Using Perfect Layout for first time

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bj nick
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Post by bj nick » Sat Nov 06, 2021 12:45 am

So I have PL, really excited as many have said it's the answer to my spending hours optimizing everything. It's installed, it's there, and I tried to follow the detailed list of options/settings/etc first. I then ran the plug in but nothing changed. He suggests reading through all his guidelines first, and I did try to get through everything, but it's a LOT.

Online it's this seemingly endless list of stuff I'm supposed to go over, starting with "DO THIS FIRST," and then many other pages/categories of settings/etc., most of which are highly detailed and I don't have a clue which is the "right" setting....I just assume I'll stick with Finale defaults at this point.....right? But it's confusing because for example, in running the plug in, they'll warn me to shut off "automatic music spacing," and I do that. Then it asks "have you set music spacing?" If I say no it shuts off.

I sent them a message asking for help, but I wonder if one of you can maybe help me just get started. It's massively confusing; basically I need a step by step....(1) do xyz 2) do abc etc. Do they provide that somewhere?
Last edited by bj nick on Sat Nov 06, 2021 5:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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AnneMillington
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Post by AnneMillington » Sat Nov 06, 2021 1:02 am

Same issues here, and no resolution yet. I was thinking I might be struggling with an undiagnosed learning disability, as I toggled between "turn off automatic music spacing" and the query "have you set music spacing?" I say this so you don't feel so all alone. Full disclosure: I am learning the idiosyncracies of Finale along the way, so I have a lot to try to disentangle.

What I did do to help myself a tiny bit was to make a hard copy of those instructions, and notate the actual path to whatever commands they are referring to on my document. That helped in my many iterations through the list. I did see that running PL made a positive difference in the layout of the document I chose to work with, but there are way too many variables for me to speak intelligently about it yet.

Looking forward to getting better at all this stuff!

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elbsound
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Post by elbsound » Sat Nov 06, 2021 1:49 pm

Thanks for your comments on Perfect Layout!
This is Jan from Elbsound.studio, the developer and owner of Elbsound.studio.

Perfect Layout offers many features for both beginner and very advanced Finale users.
But it's difficult to make it easy for everyone. Why?
Because notation is complex and Finale itself is a very comprehensive tool too.
Yet there are many users who ask for more and more fine-tuning in Perfect Layout, i.e. even more options.

You didn't learn Finale in half an hour, and you probably will require some time to understand all Perfect Layout options.
But you don't need to understand it all at once. The default settings should already give you very good results in most cases, because the plug-in analyzes the score and adjusts some crucial options automatically.
Fine-tuning the Perfect Layout options is not the first step, but comes later when the default settings don't work for you.

By the way, that is also one reason why there is no downloadable demo of Perfect Layout yet, but only the "Send us your score and we will process it with Perfect Layout for you"-service. You will get a very good demo result by email without having to bother about setting up the demo and fine-tuning the plug-in.

I welcome your feedback and will think about simplifying things even more.
One idea could be a super easy dialog with maybe only 10 options and no other dialogs - only those options that are mainly used.

The easiest solution for beginners of Perfect Layout that probably works in 99% of the Finale documents:
Don't do any special preparations in your document for Perfect Layout at all.
Ignore all Perfect Layout dialogs.
Just run the plug-in with its default settings.

(BTW, this is also the very first recommendation in the Quickstart/How to use document).

So for a very easy start with Perfect Layout do the following:
1.) Make sure to always have the latest version of Perfect Layout. A new update is usually available twice a month.
Perfect Layout (from v2.4x) has an auto-update function which automatically checks for updates and installs the updates without the need to restart Finale.

2.) Save your Finale document before running Perfect Layout. After running Perfect Layout rename your file, so that you can always switch to the original version later.

3.) If it's a huge score or has many parts or has many pages, you can save some experimental time by reducing the Finale score to 2 or 3 pages and 2 linked parts (but keep all staves in the score) and see if you already get good results with the default settings. When you have found good settings, go back to your original score.

4.) Run the plug-in, but ignore all Perfect Layout dialogs (always click yes/ok - no matter if it's correct or not). Also ignore everything in the main user dialog (even the DO THIS FIRST) and just run the plug-in with its default settings. Just click on 'OK' after the main dialog has opened.

5.) When the plug-in has finished, write down what you don't like, undo the plug-in and run it once more with adjusted settings. Try to find the required options in the main user dialog. To find the settings it is helpful to have the PDF manual (204 pages) open and search for the keywords (to open the PDF click on the PDF button in the main user dialog or open it from the website or your Elbsound.studio folder on your hard disk).

6.) To get more ideas of what is possible with PL, browse the PDF examples and the examples page, the interactive alignment demo, the PDF manual and the online videos.

7.)If you still have problems, send me your Finale document and your Perfect Layout settings file (it's JALAYOUX.ini in your Finale user folder) via email and ask for help. This will solve your problem, and it also helps me to improve the plugin, and thus also helps others.


Regarding your specific question with "Music Spacing", please read the explanation in the PL documentation:
AFAIK Finale doesn't allow its plug-ins to switch off "Automatic Music Spacing". So it's not the plug-ins fault that this cannot be done automatically.
However if you don't switch off "Preferences->Edit->Automatic Music Spacing", you can, of course, still run the plug-in.
But ... it simply makes no sense.
Why would you want to run a plug-in that applies its own music spacing algorithms (algorithms that will fix the spacing bugs in Finale), and then want Finale to automatically apply its own buggy music spacing again after the plug-in has finished?
All or at least many of the spacing optimizations by the plug-in would be gone.

Or in other words: yes, you can still have "Automatic Music Spacing" activated, but it might influence the output of Perfect Layout negatively. You can have simple scores where this makes no difference, but in very complex scores with lots of collisions of notation elements, slash notation staff style and colliding chord symbols, you may get better results if you deactivate Automatic Music Spacing.

Still, if you ignore all Perfect Layout dialogs and recommendations, in most cases you will get very good results without doing any preparations and by just using the plug-ins default settings.
Reading the recommendations in the Quickstart/How to use document is very helpful, but the plug-in will still work if you ignore it.

Jan
Elbsound.studio
Last edited by elbsound on Sat Nov 06, 2021 3:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.

AnneMillington
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Post by AnneMillington » Sat Nov 06, 2021 3:50 pm

Jan, thank you! This is so helpful. I do want to make this application work for me.

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motet
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Post by motet » Sat Nov 06, 2021 3:55 pm

If it really says "Have you set music spacing?", that could perhaps be more precisely worded.

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elbsound
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Post by elbsound » Sat Nov 06, 2021 4:10 pm

If it really says "Have you set music spacing?", that could perhaps be more precisely worded.
No, it doesn't say that. It says:
Title of the message:
Warning: 'Automatic Music Spacing' off?
Content:
Have you checked that 'Edit->Preferences->Edit->Automatic Music Spacing' is switched off? This option cannot be checked automatically.

And as this is extremely important for the plug-in, this dialog has its own section in the Quickstart document which explains why it is important. From the documentation:
"Unfortunately it's not possible to automatically switch off Finale's "Automatic Music Spacing" through the JW Lua plug-in interface, so you need to do it manually.
It is important to switch it off, because otherwise the spacing corrections of the plug-in may be automatically removed by Finale after the plug-in has finished.
Note:
Even if you have deactivated "Automatic Music Spacing" you will get a warning message by the plug-in (unless you have deactivated the message), because it can't check the current state of that option either.
"

If you have better words, let me know. I am no native speaker.

Jan

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motet
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Post by motet » Sat Nov 06, 2021 4:35 pm

Seems fine, and I appreciate the reply. I should have known better than to rely on the reporting above.

bj nick
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Post by bj nick » Sat Nov 06, 2021 5:42 pm

motet wrote:
Sat Nov 06, 2021 4:35 pm
I should have known better than to rely on the reporting above.
Yes, and I should have known better not to expect a nasty, snide comment from Motet.
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bj nick
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Post by bj nick » Sat Nov 06, 2021 5:50 pm

Jan, thank you so much for the response. Like I say, I'm anxious to have this great plug in work for me, and I will definitely listen to you and try to follow your suggestions (your English is spectacular, btw.) Overall it was confusing to me because there was just so much information, and the basic procedure wasn't clear to me....maybe it's because I don't understand exactly how plug ins in general are supposed to work on Finale.....I tried to follow everything, but nothing happened, and I figured I messed up somehow. Believe me, I read through almost everything. I'm going to send you a document as you suggested, and I look forward to your response. I promise I will follow whatever you have to say. Thanks again!
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motet
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Post by motet » Sat Nov 06, 2021 6:06 pm

Normally when you put something in quotes that means it's verbatim.

"(ugh)" isn't snide? Most people love PL, by the way.

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miker
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Post by miker » Sat Nov 06, 2021 6:20 pm

Let it go, guys, please.
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bj nick
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Post by bj nick » Sat Nov 06, 2021 6:57 pm

Mike: yes, agreed, I only want positive interactions with this community. I do understand quotes normally mean verbatim, was being more casual in this setting, will be more careful in the future. I recognize "ugh" could be misconstrued, deleted it.

This is the sequence of messages that confused me a little (btw the insert image function doesn't seem to be working.....not sure why.....I just get Image):

First I get the message Jan alluded to, regarding “Have you turned off Automatic Music Spacing?” Then the next message is “Have you applied music spacing to the full document?” So I guess maybe part of my confusion is I don’t understand that aspect of Finale, having never used that function.

I REALLY appreciate Jan’s willingness to clarify things, I will follow his instructions, send him a document and hopefully that will set me straight.
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Bill Stevens
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Post by Bill Stevens » Sat Nov 06, 2021 9:28 pm

I have had good luck using PL with the default settings except for one thing -- I felt that PL made the staff lines too heavy. I contacted Jan and he told me that PL only changes the staff line setting if the default setting is used. If you change the setting by just a few thousandths then you get your choice instead of PL's. I hope someone will find that helpful.

::: Bill
Version 26.3 / 27.4 / Mac OS 10.15.5 Catalina
Finale user since the beginning of time.

bj nick
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Post by bj nick » Thu Nov 18, 2021 1:59 am

Hey Jan, I'd love to hear back from you...tried a few times. Really looking forward to using PL and understanding how best to set things up. Tried a few times, sent you a document as requested....take care and thanks.
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ebiggs1
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Post by ebiggs1 » Thu Nov 18, 2021 3:54 pm

A tip to all first time PL users. One thing I found right off is to reduce your percentage so there is enough room on the page for PL to do it thing. If you leave it at 100% ( I believe Finale's default?) PL may not have adequate space to work.
As a matter of fact, PL will warn you if there isn't enough space but it seems to me if you have a bit more than the minimum required, PL works even better.

The ting of it is if you don't like the first run results you can run PL again with different settings or page percentages. Always make an untouched Finale file and use copies of that file to run PL on. I typically save my PL processed files with a xxxxxx_PL.musx name.
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elbsound
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Post by elbsound » Thu Nov 18, 2021 5:34 pm

Hi bj nick,

I assume you are the user that has sent me an email with only the name BJ on November 6th (with the "d..." email address). I replied to that email on the same day. Maybe it landed in your spam folder?
I also answered an email to you (or to a BJ) on the 6th of October.
Unfortunately I haven't received an email with an attached Finale document from you.
Which email address are you sending it to?

Please use the email address listed in the "Contact Info" ( https://elbsound.studio/contact.php ).

Jan

bj nick
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Post by bj nick » Fri Nov 19, 2021 1:51 am

Hi Jan, great to hear from you. I sent the messages/file to jan@elbsound.studio, but I'll be happy to resend to the other address, which I see is on your contact page. However, I don't see an option to attach the file to the contact page; am I just missing it?

Thanks very much,
BJ
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elbsound
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Post by elbsound » Fri Nov 19, 2021 8:09 am

Yes, on the contact page you can't attach files. Use the email address from the contact page instead.
The other email address that you mention also works fine. But I didn't receive anything there either.

bj nick
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Post by bj nick » Sat Nov 27, 2021 8:03 pm

Hi Jan, just wanted to check in. I did resend the file/message to the contact page email about a week ago, and I haven't heard back. Can you confirm you got it? Thanks!
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elbsound
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Post by elbsound » Sat Nov 27, 2021 8:09 pm

Hi BJ,

no, it still didn't arrive.

Maybe you need to deactivate your anti-virus software to send it?
I don't know what can cause this. The email addresses do work and I get files every day, so it must be something else.

What format is your attached file? I assume it is .musx.
Don't use .zip or .exe. Some anti virus software don't like that format.

Jan

bj nick
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Post by bj nick » Sun Nov 28, 2021 12:43 am

Hi Jan, really weird......not sure what could cause this, I send out things all the time as well....never have any trouble. Let me try again. And yes, I'm sending standard Finale files. Thank you for getting back to me right away.
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ebiggs1
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Post by ebiggs1 » Sun Nov 28, 2021 2:56 pm

You can send it to me and I will send it to Jan. I have sent him files several times. You have my email address.
Finale 27.4.1 - Perfect Layout Silver - Note Performer 4.4 - SmartScore Pro 64 - Windows 11
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elbsound
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Post by elbsound » Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:11 am

bj nick, I have received your forwarded email now and I have sent you the reply.

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