MOTUnation.com

I'm done here. I'll still lurk with questions and comments about versions of Finale prior to F25 and help when I can, but as far as future updates to Finale, I am done.

I have paid for every update since 1996 when I started using the program and have really enjoyed using it. The results have been used at the Olympics, in multiple scores for the Chicago Symphony, Harvard Pops, The Academy of Motion Pictures, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, Turner Classic Movies, and countless other venues over the past twenty years.

When I score for real musicians, I start and end in Finale and never touch my DAW. That includes my work for film. I write the notes, start to finish and everything in between, in Finale. It is the fastest and most efficient way for me to compose to picture - or at least, it was.

The loss of the MOVIE WINDOW was the deal breaker for me. For one, it simply DOES NOT WORK. Audio from Finale is not successfully passed thru to the DAW (Digital Performer). The audio appears on the DP meters as an "instrument" and I can see the VU meter in DP responding, but no audio is present.

Even if that could be fixed, the connection between the apps is otherwise lost. Finale stops scrolling after a few minutes and that ends the usefulness of that session. Restarting Finale regains the connection but it is soon lost again.

And that's not the worst of it! Once you link via Rewire, there is no playback possible in Finale when you are actually IN Finale. As long as the DAW is running, Finale plays back NOTHING. One has to quit the DAW and Finale and then launch Finale w/o the DAW running to get anywhere in F25. As long as the DAW has an audio track with the Finale output as the source, Finale no longer will playback ANYTHING.

Then there is the logistics problem. Even if this convoluted system worked, one is still required to move between apps to accomplish a simple task - playback to picture, which all recent version of Finale did flawlessly.

One can only guess at the motivation for removing the window, but I suspect it is a cost cutting measure. Since the app was rewritten for this release, perhaps it was not cost effective to have that code be redone if MM could simply "job the video out" via Rewire. I'm only guessing, but whatever the rationale, this composer will not be updating to ANY version of Finale that retains that method. I'll just stick with F2014.5 and that's where the road ends, at least at this point. It simply makes no logical sense to have to jump between programs to run a simple quicktime movie. Add to that the dysfunction of the Rewire implementation and there is really nothing to be done until MM restores the MOVIE WINDOW.

While you're at it, you might want to also restore OCR via TIFF imports. The excuse for removing that was, quite frankly, not believable. Again, I suspect it was a matter of not wanting to have to rewrite that code in the new version. F2014.4 does the job just fine.

I will be requesting a refund for the dysfunction and crippled F25 update and cannot recommend the application to anyone seriously scoring to picture.

This is a very sad day for me.

Phil O wrote:I don't do a lot of OCR, but when I needed it Smartscore Lite (or whatever it's called) filled the need. I can't believe Finale dumped it.

I was looking forward to F25's lack of reliance on Java, but it's not worth the upgrade just for that.

Looks like I'll be using 2014.5 for the foreseeable future.

Phil