Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

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  • #76
    Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

    Dr. V,

    If that feature works well, then I would agree with you that Fade In Pro has raised the bar.

    This is a feature that other major players should have been developing also.

    My approach to the "PDF to screenwriting program" problem has been to:

    (1) Use a utility to convert PDF to text with formatting retained.

    (2) Import into the screenwriting program and hope for the best.

    The biggest problems have been that the screenwriting programs may fail on several points:

    (1) Inability to recognize that multiple-word character names are, in fact, CHARACTER names (especially when the name is more than two words).

    (2) Inability to handle ALL CAPS lines properly. Is it a SHOT? Is it a CHARACTER name?

    (3) Inability to handle certain misleading typographic characters. The use of any kind of dash at the end of a line can trick the program into thinking that the line is a SCENE HEADING. (This may be primarily or even exclusively a Movie Magic Screenwriter problem.)

    (4) Inability to sort out "idiosyncratic" formatting. This usually overlaps with #2 and #3 above.

    Dr. V ...

    Try an experiment.

    Create a short PDF in something like Word or anything except Fade In Pro.

    Include something "idiosyncratic" like:

    Code:
    The policeman takes out his gun and points it at
    
    BRYAN
    
    who already has his hands on his head.
    and

    Code:
    The policeman takes out his gun and points it at --
    
    BRYAN
    
    who already has his hands on his head.
    Code:
    The policeman takes out his gun.
    
    He points it at:
    
    BRYAN
    
    who already has his hands on his head.
    and

    Code:
    The UPS delivery man walks up the steps to Apartment 2.
    
    He almost drops his package as he
    
    KNOCKS ON THE DOOR
    
    while he desperately
    
    CLUTCHES
    
    his signature device.
    Besides the problem of parsing out the CAPS in idiosyncratic formatting, the other issue in the last example is appearance of the numeral '2' at the end of the line. Sometimes a numeral at the end of a line (and maybe at the start of a line) will get deleted, because the conversion program thinks that the number is a scene or page number.

    "The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.

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    • #77
      Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

      I'll try those examples later today and see what comes out.

      The PDFs I've tested were created with Final Draft, and the results were almost flawless. Maybe if the PDFs were created with MS Word there would be more issues, as Word always seems to dirty files somewhat.

      Importing a PDF screenplay will never be 100% perfect because screenplay format is too flexible and sometimes ambiguous. How do you tell a mini slug from a shot? (Maybe it would be better to ask if there's any need to have scene headings and shot headings as two different elements, but I guess it makes sense for production software or something.)

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      • #78
        Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

        I downloaded the demo of Fade In Pro and ran a test myself.

        I made two PDF files from the first 20 pages or so of a script that I am working on.

        The script was in Final Draft 9.

        (1) Test 1
        I made a PDF with a commercial third-party PDF driver (PDF X-Change 2012) and imported it into FadeIn Pro.

        The result was terrible. Double spacing was just about everywhere. Lots of extra spaces within words, li ke thi s. The paragraph formatting was so bad that it is pointless even to talk about it.
        (2) Test 2
        I made a PDF with the Final Draft driver and imported into FadeIn Pro.

        Very good results. I would say that the cleanup would be less than what I have to do normally after my usual way of handling a PDF.
        (3) ADD: I also ran a quick test on a PDF (a different script) that Movie Magic Screenwriter generated with its built-in PDF driver.
        The result was very good, about like the result from the Final Draft driver.
        So it would appear that you can import a PDF with very good results if you have used the built-in driver of Final Draft or MMS. However, a third-party commercial driver produces a PDF that may not import well.

        "The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.

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        • #79
          Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

          Originally posted by ComicBent View Post
          I made a PDF with a commercial third-party PDF driver (PDF X-Change 2012) and imported it into FadeIn Pro.

          The result was terrible. Double spacing was just about everywhere. Lots of extra spaces within words, li ke thi s. The paragraph formatting was so bad that it is pointless even to talk about it.
          I'm not familiar with PDF X-Change specifically, but knowing how Fade In's PDF importer works, it sounds like what's going on is that generator, for whatever reason, is outputting "like this" as sub-elements of letters/letter groups. For whatever reason - I have no idea. But I've seen PDF generators do much stranger things. (I've said it before elsewhere, but PDF is really the worst of the worst in terms of document formats, with no structure or consistency, or useful limits on what you can do and how.)

          Fade In does not have a full PDF renderer, which is where that spacing issue comes in. And helpfully the PDF format does not actually give a width for any element, so there is, quite literally, no indication whether "li" and "ke" are supposed to be part of the same word until they're rendered and you can see if they're right beside each other. Fade In has so far in testing done a pretty good job of that sort of thing, but like I've said I don't know about PDF X-Change. If you had a sample PDF you wanted to send along, I'd be happy to take a look at it.

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          • #80
            Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

            Originally posted by Fade In Pro View Post
            I've said it before elsewhere, but PDF is really the worst of the worst in terms of document formats, with no structure or consistency, or useful limits on what you can do and how.
            It's the most awkward document format I've encountered. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

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            • #81
              Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

              @ Fade In Pro ... I will try to work up a few examples this weekend and send to you. And, by the way, it was not my intention to be mean-spirited about Fade In. Quite the contrary. I was impressed that the import of the Final Draft and MMS PDF files into Fade In was so good. Most PDF files that I receive from people come from one or the other of those two screenwriting applications.

              As I said, I will see about getting some examples.

              I will note that in the past I have had to use a PDF-to-text converter to create a "text with layout" file, which I then imported into Final Draft or MMS with variable results.

              The problem of getting things like "Thi s is som e text" is a frequent one. It did not appear for the first time with the import into Fade In.

              The more common rendering problem that I see frequently is that extra spaces appear between words:
              Code:
                             POLICEMAN
                           (cautiously approaching      the suspect)
                     Now, just     stay     calm.
              Anyway, I always love to talk software and programming. I will get some examples and post here when they are ready.

              "The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.

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              • #82
                Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

                Oh, I don't see it that way at all - the more it gets beaten up now, the better it'll work for people in the future. So thanks for that.

                (And again, re: your example, it's hard to convey/exaggerate just how much of a crapshoot word/line/character spacing is when ripping text from a PDF. Unless you're writing a full PDF renderer, there's quite literally no way to know where things on the page go, what goes together, etc. This is why copying text even from Adobe Acrobat/Reader is often completely messed up.)

                But yeah, if you - or anyone - has something it's failing to handle, send it my way and I'll see if I can get it working.

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                • #83
                  Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

                  Well, I did some experiments today.

                  I downloaded some short screenplays from Zoetrope to get a sampling which, I hoped, would come from a wide variety of PDF drivers. At least I got several samples ... and the trend is clear.

                  Here is the way it seems to be working out for import of PDF scripts into Fade In. It depends on which driver made the PDF that you are now trying to import into Fade In.

                  Amyuni PDF driver for Final Draft for Windows ~ Excellent result when you import the PDF into Fade In.
                  The Amyuni PDF driver is the one that comes with Final Draft for Windows.
                  Macintosh PDF driver for Final Draft ~ I did not have a sample; but I assume that the PDF would import well into Fade In.

                  Macintosh PDF drivers for MMSW ~ Excellent result when you import the PDF into Fade In.
                  I do not know if the Mac uses PDF drivers that come with the screenwriting application or the with the Mac operating system. But it produces a PDF that Fade In can import with excellent results. I assume that the result is excellent also with the Mac version of Final Draft.
                  Windows PDF driver for MMSW ~ Excellent result when you import the PDF into Fade In.

                  I even saw one script that had supposedly been converted to PDF by an iPhone. It imported flawlessly into Fade In.

                  The drivers that created PDF files that did NOT import well (I mean, they were bad to horrible) were:

                  pdfTeX ~ Is this not the driver that Celtx uses? I think it is.
                  You import the PDF and find that everything is double-spaced (or maybe even triple-spaced in places). Also, all the text is moved to the left margin. Nothing is indented.
                  FPDF ~ I think this is part of a PHP library or some other library.
                  The PDF from this driver was just like the one from pdfTeX. When you import the PDF into Fade In, the text gets shoved to the left margin and is double-spaced.
                  ScanSoft ~ Nuance is the new name of this software.
                  I used this PDF driver several years ago. The company became Nuance, which is a major company; it makes Dragon Naturally Speaking. I had an old PDF script that I had made with ScanSoft. The PDF behaved just like a PDF from pdfTeX: double spacing and everything lined up at the left margin.
                  PDF-XChange (Tracker Software) ~ This is what I use now.
                  In testing it this afternoon, I found that its PDF behaved like a pdfTeX PDF file: double/triple spacing; everything pushed to the left margin. It also had some goofed-up spacing within and between words, as I have mentioned earlier.
                  Open Office.org ~ Winner of the Grand Prize for Craziness.
                  The PDF imported into Fade In as a column of scattered numbers and symbols down the left side of the page.
                  Nitro/Primo ~ Runner-up in the category of craziness.
                  These were the free versions of Nitro. The PDF imported in a way that was similar to what Open Office did; but in the case of Nitro, it did not seem to work at all. PrimoPDF is a free version of Nitro, but there seems to be another free version also.
                  Word ~ Chinese, anyone?
                  I tried a couple of scripts whose PDF files had been generated with Word 2010. Fade In imported the file, but the result contained a good bit of garbage, including runs of ideograms.
                  Sophocles PDF driver ~ Yeah, I know Sophocles is dead. But it was wonderful.
                  The PDF would not import at all. I got a message that some PDF files do not have text that is recoverable. I also got that message with some other files that were not Sophocles PDF files. I do not remember which ones they were.
                  So what it seems to come down to is that a PDF imports into Fade In with excellent results if the script PDF files were made with Final Draft's built-in PDF driver; with MMSW's built-in PDF driver; or with the Macintosh driver.

                  I do want to emphasize how outstanding the imported file is if it meets the criteria in the preceding paragraph. I literally did not see any mistakes at all in some of the tests that I ran.
                  Last edited by ComicBent; 03-08-2014, 11:08 PM.

                  "The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.

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                  • #84
                    Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

                    Originally posted by ComicBent View Post
                    [/INDENT]So what it seems to come down to is that a PDF imports into Fade In with excellent results if the script PDF files were made with Final Draft's built-in PDF driver; with MMSW's built-in PDF driver; or with the Macintosh driver.

                    I do want to emphasize how outstanding the imported file is if it meets the criteria in the preceding paragraph. I literally did not see any mistakes at all in some of the tests that I ran.
                    This is amazing, because it means something very important:

                    It means that Fade In has solved the obsolete-files problem. I mean, yeah, maybe I can't open that old .fdr or .mmsw file, but pretty much everybody I know keeps PDF copies of their scripts. If Fade In can open those natively (without having to use Highland) then ... wow.

                    You're making it very hard for me to keep using MMSW. Fade In has been my goto recommendation for others for over a year, now. Gonna have to jump ship soon, I suspect.

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                    • #85
                      Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

                      It would be great if someone could do a similar test (like Comicbent's) with Highland, to see how it compares to Fade In importing PDF screenplays from different sources.

                      There are now two options to convert PDF screenplays into editable files, although Fade In is the only that also runs on Windows and Linux. I wonder if John August plans on releasing Highland for other platforms. I kind of doubt it, since all his apps are OSX or iOS only (correct me if I'm wrong).

                      Movie Magic Screenwriter will see a new version during 2014, apparently. We'll see what new features arrive with it. Some time ago I exchanged several emails with their technical support and I think they said they'd probably rewrite the application to get rid of the old code which made it difficult to fix the different bugs. At least that sounded more promising that what the guys from Final Draft said in the Scriptnotes podcast.

                      They'd need to do a really good job with Screenwriter 7 for me to consider buying it now that I have Fade In, though. Screenwriter 2000 was the first screenplay editor I used, and Screenwriter 6 the first I owned. I liked them very much and I'll always be tempted to try newer versions, but the thing is that Fade In doesn't do anything wrong and that's just hard to beat.

                      And when I say Fade In I mean both the application and the developer. To me, they've set the standard by which all other screenwriting apps and companies producing them are to be judged.

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                      • #86
                        Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

                        I agree with what ronaldinho and Dr. V said.

                        I just want to point out that, right now, Fade In only does a good job on PDF files that Final Draft and MMSW have created with their native PDF drivers. And on them it does an outstanding job. I perused some of those imported files pretty closely, and I did not see any errors. Undoubtedly, a few will slip in from time to time, but I was impressed at the efficiency of the conversions on those particular PDF files.

                        I just now revised my post above to include a comment about PDF files that Word 2010 produces (the built-in Word driver). When Fade In imported the PDF, the converted file contained garbage, including strings of Asian ideograms of some kind. This happened in both of the files that I tested (one from Zoetrope; one from a script of mine).

                        "The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.

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                        • #87
                          Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

                          Thanks for the examples of file formats that do/don't work.

                          Yeah, the most accurate processing is for PDFs produced from screenwriting software — these are the ones that I've had the most examples of to be able to work on (and dedicated screenwriting software seems also much less likely to mangle the formatting during output).

                          Celtx PDF import will be improved for the next update. I really just kind of overlooked it, as I didn't have/know of any Celtx-generated PDFs. (Most of what I've been using have been tests I've generated as well as some of the FYC screenplays from this and past years, and they all use pro software.) Basically it was failing to apply the proper transformation to a "next line" directive, making everything >single spaced.

                          Word I'll have to look at some more. I just tested from Word 2011 (from Mac) and it imported without a problem. Although it's entirely likely that Word 2010 for Windows uses an completely different PDF generator.* It's also possible that, depending on the content of the document, it may switch over to another of PDF's endless combination of encodings and subsettings.

                          As far as the other, more esoteric PDF generation, I'll take a look at those as I'm able to find/generate examples. (I must have OpenOffice installed somewhere, for instance.)


                          *This is actually something that Fade In has tried to avoid: its PDF output, from File > Create PDF should be exactly the same regardless of what program you're on. I know that some other software, for instance, seems to use the system PDF output on OS X and a proprietary library on Windows, making for quite different results between the two.
                          Last edited by Fade In Pro; 03-13-2014, 06:38 AM.

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                          • #88
                            Re: Fade In Pro -- feature request

                            Feature request: Some function that allows an individual page to be squeezed enough to get an extra line or 2 on that page.

                            How? Preferably by allowing blank lines to be squeezed.

                            MovieMagic can do that on an ad-hoc basis - it allows you to reduce the line spacing before an element (i.e., a single element on a particular page) in 0.1 increments.

                            MM also has a "squeeze this page" function, though I don't know if that reduces all line spacing - i.e., even within each element on the page - or just blank-line spacing.

                            Another approach: Simply provide a function to make individual elements on a page "tight". Versus the current situation that allows that only to apply (or not) to the entire document.

                            ____

                            Clarification: When I wrote make individual elements on a page "tight", I meant to write make an individual element on a page "tight". IOW, as an example, on a particular page, make one block of dialogue tight.
                            .
                            Last edited by Manchester; 04-28-2014, 11:43 AM.

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                            • #89
                              Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

                              I didn't know you could do that in MMS. It has almost as many features as MS Word

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                              • #90
                                Re: Fade In Pro -- tips, feedback, requested features

                                Originally posted by Dr. Vergerus View Post
                                I didn't know you could do that in MMS. It has almost as many features as MS Word
                                MS Word styles have been my nemesis. Even when I've gotten them to work at first, when I go to the middle of the doc and type in a new graff, somehow the style won't apply - at least, not in the way I want it to. (I can't even get multi-level outline styles to apply consistently.) If I could get styles to work predictably, that would be my s-writing software.

                                But yeh, otherwise, line spacing and kerning are easy to tweak. To 0.01 increments.

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