Perfect Layout v1 - The ultimate plug-in for Finale released

[David Ward]

Ah thanks, that's a relief.

[Anders Hedelin]

Please excuse a perhaps ignorant question, but having applied the Perfect Layout to a score, would that in any way affect further manual adjustments? There are no elements 'locked', or made difficult to change, by the use of the plug-in?

Generally, a plug-in only does what you can do yourself, manually.
The plug-in is just faster.

Thanks for the reply. Maybe I'm oldfashioned enough to have a slightly superstitious view on plug-ins. As they could 'rob me' of some of my own control. But to be fair to Elbsound, here is what meets you when you start the plug-in (Perfect Layout):

Warning.JPG

A very fair warning. One that I've not seen with other plug-ins.

And I take it, that goes not for 'in case of a crash' only, but also in case of regretting what you've done.

[Peter Thomsen]

… I take it, that goes not for 'in case of a crash' only, but also in case of regretting what you've done.

In the case of ‘no crash’ you can always Undo:
Ctrl-Z
(Mac: Command-Z)

But if you get a crash, Undo may not be an option.

[motet]

Is there a way to trigger autosave? That would be better in case of a crash, in which case Finale would restore it automatically when you restarted.

[Anders Hedelin]

… I take it, that goes not for 'in case of a crash' only, but also in case of regretting what you've done.

In the case of ‘no crash’ you can always Undo:
Ctrl-Z

That is not what I meant. I once applied Patterson Beams to a full-length opera, saved it, and quit Finale. Afterwards I regretted it, but then it was to late - not an ideal situation! (I found no way to re-apply 'Finale beams'.) What I should have done, was to save a separate copy of the document before applying the plug-in. And that I will do, using Perfect Layout too.

[motet]

"Clear selected items" lets you choose "stem and beam alterations." Might that undo Patterson?

[Jetcopy]

Waiting for the Mac version here. But I do think some type of demo would be helpful in making a purchasing decision.

My scores are set at a specific reduction, and often things don't fit. I need to cheat a little. Sometimes I nudge my dynamics to gain a little wiggle room. I had a score last week where every page fit perfectly until I got to the last page. No matter what I adjusted there were still collisions. I didn't want to make this page a different reduction or make them all smaller unnecessarily. I ended up deleting the composer's hairpin and replaced it with the word "cresc.". Everyone was okay with that fortunately.

So what types of decisions will this plugin make when collisions can't be avoided?

[elbsound]

>Is there a way to trigger autosave? That would be better in case of a crash, in which case Finale would restore it automatically when you restarted.
AFAIK it's not possible. At least not in JW Lua, maybe in the Finale PDK.
What would be possible - theoretically -, is that the plug-in duplicates the current Finale document file and automatically saves a new copy before applying the plug-in. But I wouldn't recommend it (though it could be an option) as this means that all intermediate auto-save copies can not be restored in the event of a crash.

Anders wrote:
>And I take it, that goes not for 'in case of a crash' only, but also in case of regretting what you've done.
If you want to undo the plug-in, just click on undo (CTRL-Z).

One note about crashing:
This is really a super rare case - currently only one JW Lua/Finale PDK bug is known where this can occur and which can't be prevented. This case only occurs on batch processing or if you run the plug-in very many times (100?) in a row without restarting Finale (it sounds like a memory glitch in the Finale PDF or in the JW Lua framework).
Jari (and MakeMusic) has been informed about this a year ago, but haven't provided a fix yet. As I don't have access to the original Finale plug-in code (like Jari, Robert and Tobias have), I don't know if it's a Finale or JW Lua bug.

That is also the reason why this warning message can't be disabled.
As most of us have been using Finale for many years I think we all now: ALWAYS save the Finale document regularly.

Before releasing a new Perfect Layout version, the plug-in is always run on more than 11.000 Finale documents.
Usually this is enough to find out if a new version includes a bug that leads to plug-in errors.
During the 9 month beta test with more than 20 updates , I haven't heard a single complain about a Finale crash.

jetcopy wrote:
>So what types of decisions will this plugin make when collisions can't be avoided?
That's a complex question, because it depends very much on the elements and the circumstances. If you're talking about not enough vertical space between staves even after optimizing the staff distances and the element positioning, the current version doesn't offer a solution, so you will probably have staves that don't fit on the page or a collision. The plug-in will issue a warning message that there is not enough space on certain pages.
For v2 of the plug-in there are two solutions which are already implemented and also have been showcased and discussed two years ago, for example on the notat.io forum here, but which are not yet available to the public. This is automatic system resizing for the whole score (i.e. the score will be analyzed first and then the scaling is determined automatically) or a "condensed score" is created that uses typical ways of condensing elements (e.g. moving dynamic slightly over the staves, a few distance reductions, etc). This can be seen in demos on the notat.io forum.
If you want to see what the plug-in does to your colliding documents, send a file for testing to Elbsound.studio and we will return the results to you.

Jan

[Michel R E]

How does the plugin deal with measure and page attached text?
I have quite a few scores with text that is not "expression" text, nor tempo, nor any of the expression categories.
They are block texts that need to be taken into consideration when spacing.
I tried looking though the PDF doc, but the word "text" comes up so often in reference to things that are not text blocks, it became a bit too tedious to try and search all of that.

[elbsound]

Check out the examples and video section, there you will find many examples - also for text blocks.

Measure text should be no problem, though I think it is an object type that is not moved itself. But it is taken into account for other collisions.
Here is a real-time video of how two large measure-attached text blocks (spoken text in an opera) are merged into a score by the plug-in:


Page text is not taken into account for collisions at the moment.
Using page text within staves/systems is not recommended anyway (and thus not supported by the plug-in) as it will be messed up every time you change the measure layout.
The only thing that is implemented, but not available yet to the public, is a function that will improve the vertical system/staff spacing of the "first page" with title, composer name, copyright texts, etc. It will be included in v2.0

[Michel R E]

excellent, thank-you.

will the next version be a paid upgrade? or a free one?

[elbsound]

v2.0 will be a paid update. But there will be intermediate updates. We have had 20 updates in the last 9 months.
Here is the history file since last November - we have been very busy:
https://elbsound.studio/perfect-layout/History.txt
Usually every week little things go into the plug-in. The more input (and Finale files) we get from our users the better the plug-in can be.
There will be less updates as in the beta test, but there will be definitely a few minor updates.
The plug-in also comes with an automatic updater/downloader tool:
updates will be automatically detected and it takes less than a minute to update to the recent version.

[Michel R E]

Is there a forum where we can pose questions, ask for advice, discuss issues with the plugin?

[elbsound]

Yes, there is a forum on the Elbsound.studio homepage ("Forum").
https://elbsound.studio/forum
But it is currently still empty - it was just opened this week.
During the beta test we used email only. It's good for suggestions though.

For technical questions/problems/comments send a mail to Elbsound.studio via the Contact page.
For efficient help it's usually the best to also send the Finale document (or at least the page where the problem occurs).
Without the document it's very often difficult or impossible to help.
If you have changed the plug-in settings a log, it might also be helpful to send the settings file - otherwise the issue might not be reproduceable.

If it's just a quick question, you can also chat with us via the homepage (the "Chat with us" dialog at the bottom of the homepage appears after a few seconds). But the chat is not always available.

Jan

[Michel R E]

the directions for the plugin seem to imply that as little manual placement of items should be done to a file before using Perfect Layout.
am I maybe misunderstanding something in the instructions?

I compose in Finale, and find it difficult to work with a score that is really messy. It doesn't have to be perfect, but overlapping things can obscure details you might not notice otherwise.

So my question is: just how little or how much manual adjusting can one do to allow the plugin to function properly?

Are there recommended default settings in Finale for placement of expressions, for example? (I find that the plugin places them too far from the notes, which creates too loose a spacing overall.)

Any other suggestions?

[elbsound]

>the directions for the plugin seem to imply that as little manual placement of items should be done to a file before using Perfect Layout.
If you want to save as much time as possible, do as little as you can.
You can, of course, do lots of manual adjustments before the plug-in, but then you won't save that much time ...

>It doesn't have to be perfect, but overlapping things can obscure details you might not notice otherwise.
Then remove the overlapping. That is ok for the plug-in.

>So my question is: just how little or how much manual adjusting can one do to allow the plugin to function properly?
You can do what you like, the plug-in will work, it's just a question of being efficient.
As the opening sentence of the "How to use" document says:
If you want to get "Wow!" effect, use the plug-in on an unoptimized score.
If want to see only very few things improved, use it on an already optimized score -> this can be done, but is not the efficient way.
Especially as some manual adjustments might have to be done twice, because the plug-in thinks that "your manual adjustment" was instead "a messy placement" and puts it where it thinks it should be.

Don't forget: it's always difficult for the plug-in to tell "messy placement" from "non-standard placement".
The general rule for the plug-in is: in doubt, leave it out. If the plug-in finds an ambiguous situation (see the examples in the How to use document), then it will leave the symbols untouched (which is of course wrong, if it was indeed messy). So if it finds a very unusual placements (e.g. a dynamic with a horizontal offset above 60 EVPU), it will not center it below a note. If it's just slightly misplaced (e.g. 30 EVPU), it will center it.

So your rule for preparing the symbols before runnning the plug-in: don't create ambiguous situations (e.g. correct hairpin attachment in the measure though the minor offsets are no problem). A slighlty overlapping hairpin with a dynamic is clear, while a hairpin at a 60 EVPU distance from a hairpin is at least unclear if it is not attached to the same measure pos. But usually Finale's hairpin "snapping" function leads to good results.

This sounds complex, but it isn't. Do the workflow that you like:
1.) The more clear your notation is, the less problem the plug-in will have.
2.) The more messy, but still clear (and not ambiguous) the more time you will save.
3.) Do non-standard manual optimizations after running the plug-in.

>Are there recommended default settings in Finale for placement of expressions, for example?
No, because there is no standard (It might be an idea though to give dropdown box in the dialog where the user can select something like tight,normal,loose->I'll write that down).
1.) If you want to keep your own dynamics expression baselines, just deactivate the expression baseline settings in the plug-in
2.) If you want to adjust the dynamics baselines/entry offset, do it either in the expression category or in the expression baseline settings in the plug-in.
3.) The general vertical collision offset for ALL symbols is handled with "Extra Vertical Collision Offset" in the Alignment tab.
4.) The reh.marks/tempo marks have their own vertical offset.
5.) The Gold edition can handle many vertical offsets individually.
6.) The Gold edition also has an adjustable value for dynamics in measures where no element is below the bottom staff line. In this case the plug-in can move the dynamics even closer to the staff. In Silver this is also activated, but the value is not adjustable.

[Michel R E]

thank-you very much.
the plugin has quite a learning curve for someone like myself (I know nothing about programming and such), I even find it difficult to figure out good numbers to insert in Finale's placement options for articulations and expressions... I end up just placing them manually (I never know how big a number to use, whether to use a negative or positive number, etc...)

once I get the hang of it, I think this plugin will be amazing for me. it's just going to take a bit of time.

a quick question: does the plugin not correct articulations like the roll symbol? I placed some rolled chords in my test file, but their placement was not changed from Finale's default (which overlaps with the notes themselves).

[elbsound]

Michel R E wrote:

the plugin has quite a learning curve for someone like myself, I even find it difficult to
figure out good numbers to insert in Finale's placement options for articulations and expressions...

I think you shouldn't worry too much about every parameter/option in the beginning.
The default settings usually get very good results and should work for all scores.

Our recommendation: run the plug-in without any parameter changes in the beginning.
Should you then discover that something doesn't fit your needs (like tighter spacing), then look for these parameters.

If you really want to understand all 200 parameters (in the Gold edition) in detail, then I recommend browsing the PDF manual where all parameters/options are explained in detail - many of them with images. This is probably much easier and faster then experimenting with the parameters and you gain a better insight in what you can do with the plug-in.

For experimenting and finding the best plug-in settings also read the section "What is the fastest way to use the plug-in".
This explains how you reduce the processing time of the plug-in.

I think this plugin will be amazing for me. it's just going to take a bit of time.

That's right. I'd recommend reading the "How to use Perfect Layout" document three times. If you follow the suggested workflow this will really save you lots of time and get you optimal results.

A quick question: does the plugin not correct articulations like the roll symbol?

According to the manual the plug-in doesn't correct articulations that are set "Position: Manually" like the arpeggio roll.
My recommendation for arpeggios:
use our Elbsound.studio "1 click arpeggio library" which is included in our Elbsound Music Fonts Package. It uses "single squiggle glyphs" instead of Maestro's "two squiggles glyph". Only in this case it's possible to get a correct auto-placement in Finale.
Here is a video of the one-click applying process with the library:

arpeggioyoutube.jpg

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[fratveno]

Tried it on a score and it made matters 300% worse... then tried it on single staff parts and it worked wonders!!! This is merely an initial observation, not a final judgement. I'm optimistic, but find it strange that such a major effort with such huge potential isn't stirring up more social traffic... scoring notes? Are you sleeping?

[ebiggs1]

...find it strange that such a major effort with such huge potential isn't stirring up more social traffic...

For Finale users like me, where I do a large score once or twice a year, (at most)) I can find better places for the almost $350 price tag. The huge amount of my work is for smaller groups. However, I checked the last piece I did for KC Bones and it was a few measures over the 400 bar limit so the Silver version isn't an option either. Few pieces where a plug-in that dresses up things for a true benefit will have less than 400 measures. I discussed this with Jan way back when he was starting the project.

[Michel R E]

there are two silver versions. one has the 400 bar limit, the other does not.
it's not as expensive as the gold version.

[ebiggs1]

Oh, OK, thanx, I see that now. He did not have that when I originally talked with them. Perhaps they realized 400 measures is pretty limiting. In a brass quintet, which is my mainstay, that is just 80 measures. And, If I add an accessory or percussion line it is very much unrealistic. IMHO, for shorter compositions the plug-in becomes less useful.

[Michel R E]

I think you misunderstand... I'm sure it's not "400 measures of each instrument."
It's that the total length of the work is 400 measures.

An orchestral score where each instrument's measures counted within that 400 measures would mean a 20 bar score.

However, my violin concerto is well over 600 bars, as are my 4 symphonies. Hell, I think my contrabass sonata is over that limit as well.

So it's actual measure numbers, and not "frames" of music.

[ebiggs1]

Right, 400 measures total. That's approximately 80 measures per instrument in a brass quintet. Making a 400 measure limit almost useless for me anyway.

I really don't understand why software companies offer reduced capability or crippled versions. Finale used to offer several crippled or limited versions of the software. I guess they came to their senses. I don't think even Print Music is still available. Either you need it or you don't.

[N Grossingink]

No, 400 measures per instrument. 400 measure score, regardless of instrumentation.