Final Draft, Movie Magic, Celtx

[Centurio]

Just completed my third script - all using Celtx. Is there any reason to purchase Final Draft or another type and use it instead. Been perfectly happy with Celtx, but am wondering if I'm missing something.

Pros and Cons? What can FD do that Celtx doesn't?

[joeld42]

If Celtx works for you, there's no reason not to keep using it. I think any of them produce professional quality formatting, and certainly have enough capability to write a feature length script.

Personally, I tried using Celtx and eventually switched to MM6. I like being able to see the page breaks without having to go to "typeset" mode, and Celtx felt a bit sluggish for me. I like the outliner better in MM6, but Celtx's Index Card view is nicer (tho still not very great), but I don't really use the index card view.

There's a free demo, you can try it and see if it's worth it to you:
http://www.screenplay.com/t-mmsdemo.aspx

[Goatfish]

I liked a previous version of Celtx but the new one has some weird formatting bugs when working at the end of the document. Also I agree with Joe about having to switch to typeset mode. Come to think of it I also saw some weird formatting bugs in typeset mode. All of the bugs could be related to using Vista 64. who knows? But it wasn't working for me.

I'm using Final Draft 8 now and really like it. I didn't like 7 but 8 seems much better. With FD8 I set it up split vertically on a widescreen with Scene-view on the left and the script on the right. This works well for me.

But if Celtx is working for you I'd stick with it.

[Anagram]

Yeah I'm with Celtx, bugs and all. Easy to use and it has all the options I need. Plus it doesn't cost 14,000$