Hide & collapse a region fail

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montedoro44
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Post by montedoro44 » Thu Jun 04, 2020 6:38 pm

Hiding and collapsing a region of a system -- trouble. Per attached test file, Finale thinks that 3 measures are both hidden and collapsed, but they are only hidden. I have seen ancient forum posts about this, and I tried all kinds of experiments that failed. Only on the very first time I tried, it did work.

Staff Tool > Staff Menu > Apply staff style to > Current Part/Score > 13. Hide Staff & Collapse

I also tried it and failed on my 2nd computer.

I want this for tunes with a countoff-click track. I understand that there are work-arounds, like one doc to read and another to mp3, but am I doing something wrong?

Thanks
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Collapse.musx
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motet
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Post by motet » Thu Jun 04, 2020 8:56 pm

"Collapse" means, if applied to the whole system, that staff is removed and everything else is shifted up, so it doesn't make sense applied to only part of a system.

Try putting the click on a system of its own and hide and collapse that.

montedoro44
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Post by montedoro44 » Fri Jun 05, 2020 12:43 pm

There is a provision for horizontal hiding, in the manual at "Cutaway scores", where I was experimenting. See attachment, though it isn't quite as I remembered it. The idea is to create the count-off click track and hide all evidence of it, horizontally and vertically. This doc comes close, though I hadn't noticed that it also zaps the time & key sigs. I see now that it doesn't collapse horizontally. For sure, I can make two copies of the score, one for pdf and one for mp3, but that's inconvenient esp when I make refinements, and then have to make them in two places. A Horizontal-Collapse plug-in specifically for count-off tracks would be a welcome tool, but not a big deal.
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As the moments roll experiment.musx
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Michel R E
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Post by Michel R E » Fri Jun 05, 2020 2:39 pm

why don't you simply put those 6 initial measures (although I don't know why here are 6, since you're only using 2) on a separate page?

have a page with those click-track measures, then simply start your score on the next page.
I don't quite understand why you're futzing around with a feature that's not really designed for what you need.
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motet
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Post by motet » Fri Jun 05, 2020 3:31 pm

Or as I said, put the clicks in the first system and collapse that. You can force the time signature to appear on the second system.

montedoro44
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Post by montedoro44 » Fri Jun 05, 2020 4:03 pm

Thanks, Michael R E, that's a good idea I hadn't thought of and that's what I will do.

This doc is one of many that I make for music-minus-one use. For myself, I can mute a voice and play along with Finale running, reading off the screen; for people without Finale, I make a pdf and a set of mp3 files, each with a different voice missing. There are 4 blank measures of silence so that the player has about 5 seconds to pick up his/her instrument and otherwise prepare to play.

I was interested to find out if Finale had sufficient tools to work around not including the option of the count-off clicks transferring to mp3 / WAV export. That omission makes no sense to me. At least, the manual is aware that Finale users will want to do this, so it includes a Noteman link to learn about adding a click-track. Up until recently, I made mp3s and sent them off to Audacity for silence + countoff, but that's more time-consuming. Audacity though has one more advantage for this job, the ability to amplify the whole piece.

Near x-post with motet: Thanks for that -- I forgot about forcing time & key sigs(!) Will do.

It won't work to include the countoff clicks in any one of the music-containing staves because then the music-minus-one mp3 of that staff won't have them. But when I began this project, I copied the clicks to all of the tracks. That works too. But the presence of the added click track is no problem bc it hides & collapses.

Edit: out of interest, what is Apply Staff Style option #13 for? ("Hide Staff (and collapse)") Since Staff styles exist to operate on a selected region, "collapse" would seem to imply collapsing that region, i.e., a horizontal collapse. As opposed to option #12, "Cutaway". That seems to be the same. But I will experiment some more with it.

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motet
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Post by motet » Fri Jun 05, 2020 5:07 pm

montedoro44 wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 4:03 pm
Edit: out of interest, what is Apply Staff Style option #13 for? ("Hide Staff (and collapse)") Since Staff styles exist to operate on a selected region, "collapse" would seem to imply collapsing that region, i.e., a horizontal collapse. As opposed to option #12, "Cutaway". That seems to be the same.
Again, "collapse" applies to an entire system. The staff style lets you force-hide a system even if there's music in it. "Collapse" is jargon (like a lot of things in computer land), so it in fact doesn't imply what you think it does.

From the manual:
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montedoro44
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Post by montedoro44 » Fri Jun 05, 2020 7:49 pm

Thanks, motet. That paragraph evaded me. The cure, now implemented, is per Michael R E -- separate the added measures. A separate & hidden 1st system works well.

The manual statement -- " If not all measures in the system are selected, Finale hides and does not collapse (i.e. like cutaway)." -- is strange in a way -- as if Finale anticipates that someone will want this capability, but they chose to not implement it. Great software, even so!

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