Serious problem with Export to Audio File

[Jack Clark]

I've stumbled onto what appears to be a very serious problem with my Finale product: When I'm using Export to Audio File to overwrite an existing audiofile—like after I've made a change to the score in my Finale SongWriter2010—it tells me that an audiofile by that name already exists and asks me if I really want to overwrite it. It also gives me a choice of Cancel or Replace. When I click on Replace, it acts as if it then overwrites the file. But it does not. And it gives me no indication that it hasn't, either. I've tried playing them back in Audiolobe, in iTunes, and directly in QuickTime—the changes aren't there. And File Info does not show that any modification has been made to the file, either.

I don't know how long this has been happening; I've just now discovered it. I'm now left to wonder how many changes I've made to written scores that were never incorporated into the new audiofiles I made from them. I'll now have to go back and examine each score, note by note, while listening to the audiofile for comparison. This is most disappointing.

The only work around I've found with regard to using Export to Audio File in the future is to save the modified audiofile to a different name. Then go in manually delete the old audiofile. Then rename to new audiofile to the old file name that I really want.

Hasn't anyone else experienced this problem? Does anybody have any idea why this is happening to me? This can't be just a Settings problem, can it? Do I have a corrupted file? Which one? What do I need to do to fix this for future use of Export to Audio File?

[Warren Barnett]

Please open a case with MakeMusic support for this. They would know best if it is a known bug, and if it isn't known, they should know about it.

[Jack Clark]

Hi, Wayne. Yeah, I sent it to MM support, but it's pretty hard to report something like this. For one thing about ten minutes after I posted, it started working again. By that I mean that it began modifying audio files again. The ones I had tried to modify without success remained unmodified.

This is not good. It means that: (a) I've still got to check my past audio files to see if they have all the modifications I've made; and (b) I won't ever be able to trust Export to Audio File again--each time I modify a file I'll have to remember to immediately check in File Info to make sure that it shows that a file I just modified shows a current "last-modified" time. Not good.

[Jack Clark]

Just an Update: The problem continues intermittently. And to make matters worse, sometimes the "time modified" stamp will change yet the old playback tempo persists. The only way I've found to save my work is to cut and paste the staves into a fresh template. Then I can successfully change the tempo of the tune. Rather a time-consuming workaround, though.

[Warren Barnett]

Probably the best course of action is to be consistant when saving files, always adding a date and/or time to the filename.