, some programming bugs got introduced. This is one of them.

Zuill

Aha! Thanks for clearing that up.

Perhaps Michael Good will see this.