Hi there -I was wondering if it would be possible to add a feature for toggling visibility for multiple instruments in a layout?
At the moment it seems like the only way to hide players in a layout is to uncheck them individually, which is very time consuming when handling files with lots of players (eg importing MIDI files into a score template). It would be great if you could select multiple players at once, and toggle visibility for all selected at once (if that’s too difficult to implement, toggling visibility for groups of players would be a viable alternative).
Another perhaps more effective alternative could be to make the “instrument visibility” function in write mode available in all modes. It’s a powerful feature, and it’s a pity that is relegate to Gallery View only. Thoughts?
Thank you for your time, and looking forward to hearing your feedback.
Lorenzo
From this description it’s not clear to me what you mean by “visibility”.
If you mean whether instruments are included in a layout, we can already do this in Setup with one checkbox: select all the instrument cards first, and check or uncheck the box on the layout card. Other combinations of the three zones in Setup work the same way.
If you mean hiding selected instruments in galley view, we can define different sets with the instrument filter. (But I don’t think this is what you mean.)
Mark, I am not entirely sure what you mean. If I want to remove (my bad I used the word hide which might have been confusing) a player from a score layout is to → Select Full Score Layout → uncheck box for each player I want to remove. Unchecking for each player takes a long time and it’s the kind of thing that could be automated with an option click, or something.
Yes, you can hide instruments in Gallery view, make sets, etc. It’s all very cool, but as we both said it works only in Gallery view -which makes it a lot less useful than it could be. I want to have some sketch staves in the score to paste staff around when I am orchestrating (in Gallery view) and being able to hide them in Page view (for all modes). Right now the only way to do that is using manual staff visibility, but I still need to click on each individually -which can amount to a whole lot of clicking for a film/tv job.
I understand that these might be separate items, and I apologize if there is any confusion. I hope that my answer explains my point.
Yes. But try it the other way around: Select (highlight) the instrument cards first, and notice that the box on the layout card shows the status of whether they are included in that layout. Un-check to remove all the selected instruments at once. Is this making sense yet?
Hello Mark, sorry for the late response -I have been away from Doricoland for travel/work. I found a way to deselect them in batches using shift click, which I assume is what you were referring to? It works, but it’s very slow as it processes each instrument one by one. Better than nothing I suppose. Generally speaking I found that toggling instrument visibility works better in my workflow. I just wish there was a way to do it in batches instead of selecting multiple instruments. I hope it’s a feature they include at some point!
We seem to be talking past each other. Have you read the directions in the manual? Maybe that makes it clearer than my directions. If you’re doing it right, the de-assignment happens all at once, with one final click.
Or maybe I still haven’t understood what you’re trying to do! But it sounds like this is a matter of changing instrument assignments.
I looked again at the manual. I am not sure what I am missing, but I don’t see any new info that I wasn’t aware of. Maybe we are not understanding each other. This is what I am doing, which achieves pretty much what I had in mind:
That’s what I thought. Don’t select the layout on the right. First select the players on the left, and notice that there are now checkboxes on the layouts and flows (either checked or not). You can Shift-click to select a range of player cards, or Command-click to select and deselect them individually. As you do so, the check boxes on the cards for layouts and flows update to show whether they include all the selected players.
Select all the desired players you want to add/remove on the left. Then click the box on the layout card to add/remove them all from the Full score in one click.
This is the clearest explanation I can offer. If you won’t try doing it the other way, then the above video is the best you can do.
I see what you’re saying now, I didn’t really understand that from the manual. It’s a lot better, thanks!
In terms of feature request, it would still be greatly appreciated a tool to apply “manual staff visibility” to groups/multiples within the menu 
Manual staff visibility is for a different purpose, though, and can be tricky. If you want to focus on certain sets of instruments while you work, have you looked into instrument filters?
Yes, instruments filters are useful for working. What I am trying to do is a little different though. When I orchestrate film music etc., I import the midi from the composer into my template, then use it as a sketch to paste/ develop onto the actual score staves. I need to be able to hide the “sketch” staves with the original midi, in a way they are still accessible (in case something goes wrong at the session and I need to consult what the composer put in their midi). One way to do that is to exclude the “sketch” players from the flow, which we discussed. The other is to use manual staff visibility, which I prefer because it allows me to access the midi at any point by just toggling to gallery view.
My wish is there was a more efficient way to handle staff visibility. As you can imagine, there are scenarios where these “sketch” staves are quite a lot (even after some pruning haha), so it would be great to be able to group them and make them invisible in page view, in one fell swoop. I think such a feature would have a wide range of use scenarios, so hopefully it’s something that can be looked at by the devs at some point.
Another idea for productivity: You can have as many layouts as you want, name them appropriately and setup the page for convenience, and switch between them quickly. When entering a symphonic work I have used temporary layouts for Strings, Bass instruments, etc. You may want to omit some instruments from the conductor’s score.
Custom layouts are amazing! I have multiple custom layouts, ordered in sequence for each step of the workflow, starting with the single “piano sketch” and including combo layouts (by section) just to move or copy notes from sketch to staves. It’s a brilliant feature!
That’s a good idea! I have been using Instrument Visibility → Instrument Filter to create sets for different working stages. My gripe with that (I know, I am picky) is that is a little too “mouse intensive” to set up. Maybe using layouts would be more efficient? I’ll give it a go for a bit and report back.