Product Discussion

Will has asked me to help keep track bugs that the community discovers in the Finale software. Please include the version/release of Finale that you discover the behavior in question.

Thanks!
Mike
(nepyro)

FIXED 1. encoding for the shows on the website appears to be messing up the colors
of the effects. Shell launches are blue, other effects appearing as other
colors than what was originally chosen. Export to disk OK.
2. Missing a documented way to delete positions. Ctrl - Right click will delete, but
this is not clear to the user.
FIXED 3. Display of effect title descriptions overlays Position Titles and makes them
illegible.
FIXED 4. CPU Usage is too high...especially when idle.
FIXED 5. Sky Field ZOOM +/- buttons become disabled if you move a launch
POSITION directly above them.
6. Position title length display discrepancies

I'll kick this off with a request that came by email: "Add user interface to delete unwanted launch positions (ctrl-right-click on position works but not obvious)"

R.651 - Title of the effect when mousing over it - this feature was new to this release...it works but it displays over top the same area as the positions, so when you have a cluttered display with many positions, you have a hard time reading what the effect is because it is getting overlaying the position titles. IMO, this effect discription should be displayed in a clear space, not occupied by any other UI item at the same time.
Look at this Pic: http://www.pyrouniverse.com/gallery2/data/500/FUIex1.jpg
then look at this when you mouse over an effect:
http://www.pyrouniverse.com/gallery2/data/500/FUIex2.jpg
In the last row of the display area, you can see that the position descriptions get over laid and it is kind of a mess.
This kinda boarders on a feature request/not quite working "great" request.
Would it be possible to dedicate ONE row right above the wavform to display tips, text, descriptions, etc.?
Cheers!

I see your point, clear picture. Since the effect name is a hover-over feature, would it be okay if it still overlaid the positions but did so in less cluttered a way? For instance, it could have a larger black frame behind it that would cover up the nearby positions when you are trying to read the name.

Putting a black box/background would help with reading the effect description, but I feel that the clutter is still there...Once you put the black backing, the Position titles will disappear all together. This may add confusion if your trying to track down which effect is in which position... and the black boxes behind the description text keep blocking the postion titles. I keep thinking about what it will be like when I put 50+ effects in a 1 second time span from multiple positions in the center...will it all be readable?

How about if it displays in the time bar? have it so there is a line connecting the launch position to the time bar launch location and have it split off to the area on the top seciton of the time bar. Use the black box idea and cut off part of the wave form. This way it is still clear which effect is selected on the time bar, which launch position has the effect and nothing on screen is covered up. I don't see a reason to need to be able to see the whole wave form while looking at a specific effect...

On further thought on this "Effect Description Display"...I really think it would work best to display the Effect title of what you mouse over as a "mouse tip" popup near the mouse pointer. This would prevent the problem with the overlay problems at the bottom of the skyfield and the positions. ALSO: It would help to KNOW what POSITION a shell/effect is assigned to on the screen. Right now, there is no way to know for certain, what effects are in what position, besides the line that gets drawn from the effect down to the timeline...This works, but if you have many positions at or near each other, it is hard to tell which one it is in. What would be GREAT is add two things: Make the Position "Highlighted" when you mouse over an effect that has been assingned to that position AND append the title of the Position to the mouse over popup description of the effect. It would also be great if you added a list of effects that have been assigned to the positions when you open up the Positions dialog box....just add it to that window.

These are great user interface ideas. I have written then down on my UI punch list. Cakes and firing system work is first, but I am eager to make these lovely user interface improvements.

I noticed that some of the colors are not correct in the show I uploaded "Cold As Ice Test." Many of the blue shells are showing up as red when played off the "shows" tab. The firing "trails" when a shell is launched are showing up as blue, rather than something else as well.
Perhaps this was already known but I thought I should pass it on.
EDIT:I believe I uploaded this file using release 651 although I am currently on 780.

Bradgrupe: No, I didn't know the colors were wrong, other than nepyro's polite observation about a blueish appearance. You may have caught a bug here in the video encoding process. I'll look into this. Is video export to disk correct or is that wrong too? (video export to disk uses a different video encoder)

Export to Disk seems fine Will.
Thanks for checking into this.

Okay, thanks. Export to disk verified for me too. I haven't been able to check the hosted video since our servers are down at the moment, but I'm guessing from your comment that we may have the red and blue components of the colors reversed, which will be an easy fix if so.

Sky Field ZOOM +/- buttons become disabled if you move a launch POSITION directly above them

Hi Will,
I would like the shell to open on when I press the mouse this will be much faster when programming a display like using place on hold with Fireone

As clarification, I think Khaled is referring to inserting fireworks while the the show is running, which currently launches the shells upon mouse click instead of inserting them at their burst point.

As clarification, I think Khaled is referring to inserting fireworks while the the show is running, which currently launches the shells upon mouse click instead of inserting them at their burst point.

Say does anyone elses firing positions move around on them

Position Title - Launch Position Title allows you to type a long description for the title, however the actual display of the title on the sky field is limited to only 8 characters...the mouse over description is NOT limited and will display the full title.
This is confusing....When you go through the process of adding 5 launch positions to the field, they all get put in the same spot, with the same name. You then drag them around, r-click on them and add a 1 to the end of the title, then give it a distance, save, move to the next one, add a 2 to the end, give it a distance, save, and so on...
Notice that the screen titles for the positions will not reflect the fact that you added numbers to the ends of the titles, but the mouse over descriptor will.

Limiting the Titles to 8 characters is not a bad idea, but we may want to add a Description field to dialog for expanding on the positions shoot site friendly attributes...

Edited Multishots only fire as mines, not comets. This happens if you change ANYTHING, such as the number of shots in a barrage (even reducing it by 1!)

Teaboy -- Okay, I see that we'll need to improve the UI with respect to that distinction. There is a workaround for you -- enter 0 in for the Launch Salvo's Thickness, and you'll get a single shot instead of a mine burst.

Chris

Unable to open exsisting show with new update 1260. Is anyone else having that problem?

Thanks for the note about pre-release 1260. I think I know what that is and will fix in next release going out in the first half of this week.

Chris

I've looked more into the unable to open existing show problem in pre-release 1260, but not quite seeing what is causing the problem. If someone has a show that isn't working in 1260, it would help a bunch if they could send the .hbs (chris@finalefireworks.com)

Chris

BTW - if you installed pre-release 1260 and it is causing too many problems for you, you can downgrade to the previous version (the URL for that version is
http://media.finalefireworks.com/installers/FINALE_Fireworks_01210.exe )

Chris

not sure if this is a bug since i remember will saying officially pyromate export was not ready, but I'm running the Pre-Release 1495 and when i try to export to pyromate. finale crashes saying runtime error with xulrunner.exe error R6025 - pure virtual function call.

any ideas

Will just tried using the Pyromate exporters in 1495 and did not get a crash in his tests.

Would you mind sending me the show file (.hbs) in email (chris@finalefireworks.com) to see if we can track down the problem? We really would like to be able to eliminate any chance this crashing bug appears again.

Thanks,

Chris

music file and show file has been sent m8

many thanks
pyropdc

chris (did you get the music file i sent and manage to get the same error, because the error is still coming up on the latest edition)

I love the way the strobes light up the sky on te dark backgrounds but...

I used a different background with a moon and the strobes reflect a LOT off of the moon!

Here is an example:
http://www.finalefireworks.com/node/1014372

Also, while creating that demo, a few times the music seemed to get off beat with the effects. When trying to do a hard count with the beat it would change the timing slightly but it seemed to line back up when I saved the show. I doubt I could duplicate it and it may have been a product of computer loading but wondered if you have noticed that before.

We have noticed a minor alignment problem with music on the videos. Once we get through the other major features we'll come back and tidy it up.

Will and Chris,

I have been scripting an entry for the Dominator Contest and have run into a few problems with the Launch positions, moving them, and using the Shift-Move PRO-GRID spacing.... I started the show before you added the new 3D and spacial sizing...
This has caused some things to get automatically resized, once you touch them or move them...Also, most of the effects got moved outside of their launch positions that they were already assigned to...meaning they were aligned up to the left or right of their launch position. Also, trying to really zero in on the launch positions, and their distances from each other...and center...I am trying to place 9 launch positions across the field and cannot get them equal distances from each other and center. Seems like the distances keep moving on me once I place them and the distances are not visually relative to one another in their spacing/FT distances... I don't know if these issues are because I started this script before the upgrade and now I am dealing with recalibration issues or if this happens in a clean file too...I will test it in a new one and report back here.

OK: In a new file, it seems to be much better...BUT, there is ONE MAJOR annoyance/undocumented feature...... ALL the time you spend using the SHIFT KEY while you click on a Launch Position, to move it by the 1 FT increment, and place them EXACTLY where you want them....ALL gets OVERRIDDEN if you simply CLICK on a Launch position without using the SHIFT KEY, it SNAPS!!! back to the GRID spacing...thus moving the Launch position out of uniformity... No wonder I thought they were just moving around at their own free will.... Need to fix that......

Also, the Distance from Center indicator that pops up and lets you see how far your Launch position is from center when moving them, It becomes unreadable at many of the different ZOOM levels for the view field... the distances are being displayed behind the launch positions.

NEP, fixed both bugs (clicking on non-grid aligned launchpos without holding shift key now does not cause it to snap to grid; distance from center arrows and label now is drawn on top, and the label has a black background drawn behind it so it will be readable no matter what is behind it). Fixes will come out in a pre-release next week.

I have successfully used "Make Video" for several of my shows. However, after two attempts to create a video with another show, I found that I couldn't - I was left with a permanent message "waiting for media". Then I realized that the audio file was .wav. I changed it to .mp3 and it worked no problem.

I originally thought that one other factor might have come into play here since the show was created in a much earlier version of FINALE. However, I then created a test show with .wav audio and again got the permanent "waiting for media" message. I then changed the audio file to .mp3 and I could create video.
I guess what I am trying to say is that, at the moment, it looks like you can only create a video of your show using .mp3 files. Can anybody else confirm?

Will/Chris
When working on a large show that might take days even weeks to choreograph, It is a habit of mine to save the work i have done. What i have noticed is that by doing that screws up the "Inventory Report". It collates the information from each save instead of combining it altogether.
Is there also a way to group shell sizes to module/pin. Usually you group your mortar racks together (3" 4" 6" & so on) Now Finale assigns pins as they are inserted on the timeline. Is there a way that all the 3" are grouped to a module and so on. I know you can move them around manually but would be timesaving with a press of a button. (did i explain that good enough?)

bar891:

That is exactly what I was refering to in my posts in this thread: http://www.finalefireworks.com/node/1011695#comment-1001071

Finale is so easy to use...it rarely gets in your "creative way"...but later, because it does not read your mind, it puts things together in a way that functions correctly, but not the way you would really wire it. These ideas have been talked about before...but you are highlighting a real issue. In the short term, I think a workable fix would be for Finale's "Pin Logic" to sort the product by Size and then try to populate the modules with a best grouped effort. Later, when Finale gets it's "Equipment Management" smarts, it will be able to present to you at the time you script the effect, a visual or a list of what rack and what tube you wish to drop something into, and at what angle, and lock all that down...also, when the BEV becomes real, it will also help with this...

David -- terrific job for actually figuring out what that problem is. Will you email Chris directly on that one. Regarding the horizontal alignment problem with videos, we have it isolated though not fixed yet. We expect to have it fixed and in a pre-release next week.
Bar, NEP -- good reminder about the need to consider shell size per module. If each module had a flag that you could check that would restrict it to a single shell size, would that work?

Will,

Check box on modules for size restrictions...might work, could you give us mulitiple choices...like a box for each size.. and then we check the ones we would like to allow?

Bar -- I don't understand your comment about "saving work in progress changes the inventory report to collate instead of combine." Saving work in progress shouldn't change anything at all about the inventory report. Can you give a bit more explanation and an example?

NEP -- how about a shell size field that is a pop-up menu with options of:
any combination,
any single caliber,
2",
2.5",
3", etc....
Then if you wanted to split a module up between two calibers, you could simply duplicate the module and split its pin range between the two copies and assign a specific caliber to each half-module, e.g., instead of module 1 with pins 1-32, you would have a first copy of module 1 with pins 1-16 and a second copy of module 1 with pins 17-32.

I do believe that would work! OOOO! Then down the road, with BEV and Equipment management, you could have a little graphic that showed you the module and pins, and color code the pins to the size of shell, etc. that you have alotted them or dragged and dropped to them... COOL...make it so!

In the cue maker system it has the ability to choose between:-
1:- Assign Full Modules ... Groups them into size then fills all 32 pins
2:- Assign By Effect ..... Does just that
3:- Assign By Size ...all 3" goes to module 1,2,3 All 4" goes to 4,5,6 (used most often)
4:- Assign BY Size/Launch Time ...
5:- Assign By Launch Order ...
This is decided after the scripting is done at a press of a button.

With the Invetory Report, each time i save it reports shells,comets,mines,mortars used. It doesn't add it all together,you end up with a seperate listing for each save (shells,comets,mines,mortars) you may end up with 4 lots on each page, depending how many times you saved it. If i only inserted 2 shells since the last save & saved again, there would be a seperate listing for the 2 shells only instead of adding them into one main listing.

Will,

The 3D placement of firing positions is great if you are going up. If you try to go down, using a negative number, you can move the position down (about -70 is the max and still be above the time line) but you cannot place product on those positions.

Good catch WildWilli, we were missing a range check for Y. Got it in now.

Hey, not sure if someone has already posted this up somewhere else in the forums.......but I have tried uploading my latest show with the new vertical launching positions. After uploading the show to the website, the launching positions I have used are moved either slightly to the left or right......depending on the distance I have set them. My show looks terrible because of it lol. Is there a way I can fix this or will the next update release fix this problem??

Thank you Chris!

We have a bug where the firing position shift when the video is generated if they are at multiple distances or position vertically. I believe Will has already fixed the bug and we'll have a pre-release out in the next day or so that includes the fix.

Chris

The current pre-release and upcoming major release are fully 3D , so launch positions saved from previous versions will appear in slightly different positions because of the foreshortening of the 3D projection. You'll need to adjust your launch positions once for these newer versions, and then it will look right forever after that. We have made the new versions backward compatible to best extent we could, but files saved with older versions may require some launch position adjustment.

why do some of the fire works look like stars at the ends.this is on fireworks that arnt supose to have this

Right, not sure if its a bug but it needs fixing.

I spend about 2 hrs making a 240 shot cake, only to be told when i tried to save as a cake, max permissable was 200 fireworks. I have saved it as 2 halfs so all is not lost, but it isnt ideal! Maybe i can save the 2 halves as 1 now? I will go try that actually!!!

But yeh 200 max why?

nope cant save 2 halves as it still knows about the more than 200 individuals inside the 2 half cakes... help please!