Pretty box.Ĭons: Few choices in Preferences settings. Pros: Audio stays with Video in two-column format. Allow yourself time to learn and get used to the hardheadedness of the program. If you've got an AV, TV or corporate project that calls for this kind of formatting, it's probably worth slogging through the use of this version. Either that, or the software should not have been served until it was finished baking. Indeed, the 'introductory' price of $149 should have been closer to $69. Why do they have to reinvent the wheel? The developers should have been able to incorporate what they know into a smoother, more finished 'first' product. Naturally, it took a while to build from the ground up. No doubt the developers would say, 'Hey, c'mon-Final Draft wasn't perfect when it came out, and look how well it has evolved over the years.' That's true, but when Final Draft came out, there was nothing else like it. For them to limp out with this effort just seems, well, lame. They have proved themselves capable of producing a solid, industry-standard product in the past. I feel especially disappointed by this software, partly because I long for what might have been, partly because it doesn't feel like the Final Draft folks gave this their maximum effort. Maybe upgrades will solve these shortcomings, but when? And what will they cost? My overriding question is, if these are know shortcomings (as the manual admits), why weren't they solved before this edition was sold? There are more, but you should discover them for yourself. Marking too much text at once to change the font causes the program to crash. Cutting and pasting audio bumps character names out of the way or causes the pasted block to be underlined as if it were a character. Deleting large blocks of text leaves artifacts on the screen that only disappear after scrolling away from the affected area. For instance, colons pop up at the end of audio descriptions though I remove them, they return. The program has techno-gliteches as well.

Here's a thought: People have been emailing design suggestions for this software for two years-why not start by implementing those, before calling for different or redundant suggestions?

The manual urges users to email their suggestions to tech support, and promises to incorporate those suggestions into future versions. On virtually every page, the FD AV manual promises upgrades that will deliver the level of flexibility and features that, it seems to me, should have been standard equipment on this version. Generally, the manual has more promises of future improvements than information, more urges to register for the 'good stuff' to be incorporated into upgrades than helpful explanations.

The program has so few features and such limited flexibility, there isn't much to explain.Ĭonsequently, the FD AV manual feels skimpy, as if they had to stretch to fill it and make it look substantial. Is this Final Draft AV 2001, or WordStar 1981? Cripes, c'mon, guys! *If you put the character name in line with the dialogue, the entire text column must be centered. *No smart type feature for character names or anything else, as there is in FD. *No way to mark revised copy from one draft to the next. Perhaps 'AV' stands for 'Aggravating Version.' Header entries must be changed one item at a time. If you 'select all' and change the font, that will help you with the text you've typed however, if you type anything additional, it is entered in Times New Roman. One would imagine that a preference change would rid one of that problem, but that's not an option in this version. Some of its ideas are just plain bad, such as supplying Times New Roman as the default font. As you probably know, the two-column format is favored in the creation of TV and radio ads, corporate videos, documentaries, even short film scripts.įD AV feels simplistic and inflexible. If only the Final Draft folks had spent as much time designing this new software as they spent designing the handsome box around it, Final Draft AV might have been one of the great v1.0s of all time.Īfter more than two years of development, Final Draft has unveiled Final Draft AV, their software for writing in the two-column format on Mac or IBM.

Final draft software format