If you’ve ever harbored the desire to write for the silver screen and tried to do something about it, you’ll already know about Final Draft, the showbiz industry’s favorite scriptwriting software.

Everyone in Hollywood uses it; Studio Execs, beleaguered Producers, hot-shot directors… even Michael Bay uses it, but don’t let that last one put you off. If you use Final Draft, you’ll be in the company of James Cameron, Guillermo del Toro and Richard Donner. JJ Abrams is quoted saying, “Even if you don’t own a computer, I recommend buying Final Draft.”

The company behind Final Draft — also called Final Draft — has crammed an impressive array of tools and functionality into version eight. In fact, there’s so much functionality that for novice users it can seem daunting getting to grips with it.

The good news is that it’s really quite easy to get started with Final Draft, particularly if you have some idea of how movie or TV scripts are constructed. And even if you don’t, Final Draft makes the learning process so smooth it’s really just part of your work flow. The software keeps your work in order, properly formatted, properly structured, yet never gets “in the way.”

There is a mountain of goodness packed into this release. So much, in fact, it’s beyond the scope of this review, but here’s a quick rundown of the highlights.

Templates

If you’re unsure of how to structure your script, you can use one of over 50 television and movie templates bundled with the application. There are dozens more available on the Final Draft website, too, though the assumption is that you are a naughty software thief so you must provide a valid customer number before you can download them.

Templates come in many of flavors, including movie scripts...

...TV shows...

...Graphic Novels...

...and even good old fashioned manuscripts.

Smart Element Formatting

The single greatest feature in Final Draft is its intelligent and intuitive element formatting. The software watches what you type and anticipates what you are doing next. With only the tiniest bit of learning, you’ll find yourself zooming through scripts faster than Stephen King can knock-out novels.

Smart Elements pop-up works a lot like IntelliType

Speech

Final Draft lets you assign the Mac OS X system voices to the characters in your script, and have them read-aloud. Ask any writer — there is enormous value in hearing another voice read your dialogue back at you!

Choose which character gets which voice...

...then hit play!

Scene Tools

Brand new Scene Navigator and Scene View tools provide handy ways to view, structure and manage your script without scrolling through a hundred or so pages every time you need to check scene order, or remind yourself exactly when it was your characters fell into that trash compacter… Was it before or after your hero blasted the controls to extend the bridge?

File Format

A new file XML-based file format improves compatibility with modern productivity software and other script-writing tools.

And more…

Also packed-in to version eight is improved page formatting and counting, workspace management, powerful production features for preparing a finished script for distribution or revision, a neat new toolbar and an apology from Final Draft for selling a copy to Michael Bay. (OK, that last one is a lie. But if you’ve cringed at the dialogue in Tranformers, you know that man owes us all. Big time.)

Just as a professional graphic artist can’t get far without learning Photoshop, anyone who’s serious about screenwriting should have a copy of Final Draft.

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Movies, created by French developer, Olivier Bernal, went live at the App Store on December 19. The app, retailing at $2.99, allows users to grab essential information on the latest box-office releases.

The icon for Movies clearly features a watermark from iStockphoto, a royalty free image library, implying that rather than purchase the master image, Bernal has pilfered the preview sample.

This particular iStockphoto license (including the ‘Electronic Items for Resale’ addendum) is available for 115 credits. At 95 cents per iStockphoto credit, this would be a one-off cost of $109.25. Bernal would therefore need to generate only 37 sales of Movies to cover the cost of the image license.

Achieving just 37 sales is hardly a difficult objective when you also consider that, in order to maximize the potential customer-base for his app, Bernal has created several iterations using the same icon, including Cinema and Cinema UK.

It seems that this may not be the first time Bernal has pilfered from iStockphoto. There are two more highly suspect app icons – TV Shows and Week Number of the Year. The TV Shows icon features a white diagonal line, quite possibly from an iStock Photo watermark. The latter of the pair, clearly uses an iStock Photo sample, titled Calendar – icon idea.

It’s not as immediately obvious as our prime suspect, but enlarging the app icon and then comparing it to the iStockphoto sample image, the original watermark is easily visible.

Sites such as iStockphoto provide a valuable service to organizations with limited design resources, allowing independent creatives to distribute royalty-free visual assets at reasonable rates. It’s therefore somewhat disappointing to see independent developers effectively stealing — surely they should understand the value of content generated by fellow independents?

Furthermore, setting aside development time and cost, distributing via the App Store is hardly prohibitive in terms of initial outlay: Apple charges a one-off fee to developers of $99. It seems that either saving a few bucks or just downright laziness on Bernal’s part led him to grab the sample imagery from iStockphoto.

The question is, now that Bernal has been called out on his immoral icon antics, what will his next move be? It’ll be most interesting to see how he handles the designers whose creations he has illicitly profited from; ideally, after a hasty apology, Bernal will be compensating them for their contribution to his App Store products.

Note that we’ve tried to reach Bernal for comment on the story but have yet to hear back. We assume he was too busy shoveling a mountain of coal from his stocking, stealing bonbons from children and kicking puppies.

UPDATE: We heard back from Mr. Bernal:

For [your] information, I bought the right to use the pictures this morning. You were right, at the beginning I first started with nothing and can’t afford to pay for the pictures, it’s perfectly normal to pay if I intend to continue to use it.

He says the updated, non-watermarked icons will be implemented with the next updates to the applications sometime in January.

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It is, however, possible to connect a gaming console by way of an EyeTV Hybrid, which has the necessary S-Video or Composite inputs. HD gameplay isn’t possible at this time, but there could well be products in the future which accept HDMI or Component inputs. This guide gives you an overview of this process and should get you up and running with your Xbox (or any other recent games console).

Getting the hardware together

There are a few different cables and gadgets required, some of which you might already have, some of which you’ll need to fork out for.

• EyeTV Hybrid (be sure to buy the correct edition, PAL for Europe and NTSC for the USA)
• EyeTV breakout cable (comes with the EyeTV)
• S-Video Xbox/PS3 cable (composite doesn’t offer the required quality for an HD screen)
• Composite to Headphone Jack Adapter

Setting up EyeTV Hybrid

The first step is to install the software which comes bundled with the EyeTV. Once this is all set up, simply connect the cables together.

• The EyeTV plugs into your Mac’s USB port
• The breakout cable plugs into the side of your EyeTV Hybrid
• The S-Video cable runs into that breakout cable, from your Xbox 360
• The Composite audio adaptor goes from your Xbox into the Line-In port on your Mac

All done? It’s time to start configuring some software. Turn on your Xbox and open up the EyeTV software.

The Software Side of Things

From the ‘Controls’ menu bar, select ‘S-Video Input’ to point the EyeTV to your Xbox. If all has gone to plan, you should see the dashboard screen appear. Everything should be functioning correctly, and the video should feel fairly snappy. Don’t fire up a game just yet though, there are a couple more things to set up.

The next step is to go into EyeTV preferences and ensure that your ‘Display’ settings match those shown on the following screenshot. This will help to sure a smooth picture and the correct type of scan.

The final hurdle you’ll currently be facing is a lack of any sound coming into your Mac. OS X doesn’t pass audio through by default (any audio coming into your line-in won’t automatically be broadcast to your speakers or headphones). This requires a free utility called LineIn. It will take the audio from your Xbox and ensure you can hear it loud and clear. The settings should be as follows:

Troubleshooting

Once you’ve done the above, you’ll hopefully have a very playable setup. There are a couple of problems you may encounter on the way, which this section should be useful for.

Recording doesn’t work – it’s really laggy – The built in recording function in EyeTV unfortunately can’t keep up with the Xbox input. The only way to achieve this is to use a piece of screen casting software such as iShowU. After tweaking with various settings it can perform fairly well.

My favorite game doesn’t work – Some games published on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii might not work on the Hybrid (for reasons unbeknown to me, but stated by Elgato). All the recent games I have tried worked correctly.

Is my console supported? – Almost certainly. The list provided by Elgato covers the Dreamcast, Gamecube, N64, Playstation 1/2/3, Saturn, Wii and Xbox/Xbox360.

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Glass is significantly more durable than the current material used in the LCD screens. It’s almost completely scratch resistant and has a much smaller chance of getting punctured in some way. Glass is also a lot easier to recycle.

Another thing Jobs mentioned was that they’ve had overwhelming feedback about the glossy displays on the MacBook and MacBook Pro.

So, those things being noted, do you think the next revision to their Cinema Display line with feature glass screens? I know I love the sharper colors on my glossy MBP screen. It’d be nice to see it on a larger scale (say…a 30″ display?).

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