Yeah, I’d think that having everything metrically correct would almost be more important in film music as the costs are so high. Even a smallish orchestra of 30 musicians x $120hr + $300 hr studio works out to $65 a minute. Congrats, a 5 minute clusterf**k to figure out why Dorico only has 3 beats in a 4/4 bar just cost the producer $325 and probably got the copyist fired.
Perhaps there could be several automatic options to select from by default. With Dorico’s grid, I don’t think there is an easy way to overfill bars like the Finale option to maintain barlines, but maybe there could be a few other Preferences or Notation Options to select from:
- Current handling - Rebar overfilled bars up to next meter. Good luck playing Where’s Waldo? with finding underfilled bars. An option to throw a signpost here sure would be nice, but doesn’t currently exist.
- Complete bars as specified by meter - Rebar overfilled bars up to next meter. Complete final underfilled bars by padding with rests at the end.
- Complete bars preserving duration (film mode) - Rebar overfilled bars up to next meter. Automatically change meter of final underfilled bar so it becomes metrically correct and matches whatever leftover duration exists after rebarring.
I would think most users would prefer to use options 2 or 3 rather than the current option 1.