Albums - Regenerating following a score update

• Nov 29, 2017 - 16:29

Having created and saved an album, I subsequently made changes to one of the component scores. Selecting 'Join Scores' again did not, however, reflect the update. In the end, I had to completely re-create the album to get the changes to show.

What is the intended functionality? Is there a way to generate an updated output of the album contents without completely re-creating it?


Comments

In reply to by Shoichi

Hi Shoichi,
Yes, I understand that album and joined score files are different.
Having made a change to an individual score that is part of an album, I expected that running 'Join Scores' again would re-fetch the individual scores and hence reflect the change in the resulting file. However, this does not seem to be the case and I just get another copy of the original joined file.
If this is expected behaviour, I will make an improvement request. If not, I need to test again.

In reply to by m_sandford

Album is only a list of files.
Updating the score requires you to delete the previous score from the list and add the modified one.
So I have understood, In joined score changes made to a song are part of the overall score.
IMO is expected behaviour.
Others?

In reply to by m_sandford

It's definitely not the expected behavior, and I actually can't imagine how this could happen - once you replace a score, the old one is gone, so there is no possible way MuseScore could still be accessing the old version. My guess is that either you did not in fact replace the original score but saved a new copy to a different folder. Either that or when you did the new join command, you specified a different folder than the previous. Check all the file dates and folder locations to be sure. Or maybe the old album read-only and MuseScore was therefore unable to replace it? Try deleting the old album first and re-running the join command.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Marc,
I'm 99% sure I re-saved the component score in the same place with the same name and I think I was prompted to give permission to overwrite the previous, joined score file when I created it a second time.
Nevertheless, I'll test again and pay particular attention to file dates as you suggest.

In reply to by m_sandford

I have made further tests and I think I have the answer.
Scenario 1)
- Make an album from several scores.
- Join the scores and save the result.
- Change and resave a score.
- Go back to the album (still open in MuseScore) and join the scores again.
Result - The change is NOT reflected in the newly joined scores.
Scenario 2)
- Make an album from several scores.
- Join the scores and save the result.
- Close the album
- Change and resave a score.
- Load the album again
- Join the scores again.
Result - The change IS reflected in the newly joined scores.
The confusion is around what and when things are actually saved and loaded. 'Load' seems to load the album file AND refetch the assoicated score files. Counterintuitively (to me at any rate) the assoicated score files are not re-fetched when clicking 'Join Scores'. There's probably nothing actually wrong. It just needs better on screen propmpts and more thorough explanation in help.
It would help if saving and retrieving the album file was totally sepatated from loading (or reloading) the score files.
(I note that there is no option in Preferences to select a default location for album files. It leads me to wonder how well this was thought through at the time of implementation.)

In reply to by m_sandford

Yes, what you are saying makes sense. Although it is not obvious, the component scores are pre-loaded when you create or open the album. This could probably be made clearer. Although from I understand, the whole album mechanism is going away (to be replaced by who knows what) in a future release.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Oh, that sounds a bit ominous? I hope it gets replaced with a better version or something similar.
The ability to combine multiple scores on one page of output was a feature that attracted me to MuseScore in the first place. My music is mostly prepared for a barn dance band. We have loads of single stave, 16 bar dance tunes... just two lines of 8 bars each. With the album feature I can pull any three of these together onto a single page... which is what we use for one dance. To loose this capability would rather scupper all the investment I have put into creating tunes in MuseScore!

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.