What are the benefits of FD8? Any downfalls? Is it worth my £50?
I argued above that upgrading is not necessary.
But, on the other hand, if you are several versions behind, maybe it is good to catch up. Every once in a while it is good to do that.
Final Draft 8 uses a new file format by default. You can still save in the older .fdr format, but you know that sooner or later you will have trouble because of the new .fdx format, which an older version cannot read. Somebody will send you a script in .fdx, and then you will have to ask the person to send it in .fdr.
Of course, if you really never do anything but send out, you can continue to get by with FD5 ... but you can see the possibility for trouble down the road.
Why did they change the format? They would probably give you some technical reasons. I don't know; I have not heard the explanation, if they have given one. It might have to do with Unicode or some such consideration.
But of course the change also serves as an inducement to upgrade, and that benefits Final Draft.
FD8 looks nice and seems to work well. The only "problem" that I have encountered is that I am not able to drop a file onto the FD8 desktop icon to make the program open and load the file. The program opens, but the file does not load. I am able, however, to drop a file onto the open program, and the file loads. Normally I just double-click on the file in a directory listing to open it anyway, so this is not an inconvenience for me.
Support for Final Draft 6 will be discontinued on Dec. 23.Depends I suppose, what are you currently using?
I'm using Final Draft 6. It works just fine. If I ever have a job where I have to have Final Draft 8 or Movie Magic whatever's latest version, then I would upgrade. For things like file sharing and what not.
But it's not like my version is obsolete.
I did some research. It took about three minutes with Google.
If you Google *finaldraft .fdx*, you get some interesting links.
The *.fdx format is an XML format. Supposedly, using this format helps the program work with some other programs, because those programs can implement a "Save As ... FinalDraft version of XML."
If you want to know more about XML, you can find it in Wikipedia.
The question is -- if you're writing in screenplay format -- in FD, what are these other programs that you're moving to and back where you need to retain your screenplay format?
Obsolete as in, I can't write proper script in it anymore. Or people can't read the formatting it's saved in.
I can and they can. I never used support anyway for my final draft so it's not like I'm at a great loss.
Eventually I'll upgrade, but only when I have to.
Well, most likely "obsolete" the way FD5 is obsolete even though I still use it.
Which is, when my old computer, which had FD5 activated finally died, I could still use FD5 on my laptop, which is where I use it, but I couldn't activate it any more.
And it isn't activated. I can only use it by putting the original FD5 disk into the drive to activate it.
That's because Final Draft will only let you activate (or reactivate) even a legit copy of their software online. And if they no longer support a version of the software -- guess what? That means that they no longer provide the means to activate it on line.
And I'm betting that that will mean that you'll no longer be able to use their on-line activation if you have a system crash or need to move FD from one computer to another.
You'll either have to rely on a disk or upgrade to whatever the next legit generation is.
I remember when they let you have like three activations so you could actually put a copy on your main computer and one on your laptop and you had a spare just in case you had a crash and you didn't have to bother with all of this nonsense.
Software issues aside, they really have become almost militantly customer-unfriendly as time has gone on.
NMS
That's because Final Draft will only let you activate (or reactivate) even a legit copy of their software online. And if they no longer support a version of the software -- guess what? That means that they no longer provide the means to activate it on line.