Greetings,
I offer this feedback for film scoring. I’ll compare to Cubase as I imagine you guys will be more familiar with it than other DAWs. I know film features aren’t in v1, at least yet. But I hope this input helps either way.
Tempo
Sibelius tempo markings made sense for an engraving tool.
Cubase markers + video viewer work really well for film.
The reason why those two features work well for film (for me anyway) is because the tempo track interacts with them in real-time. If I drag a dot up or down, I can watch a marker or “hit-point” for the film move to the bar number I need it to line up with. I can watch the video with time code update in real-time. Rather than doing any math, I have an effortless and fast way to sync to picture. I’m not sure what the ideal solution is for Notation. It may include many more considerations than just my own. But I’d love if I could drag the tempo up and down to both change the number and watch the film project update in real-time… in some form or another.
Framerate
“Get framerate from video”, as it works in Cubase, is brilliant. Personally, I don’t need a timecode display. Most everyone includes it and if they don’t it’s easy to ask for.
Audio
One major draw back moving to Dorico will be the lack of being able to import and process audio files. I’m not saying that type of thing “belongs” in Dorico. It obviously is more foreign than native. But it is a legit weakpoint for film users. Where Dorico will already host many great Cubase plugins, a way to insert audio files into the score and perhaps process them might be advisable. I know that’s tricky. And it borders on something programmers may not love as it’s so foreign to the idea of notation. But as a point of feedback, it’s really one of the only major universal conflicts I can see outside of people’s individual workflows.
Video
In Cubase, you can split a film’s video and audio on tracks. Then you can move the separated events around. You can also load multiple audio tracks, which is essential when working with dialog and FX on separate tracks (a must when FX is a heavy part of the film). Sometimes you need to mute one or both. Sometimes you need to split events and move them around because sometimes you have to work with a rough cut of a film, where timings aren’t locked by the time you’re writing. It depends on the film, the composer, and often the needs of others.
In short, I can’t stress enough just how helpful it is to have track views for video, audio, and tempo.
Possible Solution 1
I almost want to say that Dorico should have a Film tab, a sequencer view really.
Possible Solution 2
Maybe forget adding film features altogether. Just integrate Dorico with Cubase. Dorico looks to have much more promising MIDI playback than Cubase IMHO. So just have Cubase do Video and Audio Tracks and leave the rest to Dorico when used together. You could even have tempo markings be a slave to the tempo track, the way that hairpins will be slaves to the CC lane in Dorico already.
I’m not sure if you guys will love that input. It’s big picture for sure. But I hope the benefits from tracks are clear and that it will at least help to create effective user-oriented solutions. I understand you’ll get input from others as well. So I’ve tried to at least keep this fairly general about how these Cubase features inherently just work and why that suits film effectively.
Cheers,
Sean