Looking for in-person help

[GarryW]

I haven't been able to find a good workaround for my most recent Finale bug. (See viewtopic.php?t=17669.) And I've started thinking my world might be a generally better place if I were to switch from using "Layers as parts" to using "Parts" as parts instead. Duh. But, it's rather late in the day to make a major switch like that. Without guidance.

So... would there be an experienced user here that I might be able to hire, in person, to help me make a smooth and graceful transition? I have other questions too. I'm near Berkeley, California.

Thanks.

(I did find a clumsy work-around for the bug...)

[gogreen]

How many parts, or groups of parts, are in your fiddle tunes? If you could post a problem piece, I bet the experts here (of which I am not one) could find a solution.

Have you tried setting up each part in its own Aria instance? You can adjust the overall volume of each part better this way. You could also adjust balance with redefined and/or hidden dynamics.

Art

[motet]

I think the reason you didn't get a response to your other posting is it's not clear what you're doing. What do you mean by playing back a layer?

Try going to Document / Manage Parts, click New Part, then Specify voicing, where you can restrict the part to a single layer. Then back at the Document menu, pick Edit Part, choose your part, and play that back.

[N Grossingink]

The old saying goes "A picture is worth a thousand words". If you'd post a one page Finale file that exhibits the problem and provide a simple explanation of what you want, you might get some worthwhile responses.

N.

[GarryW]

I've been asked to post an example.In an effort to isolate the problem, I managed to strip down my large original file considerably, but not completely. (The number of instances and locations of the instances are very sensitive to the current contents of the file.) So it's on purpose that Layer 1 of page 1 has only one staff system filled. Please see attached.

To demonstrate the problem (at least on my machine)...

open the file,
make sure "View / Select Layer" equals "1",
make sure you're in "View / Page View".
make sure that "Document / Show Active Layer Only" is "on".
make sure that page 1 is indeed showing in your Layer 1 color.
space-click the last bar in page 1 to start playback.
the playback quickly flips to page 2 (of course.)
on my machine, Finale wrongly displays Layer ==2== of page 2, using the Layer 2 color.
click anywhere to stop the playback.
on my 2014.5 the screen instantly flips back to showing Layer 1 (of page 2) after all.
on my 26, I do a page-up/page-down to force a screen refresh
on my 26, the refresh causes Layer 1 to be drawn after all.

The problem occurs on transition to many other pages as well; page 2 is just the first example in the file.

Thanks in advance for looking.

[motet]

I get your result if Page View Style is set to Looseleaf: Current page only.

It would appear to be a bug. Probably nothing to be done, I'm afraid. But why don't you take my advice above? It should take you all of five minutes.

[GarryW]

Motet: thanks for checking. I'm glad the bug is reproducible and that I'm not crazy.

I'm sorry I didn't try your fix (i.e., using Parts to select the visible Layers) right away. It's my bad.

It's ingenious. And it works.

But: if I use Document / Edit Score, I see everything just the same as before the conversion. Including the bug. If instead I use Document / Edit Part / (name of Part), I see just the one layer in that Part. And I can play it back, without any hitch in the display (at least, in my initial testing.)

Unfortunately, the Part loses all the page layout that the whole score possesses. And I have a lot. Is there a way to tell the Parts to inherit layout from the (single-staff) Score?

[motet]

Not that I know of. There's a free plug-in, JW Copy Part Layout, but it doesn't appear to work from the score, just from one part to another.

[GarryW]

With "JW Copy Part Layout" I would have to re-enter the current Layout once, rather than four times. It's a start.