Final Draft AV fills a niche that Final Draft's screenwritingsoftware ignored: creation of two-column audio-video scripts andaudio-only scripts for radio. Television news writers, segment producers, andad writers usually create scripts with video in the left column andaudio in the right column. Writers who don't have access to aprofessional scriptwriting system like Basys or Avstar usually inserttext into existing script templates, or patch something together usingtables and columns in a word processing program. As both of theseoptions scream "hack!" students and freelancers will welcome FinalDraft's venture into this format of scripting.

That said, Final Draft AV feels like a TV-writing program designed byscreenwriters. The two columns are there, it's easy and intuitive tomove between them, and the video column does stay aligned with thematching audio column. But there are also some glaring omissions. Theprogram doesn't provide estimated times for scripts, nor does itprovide a space to input actual running time once a script is produced.Some of the automatic functions are unnecessary: each time the writertabs from the video column to the audio column, the programautomatically underlines and adds a colon to whatever is written.Useful for screenwriters, who write dialog between characters that mustadhere to a strict punctuation format, it's useless for segmentproducers, who usually have one narrator reading their copy.

Also, though the user's manual says that importing and exportingscripts to and from Final Draft AV from other word processors is simplya matter of making sure they're saved in rich text format, we couldn'tsuccessfully manage it with a multipage script for a half-hour cookingshow without going back and forth between the scripts and thenperforming major surgery on the mashed together copy. We think theFrankenscript occurred because there isn't one "right" way to write ascript for TV: unfamiliar capitalization and spacing confused FinalDraft AV, so the program just crammed it all together. Scripts can betransitioned smoothly between computers if both were written in FinalDraft AV. And Final Draft AV scripts can go from PCs to Macs with nohang-ups.

Using Final Draft AV is still a lot better than building homemadescript templates with your word processor, but a template is really allthis program provides. It will probably work well for student projects,single segments, and ad scripts. But if you want to use this program todevelop and produce a multisegment half-hour show, you'll have to pullout your stopwatch and your calculator.--Anne Erickson