Score replaced by part

• Sep 30, 2014 - 14:03

I'm using MuseScore 2.0 beta 1 on a Windows 8 laptop.
I have spent a lot of time creating a score with five instrument parts.
In order to have an easier overview when setting and testing the repetitions and codas, I edited those on the piano part. I assumed that any changes will be reflected in the full score. And this assumption seemed to be confirmed when checking.

After several rounds of resetting and testing the playback with codas, I was satisfied - but found that the score has been overwritten by the part. The other instruments are gone!

I had the same problem earlier this morning when working on the bandoneon part. But fortunately, I found a .Piazzolla-Bando-Partitur.mscz, file which contained the full score. I was able to open it after renaming it, especially removing the , at the end of the mscz extension.

Unfortunately, that file has meanwhile also been overwritten by the piano part.
How can this happen? And is there any way I can get the result of 30 hours of hard work back, i.e. the full score with all instrument parts?


Comments

Sorry this has happened. Did you at some point do a Save As or Export or Export Parts while viewing the piano part, and give the same name as the score? That's the only thing I can think of that would cause that behavior. Normally, hitting the regular Save command would save the whole score and parts together. Understanding what caused this would be the first step in understanding if there is anything that can be done about it.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks for your quick response.
I did use Save As while viewing the piano part, but under the name Piazzolla - Bando Partitur Piano. That name would show for the piano tab, but the other tabs (including the one for the full score) would remain visible.

I tried it out just now with a different full score. Even using Save As under the original name while viewing the piano part won't wipe out (or replace) the full score, but will save the full score. Whatever way I save it, the full score and all its parts remain there.

That is what I believed until a minute ago. Now after closing and reopening the file saved from the part view, I only see the part. The rest is gone! I can also see it comparing the file sizes of around 2000 KB vs 344 KB.

As long as I didn't close the score, the full score and all the parts remained visible.
I wish the full score would always get saved, no matter from which view I'm saving.

Possibly a crash - when trying to insert a new horizontal frame at one point - and saying yes to the recovery option while reopening MuseScore 2.0 beta might lead to an explanation?

Is it correct that the .Piazzolla - Bando Partitur.mscx, file gets generated as a back-up while working on the score? How is it to be explained that earlier this morning there was a full score in that file, while now there is only the piano part? Will the back-up file also get overwritten, once I reopen an edited and saved score in the piano part view?

Is there any chance recovering the full score with some recovery software, if it has been overwritten?

In reply to by pseller

I believe you might be right about the crash and recovery. There was this:

#15746: Restore session fails on multi-part scores

which was apparently fixed just *after* the Beta release. So if you were using the Beta version at that point, that could explain it. If it's any consolation, it should work in Nightly builds since then.

As for recovering the full score, if you mean disk recovery software, yes, that might be possible. But if you can't get the complete file - eg, if some blocks have been overwritten - I'm afraid you'll be out of luck.

FWIW, I often save working copies of a document at various stages when working on large projects with Beta software. I think maybe working in a Google Drive or Dropbox or similarly-synced folder might provide some sort of automatic versioning and you might consider that in the future.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks. Understanding what happened helps me in dealing with the loss - and avoiding it in the future.

I'm now using the piano and bandoneon parts to rebuild the full score. I also have the unedited results of PhotoScore 7 Ultimate's go at reading the PDF with all the instrument parts. So, I will hopefully be much quicker in rebuilding the full score than during the first time.

Unfortunately, pasting in the roughly edited violin part into the new score lead to crashes several times.I hope I can overcome that problem. I assumed it might have to do with repetitions and codas that I added to the new score which are not yet in the roughly edited violin part. But even just copying and pasting the first half which doesn't contain any repetitions and codas lead to a crash ...

Is updating the 2.0 beta 1 with a Nightly build an easy thing to do? Or does it require some recompiling or something like that? How long will I have to wait for the next updated version of MuseScore 2.0?

In reply to by pseller

BTW, my understanding is that the backup mechanism is quite simple. At the moment you open a score, it gets copied to a new version with leading period and trailing comma. Whatever was in the file at that moment, that's your new backup. And yes, it would overwrite whatever previous backup was there from a previous session.

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

Been to that code about an hour ago: a backup file (dotNAME.EXTcomma) gets created only if a score is saved the first time in a session. Not in subsequent saves in the same session.
And I believe the autosave has nothing to do with it, it saves files under a completly different directory, with some fabricated names, basically just for recovery after a crash (but doesn't clean up after a clean exit, so these files accumulate)

The location mentioned by Jojo for the backup files is often hidden in the Windows OS.
You must put a check mark in the box 'Show hidden files, folders, and drives' in the Folders Options dialog of Windows Explorer. Once you access these hidden autosave files, the file names themselves are renamed alphanumerically (not even close to 'Bando Partitur...'), and must be opened with MuseScore to see what's in them. The file date and/or size might give you a clue if you have many to be searched through.

Now, you mention that you have indeed found these files, but could not find your full score backup. You also mentioned the existence of a PDF with all the instrument parts. If the PDF was generated from a scorewriter like MuseScore, here's an alternative to using Photoscore:

http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/pdftomusicpro.htm

While Photoscore uses a scanned image (picture) to generate a score, PDFtoMusic Pro uses discrete elements already present in the PDF (so long as the score was generated by a scorewriter like MuseScore) to create a score which can be saved as MusicXML and imported into MuseScore. PDFtoMusic Pro cannot manage scanned image sheet music. Also, the trial version allows only one page at a time to be exported. However, it may save some time over editing in Photoscore.

Here's a litmus test on how to tell the difference in a music score PDF:

Open a PDF score, click on a score element, and drag the mouse.
With a scanned image, you will see this - a uniformly colored rectangle around the selected area:

NOT FOUND: 1

The PDF above is a good candidate for Photoscore, because each and every single score element needs to be identified and reconstructed - a lot can go wrong, requiring much manual editing to 'help' the program to recognize the various score elements (notes, text, time signatures, etc.).

In contrast to the above, opening a PDF created from MuseScore (or other scorewriter), and dragging the mouse across score elements will show something like this:

NOT FOUND: 2

The PDF above is a good candidate for PDFtoMusic Pro as it was exported from MuseScore (or other scorewriter) and actually shows discrete score elements. Oftentimes this results in a score which requires less editing.

It's good to have many tools available as some can be more helpful than others in (hopefully) mitigating 'painstaking work' of reconstructing a score.

Regards.

Attachment Size
Scanned pdf.png 132.92 KB
Generated.png 163.98 KB

In reply to by Jm6stringer

Meanwhile, I have rebuilt the full score with a lot of effort.
Then I created the parts (inside the same mscx file). When trying to view one of them, MuseScore 2.0 beta 1 immediately crashes. I can only view the full score.
I also tried opening individual part files created from the full score. Again, immediate crash.

Can you look at the files and let me know what is wrong with them, and what I can do?

Attachment Size
Piazzolla - Bando Alle.mscz 112.98 KB
Bando-Auszug-Bando-Violine.mscx 243.71 KB

Thanks, that has worked for me and allowed me to make everything ready for today's first rehearsal of my new tango ensemble. :-)

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I still had the fully-edited piano part and the almost fully-edited bandoneon part.
I also had the PhotoScore-read pdf with all parts.
As the violin part contains the small-print of the bandoneon melody, I had difficulties copying and pasting that into the new score. I wanted to use the edited bandoneon melody in voice 1 of the violin part, and paste the violin voice into voice 2.
The pointers I found about swapping voices 1 and 2 didn't help me. I didn't manage to copy and paste just the violin voice. I was only able to copy and paste the two voices, thus overwriting the bandoneon melody. Even deleting the bandoneon melody from the (un-edited) violin part didn't help, as breaks remained in the second voice which would overwrite the bandoneon melody I had copied and pasted from the edited bandoneon part. Thus I ended up re-entering the violin voice measure by measure. I think I had managed to copy and paste the edited bandoneon melody into the (un-edited) violin part somehow when I built the score for the first time. But I couldn't remember or figure out how.
Copying and pasting the bass part was easy, as PhotoScore produced an almost perfect reading for it, and there is only one voice.

When copying and pasting the final score into a new file, in order to overcome the crash problem I had encountered when opening the parts, I needed to re-enter the timings and the coda markers. Or would there have been a way to also copy and paste those?

I'm attaching the final score.

Attachment Size
Bando-Partitur Neu.mscz 86.04 KB

In reply to by pseller

I figured out how to get rid of the whole second voice, including the remaining breaks, so that I can copy and paste the other voice into the staff with the small-print bandoneon voice. Using the voice swapping method pointed to in the forum works after reducing the voices in the source staff to one, i.e. leaving just the violin voice.

What I had not figured out before is that after swapping the unwanted second voice, so that it becomes voice 2 in that staff, I can get rid of the whole second voice by first deleting all the notes, and selecting all the remaining breaks and deleting them, too. This won't work when they are in voice 1, which is where the bandoneon melody was in the first place.

So next time I know how to copy just the violin voice and paste it into the staff with the copied and pasted small-print bandoneon voice already in it. Had I figured that out yesterday, it would have saved me several hours ...

In reply to by pseller

Well, glad you got the job done, and learned a few things along the way! Do also take note of the new Selection Filter in 2.0 Beta 1 (see View menu), which allows you to filter a selection to include exclude particular types of elements, or include just particular voices. I suspect that also could have helped, both with your voices issue and also perhaps with the codas / segnos.

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