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Summary: EZ to use, even 4 this computer goober & quick delivery, too
Review: A writer wants to write not get bogged down with hard to decipher manuals, and difficult setup instruction sheets. Not to worry with Final Draft! In no time I was doing what I love to do: creating & writing!Excellent program. Should have made the investment long ago! Hope to see you at the movies enjoying my movie, "Country Inn, Dead & Breakfast."
Rating:
Summary: EZ to use, even 4 this computer goober & quick delivery, too
Review: A writer wants to write not get bogged down with hard to decipher manuals, and difficult setup instruction sheets. Not to worry with Final Draft! In no time I was doing what I love to do: creating & writing! Excellent program. Should have made the investment long ago! Hope to see you at the movies enjoying my movie, "Country Inn, Dead & Breakfast."
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Summary: Instruction book is worthless and phone support is $$$$$
Review: As a writer of Novels and Short Stories, I decided to try my hand at a screenplay, using Final Draft 6. BIG MISTAKE! The instruction book assumes you already know how to write a screenplay and never explains the basics. Tech support is very expensive and will cost you more than the price of the software by the time they explain how it works. An instructional video would be helpful, but is not available. My advice would be to not purchase this software unless you know someone who is willing to teach you how to use it. I'm sure it's great for those that already know how to write a screenplay, making it much faster. But for a novice to the trade, it is worthless.
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Summary: Writing is So Much Easier
Review: As we all know, screenplays require a specific, yet quirky format. The other day, I saw a gentleman at Starbucks with his laptop putting the final touches on his screenplay. He said it took him six months to write, the main culprit being the formatting for the long duration. It turns out he was using Microsoft Word to write this thing. I could see the smoke coming out of his ears when I showed him Final Draft. I've written three screenplays since purchasing the product. It is formatted to the industry standard, and guarantees your work won't be rejected for improper formatting. Another cool feature I've taken advantage of is some television show script templates. It's very helpful if you've never written a script for TV. It may not be perfect, but it is clearly the best out there.
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Summary: Quirky program made useless by copy protection
Review: Buyer beware: Final Draft incorporates an archaic copy protection scheme that will drive you nuts. Every other category of computer software did away with this kind of user-unfriendly copy protection scheme in the mid-80s, but the screenwriting software vendors persist. You're probably better off using Microsoft Word (which is far more robust) and using a simple formatting utility when you're project is finished. If you have any hard drive crashes or hardware upgrades and you forget to de-install Final Draft you will lose your install keys. Tech support is scarce and the online help system is only good for the most basic information. While it should make your life simpler this product will make your life hell. Avoid it like the plague.
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Summary: Final Draft 6 Needs Revision
Review: Even though it remains the Hollywood standard, Final Draft 6 leaves a lot to be desired. For lack of a decent alternative, I've used this application for the better part of a decade, and it remains clumsy to use and well behind the curve of technology. The big issue: Onscreen text looks atrocious. After a year on the market, Final Draft 6 still doesn't use Mac OS X's technology to render beautiful anti-aliased text. Third-party fixes, like Silk, work only halfway to solve Final Draft's shortcomings. But should an application that costs $ need fixing at all? Unacceptable. And beware of WYSIWYDG, or "What You See Is What You Don't Get." You might find the perfect font in the Font Menu, but good luck applying it to your screenplay. Worse, there are occasional text hiccups, where the text-rendering is garbled and screen redrawing is skewed. 'Authorization' remains a nuisance, too. (Bet you didn't remember to 'deauthorize''before a system reinstall or upgrade.) I know of no other software that requires such an unwieldy process just to stay running smoothly. Final Draft 6 is still better than a typewriter or a standard word processor for writing scripts, but not by much. Considering the steep price, maybe it's time to revisit the competition.
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Summary: Very Easy & Very Good
Review: Final Draft has created the perfect word processor for constructing scripts. The interface is clean and straightforward. To the beginner it can be used quite effectively after the brief tutorial; for the expert it offers unlimited customization. Quibbles? None really except that you have to 'authorize' the program to use it without having the CD in the drive. Therefore if you write on two computers you will either have to have two copies of Final Draft or put up with having to insert the program CD into the drive of the unauthorized computer. All in all Final Draft 6.0 is an excellent program and well worth the money.
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Summary: There's a reason the whole world uses it -- it's the best
Review: Final Draft is simply the best there is. Screenwriter is buggy [I borrowed an install from a friend], Scriptware is a joke [based on the demo I tried] and Sophocles doesn't even run on my Mac. If you follow the directions it does exactly what it says it's going to do. It's a professional-grade tool [even though I'm not a professional-grade writer - YET], it's got 24/7 help [that I haven't even come close to needing] and everyone I know uses it [and I do work in the industry]. As far as I can tell the people who have problems with it aren't using it right or they have crappy computers. Don't mess around with other programs. This one is the one to use.
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Summary: Final Draft 6 Far Exceeds Expectations
Review: I am a screenwriter who is proficient with Microsoft Word. I put off buying Final Draft because I thought with the macros I'd created in Word, this product could not be much better than what I was already using. I WAS WRONG!! This program GREATLY simplifies screenwriting and is INCREDIBLY easy to use.
The program is also able to convert screenplays written in Microsoft Word into Final Draft documents, and does so with a minimum of errors. My hard spaces in Word were inconsistently converted to question marks; some of the scene headings in the Word document were mistaken for character headings in Final Draft - both easily fixed. (However, Final Draft documents are not easily converted back to Word, as the formatting is lost.) Final Draft is also able to save documents in pdf format. However, one cannot simply click on the document and have Adobe Reader open it. Instead, one must open Adobe Reader, and then open the document through that. In spite of its minor faults, this is a TERRIFIC, easy to learn and operate program!
Rating:
Summary: Final Draft 6 Far Exceeds Expectations
Review: I am a screenwriter who is proficient with Microsoft Word. I put off buying Final Draft because I thought with the macros I'd created in Word, this product could not be much better than what I was already using. I WAS WRONG!! This program GREATLY simplifies screenwriting and is INCREDIBLY easy to use.
The program is also able to convert screenplays written in Microsoft Word into Final Draft documents, and does so with a minimum of errors. My hard spaces in Word were inconsistently converted to question marks; some of the scene headings in the Word document were mistaken for character headings in Final Draft - both easily fixed. (However, Final Draft documents are not easily converted back to Word, as the formatting is lost.) Final Draft is also able to save documents in pdf format. However, one cannot simply click on the document and have Adobe Reader open it. Instead, one must open Adobe Reader, and then open the document through that. In spite of its minor faults, this is a TERRIFIC, easy to learn and operate program!
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