I’m working with the latest Dorico 5.1, on a Mac Studio with an M2 Ultra CPU, 24 cores, and 64 GB RAM. (If you’re curious, yes I do see some UI delays, but overall performance feels good so far, except for the mysteriously occasional beach-balling when I’m not doing anything. I’m condensing 9 pairs of staves; switching that on takes about 28 seconds.)
My co-editor on this project has an Intel system of far more modest means. When he opened my Dorico file, it took 5 minutes. I suspect his system will not be up to the challenge of editing this one, large file.
So my question is, how best to handle this situation? Are there guidelines or best practices for having multiple editors work on one large composition? I see I can export flows to separate files, but one of the main attractions of Dorico for me is being able to easily enforce conformity across all flows of a composition.
Thanks for any tips! (Or perhaps even the link to the page I should have read before posting this!)
You certainly can work on individual flows and bind them all into one dorico file when the work is nearly done. I’ve been working on an opera last fall and that is the workflow we’ve been using. No problem at all, and the casting off of the parts has been done when all flows were reunited (to take advantage of having flows starting on the same page, which gives way more freedom on turns). Not ideal, but it works.
[Edit] One piece of advice I’d add: make sure you don’t have any page overrides. This will make the whole process way easier in the end. This can mean you might need to have some custom page templates, custom flow headings, etc… It’s really worth it, in the end, as everything is so smooth and workable.
Welcome to the forum. I suspect the beachball is autosave, which you can turn off or set to less frequent.
As regards splitting files, that’s not a problem really. Join them when you’re ready for final engraving and layout. Importing flows into one file will give you the conformity you’re wanting.
Thanks Marc & Dan. Here’s my worry (as a noob) … there are dozens (hundreds?) of settings. What happens if/when one of us changes one of them in a separated flow’s Dorico file, but not in the master (full score with all flows) Dorico file?
Auto-save shouldn’t take too long, even with a large project, unless you’re using a big set of third-party sounds, for example. Stick to the factory sounds (or, even better, NotePerformer if you have it) and the impact of VST instruments etc. will be minimal.
When doing a “proper” save (e.g. via Command-S) you can speed it up a bit by turning off the option in File > Project Info to save a preview image. (You may need to scroll down a bit in the dialog to see the checkbox.)
