Trelby / Final Draft / Movie Magic: 62-83-97

[Randall_Oelerich]

Weird. I have a screenplay in Final Draft 8. Using Courier Final Draft 12 font, it is 83 pages. If I change the font to Courier Movie Magic 12 and apply it to all elements, my script goes to 97 pages. Okay I get that. But then if I import my FD8 screenplay into Trelby 2.2 I get 62 pages even if I apply the FD/MM courier 12 font in Trelby. I would like to consider using Trelby, but not if it is dropping a page count from 83 to 62, hard enough as it is looking at blank pages and inventing story and witty dialogue. Anybody have a clue how to fix this so Trelby shows a more accurate page count? Anybody else have this issues if you import a FD .fdx screenplay into Trelby?

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Weird. I have a screenplay in Final Draft 8. Using Courier Final Draft 12 font, it is 83 pages. If I change the font to Courier Movie Magic 12 and apply it to all elements, my script goes to 97 pages. Okay I get that. But then if I import my FD8 screenplay into Trelby 2.2 I get 62 pages even if I apply the FD/MM courier 12 font in Trelby. I would like to consider using Trelby, but not if it is dropping a page count from 83 to 62, hard enough as it is looking at blank pages and inventing story and witty dialogue. Anybody have a clue how to fix this so Trelby shows a more accurate page count? Anybody else have this issues if you import a FD .fdx screenplay into Trelby?

The reason is that the line spacing of the various fonts are different. Here's a PDF on the subject.

Here's a 'quick check'. Put the following lines through the several screen writing programs. Print out. The measure from the baseline of line #1, to the baseline of #7. If it is 1 inch... then the
font is generated the 'standard' 6 lines per inch. If it is not, you should be able to state the number of pages, expanded, or contracted, based on the measured value.

I don't have any of these programs, so this is somewhat theoretical...

I'm thinking about buying Highland, but haven't yet, and it uses Courier Prime... yet-another-courier-font...

Look at my example line 1
Look at my example line 2
Look at my example line 3
Look at my example line 4
Look at my example line 5
Look at my example line 6
Look at my example line 7

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

j1clark-- thing is, i am not changing fonts when i get that massive drop in page count. What I mean is I have an 83 page screenplay in Final Draft 8 using Courier Final Draft 12 pt font. I import that screenplay.fdx into Trelby and see 62 pages, not 83 pages; I change the font of everything in Trelby to Courier Final Draft 12 pt font and the click apply and still I just have 62 pages. Whopping 21 pages vanish. What is the trick to get back the 'missing' 21 pages in the total page count? Anybody?

 

[craigbowman]

The name of the font is irrelevant. There is a difference in the way a font and all of the underlying structures which surround it are put together if the font is a different type. Even online there is a difference between OTF and WOFF and in print a difference between Adobe Type 1 and True Type, even if the font name is exactly the same.

You can get page counts to change just by adjusting the rules surrounding kerning and tracking.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

j1clark-- thing is, i am not changing fonts when i get that massive drop in page count. What I mean is I have an 83 page screenplay in Final Draft 8 using Courier Final Draft 12 pt font. I import that screenplay.fdx into Trelby and see 62 pages, not 83 pages; I change the font of everything in Trelby to Courier Final Draft 12 pt font and the click apply and still I just have 62 pages. Whopping 21 pages vanish. What is the trick to get back the 'missing' 21 pages in the total page count? Anybody?

Unfortunately, since I have none of these, I can't experiment and 'see', what may be of interest is to print out to at least PDF and print the first few pages, then compare via holding up two samples to a light bulb...

The thought that I have, is that Trelby is 'converting' the incomeing FDX file, and associating a 'courier font', rather than using Courier Final Draft (or the like...). Or, not correctly using the font height as given.

As for the other two, I'd have to get trial copies, if such is available, to 'pontificate' further...

Try the experiment of the lines and see if Trelby yields a significantly 'smaller line height'... from your numbers I predict Trelby is about 75% of the 'gold' standard with Final Draft. So, you would have 7.5 lines per inch, rather than 6.

On the other hand.... what happened a few days ago to the Wife may be of interest... She has a transcriptionist for the class we are taking, and the transcriptionist sent a file, a Word document, of the previous class' transcription. The Wife loaded it into Word, and the document pages ended up being 'too long'... why... the document was configured for 'legal' paper size. Last night we discussed that with the transcriptionist, and she has 'no idea why' her document would have had 'legal' paper size... her transcription activities are for academic classes and not 'legal depositions' or the like.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

EDIT: Okay, it does seem to be all about the line spacing, but not just simple line spacing (single double etc) but fine tuning the line spacing as you have discussed j1clark. I went into the settings in Trelby and adjusted the before and after spacing for a number of elements (scene, action, dialogue, chars) and click Apply and that drastically alters the total page count in a good way, moving it towards what the page count should be. So looks doable, and looks like Settings can be saved/loaded so a settings config file could be created. Going to play more with Trelby, especially now that multiple levels of Undo have been implemented.
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I am going to play with this more, if the cultprit of this mystery can be revealed. Thanks for the clues.
I also tweeted one of the main developers of Trelby, sent him a link to this thread, hoping he will tweet me back with a solution, or else jump in on this thread and enlightme me/us.

 

[Name's Luke Y'all]

Weird. I have a screenplay in Final Draft 8. Using Courier Final Draft 12 font, it is 83 pages. If I change the font to Courier Movie Magic 12 and apply it to all elements, my script goes to 97 pages. Okay I get that. But then if I import my FD8 screenplay into Trelby 2.2 I get 62 pages even if I apply the FD/MM courier 12 font in Trelby. I would like to consider using Trelby, but not if it is dropping a page count from 83 to 62, hard enough as it is looking at blank pages and inventing story and witty dialogue. Anybody have a clue how to fix this so Trelby shows a more accurate page count? Anybody else have this issues if you import a FD .fdx screenplay into Trelby?

Just stick to Final Draft. You KNOW that's what all the pros use. Why create more problems.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

Just stick to Final Draft. You KNOW that's what all the pros use. Why create more problems.

I have not decided to use Trelby yet, but one feature of Trelby I like over FD is its full screen mode, very clean full screen interface--- can't get that in FD unless I am not seeing some menu / hotkey combination to get that in FD. EDIT: Okay I just moved the toolbars in FD from taking up a top horizontal row to the left vertical, now the view mode in FD is almost on par with Trelby's fullscreen mode. So yeah i might just stick with FD.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

I have not decided to use Trelby yet, but one feature of Trelby I like over FD is its full screen mode, very clean full screen interface--- can't get that in FD unless I am not seeing some menu / hotkey combination to get that in FD. EDIT: Okay I just moved the toolbars in FD from taking up a top horizontal row to the left vertical, now the view mode in FD is almost on par with Trelby's fullscreen mode. So yeah i might just stick with FD.

Personally I am more inclined to 'cheap/free' software solutions for 'simple problems'... I'm also inclined for 'open source' solutions rather than proprietary ones. Absent that... cheap becomes the main criteria.

As for 'well the pros use it'... well.. that may be true... and the number of 'pros' and the number of 'would be pros that actually make the jump to Pro-speed', is vanishingly small. Hence, I strongly support 'cheap' tools that address people's needs who in all likelihood are not going to be pros.

In the case of 'editors' with 'screenwriting' sense... there is a wide range from 'tediously' formating by hand, to 'power products'... I happen to like the concept of Fountain, which is somewhat like 'HTML', etc. and so since 'slugline' creates files which are in Fountain, and thereby editable using anything from 'text edit' or 'vi' to, now, slugline, I tend to think that's a good thing.

If Final Draft had a 'generate production documents' portion of the package I'd probably be more inclined to FD... but as a 'get the printed page out'... it is expensive in my book for what it does...
Movie Magic, used by many pros, had such a package, but I think it has been split off into a separate company, or more standalone.

The biggest improvement of late with FD is the use of XML for the underlying file. Then one can think about writing tools that process the XML and generate such documentation...

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

Solved, as far as FD->Trelby, and the mysterious missing pages. Trelby has default page size as A4, not Letter. Geesh. Soon as I went into Trelby settings and set the page from A4 to Letter, my page count magically became what it should be. I believe someone on this thread already alluded to that A4 issue perhaps, my mistake not taking that more serious.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

Just stick to Final Draft. You KNOW that's what all the pros use. Why create more problems.

Wasted a sheeetload of time today because of Final Draft, seriously. Has anybody here look at a PDF generated from Final Draft, on your android tablet or ipad? Major fricken issues. A screenplay PDF generated by FD just looks completely funked, unreadable, would likely doom a spec if an agent/prodco looks at your script on their tablet, more common these days I surmise. What I did discover today, was that a PDF generated from either Movie Magic or Trelby is nothing like the FD generated PDF, the pdf from MM or Trelby is actually readable, acceptable. Becoming less of a fan of FD now that I see its weakness in exporting to PDF and how that impacts readability on tablets. I own MM and FD, and I have Trelby, so it is not a matter of which to buy, I have them all. Have not tested FadeIN or Celtx on this issue yet, perhaps someone could check that and report back here?