The PDF that FD7 made in its first release was enormous, because it was not a text-based PDF, but an image-based one. well, you missed a couple of chapters in the saga.įirst, FD7 is a good many years old now.
I think you missed the actual subject of the conversation, which was how to go from PDF to FinalDraft, not the other way around.Īs for the huge size of the PDF file that FD7 makes. There is also the possibility of saving the FD script as a RTF file, opening it in Word 2007 or 2010, check the format, then save it as a PDF there, which is now an option in Word. Weeeeellll, FD7 has a PDF converter, but it has a habit of making HUGE files, and I've never been able to figure out why. The error message in MMS-6 states that it does not support 64-bit. Anyone who uses the 64-bit version will almost certainly encounter the problem that I mentioned.
It was 32-bit until a 64-bit version became available a couple of years ago. On the other hand, I have converted some scripts that required almost no cleanup. It has been a while, and I do not remember what I finally did. Even doing a search-and-replace to make a temporary substitution with some kind of uncommon typographical character did not work. I had to try all kinds of workarounds to get all of that straightened out. The problem? The writer had written a zillion action lines that ended the paragraph with '-', and MMS-6 wanted to make these into Scene Headings. MMS-6 kept trying to make things into Scene Headings in one very difficult script that I converted one time. I do not remember if that eliminated the problem, or maybe eliminated the problem but introduced some other issues, or just what.Īll I know is that importing any script that has unexpected formatting is problematical with MMS-6 and with FinalDraft, no matter what you try. If you uncheck the option "Use most aggressive interpretation of the source." and check "Don't use Capitalization Information for Element.", then the script should be formatted properly, with SHOTS as SHOTS and not as CHARACTER NAMES. In MMS6, when you import or paste the text you get a window "How should I Interpret This Text?". He gets up from the floor and looks at the But I can tell you, from years of experience doing this, that if the script has all kinds of formatting like: If the screenwriter has followed very standard formatting, you will have minimal cleanup to do. After that you can try to import into Final Draft.
So if you are using the free converter, you first have to convert the file from PDF to text then you use a high-quality text editor like Notepad++ to do a search-and-replace to put in standard ASCII ' and ". When you import that file into Final Draft, the curly ' and " characters come out as something like ^. The retention of the curly quotes might seem like an advantage, but it is not. The commercial version throws out the curly quotes and uses the standard ASCII ones.
The free one retains the curly quotes for ' and " in its conversion if you have those in your script. Here is one significant difference between the free one and the commercial one. I also have a very inexpensive commercial program (about $20, I think) that is put out by Intelligent Converters. I have even had to convert PDF files that were image-based, not text-based. I have written about this matter a lot through the years, and I have converted a bunch of scripts for people (sometimes free, sometimes for pay). Re: How to convert a PDF to Final Draft (or any other screenwriting software)