Norton 360 v6--only £24.99 when you spend £30 or more
Spend £30 or more at Amazon.co.uk and you can get Norton 360 v6 - 1 User 3 PCs for just £24.99 when you enter the promo code 'NORTONV6' at checkout. Here's how (terms and conditions apply).
System Requirements
- Platform: Windows 2000 / Me / XP, Mac OS X
- Media: CD-ROM
- Item Quantity: 1
Product Features
- Final Draft AV, a full-featured script processor specifically designed for audio/visual scriptwriting.
Product details
|
Product Description
Manufacturer's Description
For years, the creative minds of advertising, documentary and industrial filmmakers, news and speechwriters have had to suffer through the rigors of standard word processors and graphics programs to generate a single professional-looking audio/video script...until now.
From the publishers of the premiere screenwriting software, Final Draft, comes Final Draft AV, a full-featured script processor specifically designed for audio/visual scriptwriting.
It combines powerful word processing with a variety of industry-standard formats, all in one self-contained, easy-to-use system.
Final Draft AV lines up multiple audio/video columns automatically and keeps them aligned when text is added, edited or deleted. There are no complicated commands to learn, no frustrating tables to deal with.
In addition, scripts created in Final Draft (for screenplays) can be interchanged with Final Draft AV and vice versa.
Whether you are creating a 60-second commercial, a 15-second radio spot, a half-hour speech or a four-hour training film, Final Draft AV's ease of use allows you to focus on writing, so you don't have to worry about style or placement of text. Packed with all the features you demand, Final Draft AV will have you writing in no time.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Final Draft AV 2 (PC/Mac)
Like many of my colleagues, I bought both Final Draft AV and Final Draft 8 because I needed a wide variety of industry-standard templates. But the whole could have been so much greater than the sum of these parts with more thought and effort.
As it stands, I think it's a poor choice for the professional. I've handled scripts for everything from TV news to corporate videos to games, so I'm looking at Final Draft AV 2 in a broad context.
The first question that struck me is why they bothered to have two separate products at all. Given the range of templates already in Final Draft 8 - from query letters to novels and full film scripts - I can't understand why they didn't just roll that up with the small number of two-column templates in the AV version and treat it as one write-anything app for a premium price. It would have been worth it for the extra functions in Final Draft 8 - like bookmarks, backup versions, and script compare - that could have been made available for AV documents.
AV will probably feel like hard going to anyone used to the average word processing application. Word and equivalent apps are an IT literacy standard, and most end users will have spent years working with that kind of interface. That has to be factored in when you design writing software; it's become a standard because it works. There are tools we all expect to have when we write.
But AV is just too basic and unintuitive when it comes to frequent routine actions. Perhaps I'm too used to over-featured Microsoft apps, but AV 2 lacks fundamental tools - like bookmarking, revision tracking, annotation, and version control - that you really need in the business. Even deletion isn't as simple as it should be, and I'm still trying to work out how I delete a scene other than "undo." Saving documents is particularly annoying; there's no way of setting an autosave, which is essential anyway, but especially as AV crashes frequently. (A rare experience for me these days with any app.) Even a compulsive "two minute saver" like me ends up losing material.
Customisation is too limited. I can't even change the width of the header cells to accommodate the category names I need on my scripts. And there's no way of adding comments or tracking revisions without outputting the script to a PDF or a text document so that colleagues and clients can read it and annotate/ revise it. I then have to transfer those revisions manually to the AV document because it can't compare or import changes.
Good points about AV; if you're an absolute novice at word processing, it saves you the hassle of creating a document template in your word processor of choice. You also know it's accepted in the industry, which matters when companies can be so picky about formats. It does the (very rigid) layout thinking for you when you switch between video, character, and dialogue.
Bad points about AV; it needs a whole extra level of tools for saving docs, formatting, annotation, version control, and revision. It's almost as if whoever built it didn't know all the things that scriptwriters have to do, and the stages that a script has to go through in the real world. It could have been replaced by two-column templates within Final Draft 8. (Unless there's a solid technical reason why they couldn't do that - although I can't think of one.)
Conclusion; I don't regret buying Final Draft 8, but I wish I'd spent time testing the demo version of AV 2 before parting with my cash. I didn't, because I needed the app for an urgent job that cropped up on a weekend, so more fool me. If I'd had the time and inclination to build my own two-column templates in Word, I'd have the ability to recover crashed documents, autosave, backup versions, track revisions, and add comments - none of which should be beyond a product that costs as much as Final Draft AV. If you need to use this in the real world to earn money - well, I spent more time grappling with its shortcomings than I did actually writing the script. I'm setting aside some time to build my own templates now.
Like many of my colleagues, I bought both Final Draft AV and Final Draft 8 because I needed a wide variety of industry-standard templates. But the whole could have been so much greater than the sum of these parts with more thought and effort.
As it stands, I think it's a poor choice for the professional. I've handled scripts for everything from TV news to corporate videos to games, so I'm looking at Final Draft AV 2 in a broad context.
The first question that struck me is why they bothered to have two separate products at all. Given the range of templates already in Final Draft 8 - from query letters to novels and full film scripts - I can't understand why they didn't just roll that up with the small number of two-column templates in the AV version and treat it as one write-anything app for a premium price. It would have been worth it for the extra functions in Final Draft 8 - like bookmarks, backup versions, and script compare - that could have been made available for AV documents.
AV will probably feel like hard going to anyone used to the average word processing application. Word and equivalent apps are an IT literacy standard, and most end users will have spent years working with that kind of interface. That has to be factored in when you design writing software; it's become a standard because it works. There are tools we all expect to have when we write.
But AV is just too basic and unintuitive when it comes to frequent routine actions. Perhaps I'm too used to over-featured Microsoft apps, but AV 2 lacks fundamental tools - like bookmarking, revision tracking, annotation, and version control - that you really need in the business. Even deletion isn't as simple as it should be, and I'm still trying to work out how I delete a scene other than "undo." Saving documents is particularly annoying; there's no way of setting an autosave, which is essential anyway, but especially as AV crashes frequently. (A rare experience for me these days with any app.) Even a compulsive "two minute saver" like me ends up losing material.
Customisation is too limited. I can't even change the width of the header cells to accommodate the category names I need on my scripts. And there's no way of adding comments or tracking revisions without outputting the script to a PDF or a text document so that colleagues and clients can read it and annotate/ revise it. I then have to transfer those revisions manually to the AV document because it can't compare or import changes.
Good points about AV; if you're an absolute novice at word processing, it saves you the hassle of creating a document template in your word processor of choice. You also know it's accepted in the industry, which matters when companies can be so picky about formats. It does the (very rigid) layout thinking for you when you switch between video, character, and dialogue.
Bad points about AV; it needs a whole extra level of tools for saving docs, formatting, annotation, version control, and revision. It's almost as if whoever built it didn't know all the things that scriptwriters have to do, and the stages that a script has to go through in the real world. It could have been replaced by two-column templates within Final Draft 8. (Unless there's a solid technical reason why they couldn't do that - although I can't think of one.)
Conclusion; I don't regret buying Final Draft 8, but I wish I'd spent time testing the demo version of AV 2 before parting with my cash. I didn't, because I needed the app for an urgent job that cropped up on a weekend, so more fool me. If I'd had the time and inclination to build my own two-column templates in Word, I'd have the ability to recover crashed documents, autosave, backup versions, track revisions, and add comments - none of which should be beyond a product that costs as much as Final Draft AV. If you need to use this in the real world to earn money - well, I spent more time grappling with its shortcomings than I did actually writing the script. I'm setting aside some time to build my own templates now.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Disappointment
18 Sep 2006
I am so disappointed with this software. It crashes and seems to be extremely sluggish. I expected much better from a product that costs so much. I need to be able to create scripts for my clients, so I don't know what I'm going to do. But I may have no choice at some point to buy something else. I've got to get my work done and not have to constantly be frustrated with the way the software stumbles along.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Frustrated!!!
13 Mar 2009
We had such high hopes for this. After struggling to create columns in Word, this seemed like the perfect solution. But the constant crashes make it extremely frustrating to use. If only it had an automatic backup it would at least be usable. But the hours and work lost are adding up. For me the crash rate is extremely high. A colleague uses it as well and has had only a few crashes--though one is too many IMHO. I've tried both the PC and now the Mac version. Today I noticed there was an upgrade so I downloaded it and tried to install it. The install failed and now I can't even open my past scripts. I tried calling customer service but you have to enter a credit card and agree to pay for support before you can even talk to someone. They do allow limited free support at first. If you have money to spare this may work for you. Write in a word processor and then paste the audio portion into the second column. Then write in your visuals. That's what I'm going to have to do from now on if I can get it working again.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
AN IRRITATING NECESSITY
30 April 2008
Amazon Verified Purchase
If you're doing AV scripting (TV, particularly), this is a must. It's MUCH easier than struggling with Word columns or templates, and it delivers a very professional looking product.
But there are too many missing or problem features. First, it has an irritating tendency in Windows XP to shut down due to errors. So save...early and often. Then, there doesn't seem to be a zoom function for Windows (there is for Mac), so you're stuck with a full page at a time, which isn't great if your eyes aren't as strong as they used to be. And when it comes to sharing...if the person receiving your script doesn't have Final Draft AV, you'll have to export as a .pdf or a rich text file.
In other words, for as long as this product has been around, Final Draft hasn't attended to some basic issues. Make it exportable to .doc format for Word, make it zoomable, and above all, figure out what the code issue is that's shutting it down and it will be a MUCH better program.
But there are too many missing or problem features. First, it has an irritating tendency in Windows XP to shut down due to errors. So save...early and often. Then, there doesn't seem to be a zoom function for Windows (there is for Mac), so you're stuck with a full page at a time, which isn't great if your eyes aren't as strong as they used to be. And when it comes to sharing...if the person receiving your script doesn't have Final Draft AV, you'll have to export as a .pdf or a rich text file.
In other words, for as long as this product has been around, Final Draft hasn't attended to some basic issues. Make it exportable to .doc format for Word, make it zoomable, and above all, figure out what the code issue is that's shutting it down and it will be a MUCH better program.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
