Changing trill settings has corrupted file

• Jul 22, 2023 - 12:16

Changing the accidental settings for a trill so that they always show has permanently corrupted a file I've spent hundreds of hours on and my latest backup is a good 30 hours work ago. If someone knows a way to find the offending trill and edit it outside of Musescore, I would be forever grateful. Attempting to open the file takes a long time to load but it always eventually crashes the same way it crashed when I added the trill.

Musescore Version: 4.1.0

Attachment Size
Shostakovich Symphony No. 4 Solo Piano.mscz 239.71 KB

Comments

• Jul 22, 2023 - 16:26

Here is what I tried:
1. Used the free 7-Zip tool to extract the .mscx file from the .mscz archive
2. Opened the .mscx file in a text editor (e.g. Notepad ++)
3. Searched for  <Spanner type="Trill"> and found 6 instances
4. Identified that 3 instances were "real" trills, each one followed at some point in the file by an "empty" spanner definition
5. Deleted the 3 empty spanners, and saved the .mscx file
6. Opened the .mscx file in MuseScore 4.1 and saved it as .mscz

You need to identify what it is that you do to cause these corrupt Trill definitions, which look like this:
LINE: 60936

<Spanner type="Trill">
            <prev>
              <location>
                <measures>-6</measures>
                </location>
              </prev>
            </Spanner>

LINES: 87886 and 215570

<Spanner type="Trill">
            <prev>
              <location>
                <measures>-2</measures>
                <fractions>-1/8</fractions>
                </location>
              </prev>
            </Spanner>

Note that in these instances only the trill length is defined as negative measures and fractions. I can hazard a guess that perhaps you are trying to adjust the trill position or length by dragging backwards with the mouse? Please don't do that, just read the Handbook section Changing the range of a line here:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/4/adjusting-elements-directly#change-…

I also noticed negative numbers in definitions for Hairpins and Ottavas, so that Handbook section might help with adjusting those line types as well.

Attachment Size
Shostakovich Symphony No. 4 Solo Piano - without empty trills.mscz 239.13 KB

Reply

• Jul 22, 2023 - 22:34

Thank you so much for the help Daniel. The file without the trills has saved me a lot of work even if it means figuring out which trills are gone now! The steps you've supplied are really helpful for if I ever encounter something like this again and I might try to reproduce them now to get a better understanding.

I wasn't aware of the issue where using the mouse to drag lines can create negative numbers in the definitions so I will watch out for this in the future. I think this was exactly what happened as I did slightly shorten the length of the trills before changing the accidental rules. Thanks again for the info and the link to the relevant section in the handbook!

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