by Tim Siglin & Paul Schmutzler
September 10, 2009
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Adobe is developing a new application for their Creative Suite product line called Story. A scriptwriting collaboration tool, which runs on the web or via a synchronized Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) application, Story allows multiple users to share in the viewing, creation and editing of scripts, characters, and links.
More interestingly, because Adobe stores the metadata for each character and portion of the script, the product has the potential to eliminate one of the bottlenecks of metadata in the production process: the need to rekey information, gathered in pre-production, into the production and post-production workflow.
We were given access to the pre-release version, and were able to try out the features touted by Adobe.
Adobe Story home screen
Adobe has made security a clear priority in developing Story. Besides a user name and password required to login and work on the web version of the application, collaborators must also have an invitation from to work together on specific projects.
When you invite a person to collaborate with you, the software automatically searches its database of users first to make sure that the email address you entered is valid in their system. If it isn’t, it will display a message denying your request to share the project. This may be a feature relegated to the pre-release version of the software, but it emphasizes Adobe’s desire to segment and secure the content of scripts and metadata it holds in its repository.
According to Adobe’s documentation there are four different
roles that you can assign to someone you wish to share your project with:
• Co-authors can add, modify, or delete
content from the script. However, they cannot delete the script itself. Co-authors
can also, like reviewers, comment on the script.
• Reviewers can add comments to the
script but cannot edit it.
• Viewers have read-only permissions to
the script. They can read the script but cannot modify content or add comments
to it.
• Taggers can add extra information to the
script. This information could include location details, schedule,
instructions, and so on.
In our test, Paul created a project complete with one short script and bios of the two characters. Once Tim had access, he was able to add comments akin to the way comments are made on Acrobat PDFs.
Co-author comments on character bio
This screenshot taken from Tim’s machine shows Paul's original bio of H.R. Puff n Stuff with comments from both of us. One problem we noticed was that anyone that has privileges to a given project can edit another person’s comments without any trace. In the second comment down, Tim added the sentence after the hyphen to my comment, but there’s nothing to indicate that on the screen. We’d like to see additional security that only allows the original commenter to edit his or her comments, or at least some sort of tracking of individual users’ modifications to others’ comments.
Color-coding is included for each character given a bio. Story only allows for six colors, so for now you’ll have to stick to writing scripts with no more than six main characters in them. Sorry, soap opera or epic screenwriters; you’ll have to wait until Adobe enhances this feature to keep track of your casts of thousands. It would be nice to see the color-coding show up in the script for either the character’s name or name and dialogue.
The script editing is pretty standard as far as screenwriting software goes, and it can ingest FinalDraft as well as Word documents that have been created in a script format; one nice feature, though, is a handy tool called Smart Type that automatically suggest a variety of commonly used words and descriptions in order to speed up the process of writing your script. I found this very helpful and quickly got used to the “interruptions” that really freed me up to write meaningful dialogue instead of consistent script terms. Spell check would be a helpful addition to the screenwriting portion.
Smart Type suggests commonly used words and descriptions as you type
The one preference available in Story’s online version is how often the system auto-saves a project. The lowest increment is every 60 seconds. In our tests, we couldn’t verify if this feature actually worked because there was no visual indication that the project was auto-saved. This caused some confusion, since only one user at a time can edit a given script or bio; we'd hoped that the auto-save every few seconds would update all other users’ screens to let them know when one writer had stopped writing.
This did not happen, however; whenever Paul would make changes to a document, Tim would only see that Paul was editing and that the document was locked while he made changes, even if Paul stopped typing for several minutes. If Paul wanted Tim to be able to see what he had done, he would have to manually save the document in order to refresh his screen. We noticed other issues where the locking seemed finicky. Sometimes in order to unlock a document, Paul would have to click on another screen so that Tim could see my changes and begin editing.
For those of you on a thin connection, Story is pretty light on bandwidth. Tim even worked from his end on a dial-up connection from a remote location. Although the initial loading took a while, once he was in, everything was almost as speedy as if the program were running directly from my local machine.
What about AIR? For those working remotely with no internet connection, there is a downloadable Story app that can work with Adobe Air on your computer. We weren’t able to test this offline version, but supposedly it works mostly the same as the online version.
There are three documented limitations for the offline version:
• Shared scripts are not visible.
• Scripts cannot be shared with other users.
• Some of the import and export features might not
work as intended
Story will certainly fill a gap in Adobe’s Creative Suite, making it a full-fledged production software package. As other tools in the Creative Suite package are updated, we hope to see Adobe pushing the metadata it gathers during this scriptwriting process out into its production and post-production tools. If Adobe succeeds in doing so, the upside to those of us in the streaming community is that the metadata will carry along with the original shots, even when they are part of a larger finished production. In other words, there might even be the potential to see auto-population of sizable metadata records and inherent syndication tracking.
Adobe is announcing the public beta of Story at the IBC show in Amsterdam on September 10. IBC runs through September 10-15, 2009 at the RAI Convention Centre.
