Hi Al,
BIAB should definitely import the files correctly.
What might be causing the issue is the setting of BIAB's grid. This depends on the style that is loaded. There are two settings: (a) even time -- this has evenly timed 1/16th note resolution; (b) swing time -- this has triplet 1/8th note resolution.
The problem you describe is likely to occur if a swing style is loaded into BIAB when your melody with dotted 1/8th notes and 1/16 notes is imported.
To test if this is the problem...
1. Load a style that has 1/16th note resolution. (These are identified by the "ev16" in the EvSw column in stylepicker.
2. To confirm that the style has set the necessary note resolution, enter Notation Mode and select "Editable Notation". Each beat should have 4 x dashed vertical lines.
If there are only 3 x dashed vertical lines per beat, this means that notation is set to 1/8th note triplet feel.
After loading an ev16 style, if the beat's resolution is not 4 x dashed vertical lines per beat, then generate the song and stop it after it starts playing. If that doesn't give the required resolution, try loading another ev16 style.
3. Import your MIDI melody into BIAB.
Does this help?
Should you still not be finding musical joy, it's possible that the MIDI is loaded in with a small timing offset.
To check this....
4. Create a file in Finale that only has 4 bars of 1/4 notes (without any pickup notes).
5. Save this as MIDI and import the MIDI into BIAB.
6. Open Piano Roll View. The melody's notes will show as horizontal bars on a grid that aligns to keyboard notes (the keyboard is on the left of the screen).
7. Check that the left edge of the bars (i.e. quarter notes) are located at the start of each beat.
8. If the notes are not at the start of each beat, try to estimate by how much of a beat each note is displaced from where it should be. In BIAB, each 1/4-note beat has a resolution of 120 ticks. Once the note's displacement has been estimated and converted to ticks, it's possible to time-shift the melody to match this and to align it. This option is found under the main menu as "Melody || Edit Melody Track || Quantize, Timeshift".
Hope these thoughts help.
Regards,
Noel
P.S. Let us know how you go so others who read this thread for future help will know if these ideas worked.