Software Review
Fade In vs Final Draft – Which One To Buy?
okay so in this blog I want to compare the two quite popular screenwriting applications final draft and fade in and give you my opinions but before we dive into the differences let’s real quick talk about what both of them do well they are both professional screenwriting applications meaning they will help you format your script to industry standards they have production tools they both have a bunch of other tools that help you with your writing in general like scene overview character lists synopsis alternative dialogue and whatnot both are offline screenwriting programs meaning you don’t write in a browser window but in a real application so to speak that is installed on your computer also both have a pay once model you pay once and you own the copy you don’t have to pay a subscription fee every month then both can handle the final draft file format well obviously final draft can handle that but also fade in can import it as well as export it so there is no problem of Inter-compatibility between the two fade in does have its own format though but converting that to FDX is not a problem so no matter which of them you choose most probably you won’t really miss anything having said that let’s look at some differences or in other words let’s see if this statement from fading is true this is what i found on their website for just a fraction of what it costs to buy a new copy of final draft you’ll get a software package that does everything final draft does and more not only that but it’s less than the cost of a single final draft update and updates to fading or free how can it get any better than that so let’s see if that’s true i’m not going to go through all the bells and whistles of both applications since there is already a ton of content on this and on other channels so let’s just focus on the main differences between the two what i think might be decision makers or breakers in terms of considering them for your screenwriting endeavors all right what are the differences i’ll just point out a few of them that i noted so you will have to judge for yourself if they really make a big difference to you templates final draft comes with more different templates it already has a lot of different templates built in and if you want you can download a lot more from their website what’s nice about the final draft templates they also include story structure examples so when you use them you already have the beats of that respective story structure on your beat board that’s kind of nice if you want to work with them fade in doesn’t have any of those fade in also gives you a bunch of templates and lets you download additional ones from their website and there is one i want to point out specifically and that is the fading AV template AV means audio visual script and this format is used for commercial production sometimes or for corporate videos or for that kind of stuff a while back final draft supported a v script as well i don’t remember if it was a different application or if they did it inside of the final draft application itself but at some point they stopped supporting that format so if that’s something you’re going to use this is a definitive advantage for fade in so as far as templates go final draft has more and also has story structure templates but fade in has the audio visual template the scene navigator when it comes to working with scenes i personally prefer the way the fade in scene navigator is implemented the problem with the final draft scene navigator is it’s always a little bit in the way and it’s covering up parts of the script in fade in it has its own integrated window on the side and doesn’t distract at all that said i have to admit that the final draft scene navigator has a lot more functionality you get this table view of your scenes you can also expand the window to full size and you can even export your scene information as a csv file which is great so it’s a matter of design versus function if you will fade in is easier to use final draft has more functionality here let’s talk about file types fade in imports more file formats than final draft for example pdf fountain and highland and you can even import scrivener files so the import file point definitely goes to fade in in terms of exporting it also has more possibilities than final draft again scrivener fountain and also it has epub if you want to export an ebook and you can also export in open screenplay format final draft doesn’t export to any of those that i just mentioned although i should mention here that if you know what you’re doing you can export a final draft file for scrivener or even fountain it’s just not officially supported and therefore you have to jump through some hoops to get it done free trial version final draft gives you a 60-day trial period in which you can test everything fade-in gives you an indefinite free trial but you can’t use online real-time collaboration and you have a watermark in your pdf export and every now and then a dialog box pops up and asks you to purchase now all that is very generous if you ask me at least a lot more generous than most software vendors out there because if you don’t care about collaboration because you’re writing alone and you don’t care about the watermark in your pdfs you’re good you’ve got a free screenwriting software although theoretically if you think a little bit of out of the box i’m sure you will find a possibility to forgo the watermarking but then again I think failing is so generous on their free version policy they give you so much for free that that is the pop-up box by the way that if you decide to use the software on an ongoing basis you really should buy it and support for the further development outlining both have index cards but only final draft has the beat board that is something they added in version 10. i’m not sure if you even need it but anyway it depends on the way you work if you like that then that’s an advantage final draft has over fade in the problem with the beat board is that you can only export it as one big pdf so in my opinion its usability is a bit constrained but then again as a notepad it’s great because it is saved together with your script document it’s inside your script document it’s one file and fading doesn’t have anything similar so in terms of outlining you might say that final draft has the advantage here design okay this is personal preference of course but i think final draft just looks better i wouldn’t say that the fade in design puts me off that’s too much to say but if i compare the two i think final draft looks cleaner and more modern it’s a bit like with computers apple computers can’t do more than pc computers in general sometimes they’re even more expensive and have reduced functionality but they’re pleasing to look at so how important that is to you that you will have to decide for yourself on the one hand you can say well it’s more about what the software can do right both of them will produce a wonderfully formatted script so who cares on the other hand if you spend hours and hours looking at it well that’s the decision you have to make which brings me to the conclusion almost let me say one thing more about the design in fading you can change the design to a darker design and you can change the text color and the background color and you have a couple of color templates in final draft you have this bright design and you can change the colors to night mode all right conclusion all in all i would say fade in has the overall advantage it’s just it just has more functionality and there are also a bunch of little functions that i didn’t mention here that i like a lot about fade in that final draft doesn’t have so i would say fade in is the overall winner above all if you consider that a full fade in version doesn’t even cost as much as a final draft update but again it totally depends on what you want and need there are some areas where final draft has a slight advantage for example the beat board and in my opinion the design how important those things are to you that’s a choice you have to make all. I hope i could help you a little with your decision if there’s something i missed or if you disagree let me know in the comments. Thanks