Finale Forum

For some time now, I have been worried about Finale's future. Since it is a licensed product, I would like to be prepared in case MakeMusic goes out of business or otherwise stops licensing Finale. Presumably Finale would continue to work on machines it's already installed on, but you probably wouldn't be able to transfer a working version to any new machines or disk drives since you wouldn't be able to deauthorize/reauthorize. Mac users may be out of luck even sooner, after an OS upgrade.

So I would be interested in brainstorming here how best to prepare. It would be painful in any case, but offhand I can think of two things: making a PDF of all scores and parts, and creating MusicXML files of everything. The PDFs I already do anyway, since for various reasons I don't print straight from Finale.

MusicXML I haven't done. It's unclear to me how well Dorico or Sibelius read MusicXML files made by Finale, and it's lossy at best even when read by Finale, but it would be better than nothing. I have hundreds of Finale files in dozens of directories, so wonder if there's some way with FinaleScript, say, to automate doing them all. And how well does it work with linked parts?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

The question is, will the other products import XML created by Finale? I'm happy with XML import, for files created in SmartScore. And when I've exported from Finale and imported back in, they seem to be fine.

I guess if any users of Dorico or Sibelius are willing, you could send them a few test files, to see. If so, then yes, go ahead with the XML. There is a FinaleScript already set up to batch convert.

And print them, as well. With all the super-duper electronic storage methods available, just remember that the Dead Sea scrolls were written on papyrus and parchment, and they are still legible!

for now, from what I've read after posting about an issue I had with XML import into Dorico, D. seems to have some issues with longer files I think.

I imported the XML of my violin concerto, and about halfway through the 2nd movement noteheads started disappearing, leaving only beams, dynamics, some hairpins, and staves.

Dorico generally does fine with XML imports. Sometimes more complex tuplets are a problem. I generally delete tuplets before importing.

Presumably any problems with XML that Dorico has will get fixed eventually. Barring being able to read .musx files directly, MusicXML is all we've got.

If you keep both the PDF and the XML, the latter will get you 95% of the input, and the former will allow you to add the last bits.

in my case, there was a good 20 minutes of music left when it started deleting noteheads and everything.
deleting tuplets was most definitely not a possibility, either. (which is why I opted to simply learn how to use Dorico on the fly, by re-entering the entire concerto by hand.)

And yes, I'm assuming that there will eventually be fixes either to Music XML or to Dorico, correcting this issue.

Did you have any hidden notes for playback purposes?

I'm not sure.
I'd have to go back and check. we're talking about 50 some pages of music.

Michel R E wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 15, 2021 9:47 pm

for now, from what I've read after posting about an issue I had with XML import into Dorico, D. seems to have some issues with longer files I think.

I imported the XML of my violin concerto, and about halfway through the 2nd movement noteheads started disappearing, leaving only beams, dynamics, some hairpins, and staves.

I've done quite a bit of Finale>Dorico converting and the most common reason for the issues you describe is erroneous tuplets, which may look right but which have, for some reason, been defined with the wrong unit value. Based on what I see in my clients scores, this is a very common mistake... (Daniel at Steinberg has also confirmed this on the Dorico forum)

1) run the plug-in "check region for durations..." and correct over- or underfilled measures. This plug-in will not detect errors in tuplets, so suspicious ones must be checked manually... can sometimes be a bit of detective work.
2) don't use the feature "use a different time signature for display"...

That said, Dorico has problems with 8th note triplets in the form 8th-16th-16th-8th ... (via XML)
Also, several forms of tremoli are problematic and must usually be reentered in Dorico.

File size/length is not a problem in my experience...

Yes, I have always made PDFs of everything I do -- mostly to avoid any issues of things moving about just when you open a file for printing.

You can batch process folders of files with "Translate Folder to XML" menu item.

Hidden Notes -- particularly things like trills or tremolos for HP -- will get passed through, so make sure you remove those first.

Any 'non-notationally correct' workarounds will need correction. This includes using a different displayed time signature from the 'actual' one, for example.

I think it's fair to say that Sibelius, MuseScore, Dorico -- none of these will 'recreate' your Finale document verbatim, and you will need to spend some time perfecting the layout.

Also remember that currently, nothing can read XML 4.0. This is certain to change in the future, and may bring better results than 3.1 or whatever we're on now.