Hello there!
I’ve just downloaded and installed Scrivener for the purpose of restructuring a screenplay written in Movie Magic Screenwriter 6. It’s a huge undertaking and I have a short deadline so I figured I’d give Scrivener a try. I exported the script from Screenwriter to a plain tex file. I can open the file and confirm that the entire screenplay is indeed there. But when I import it in Scrivener, all I get is an empty file with the name of the screenplay. I have tried to import other types of files and they import fine.
I have to admit that I have not yet learned how to use Scrivener. Because I’m in a hurry I wanted to take a look at the imported screenplay first and decide if this is the way to go with this project. I’ve been looking at scrivener for some time now but haven’t had an original project to test it on. However, I’ve heard it’s great for restructuring a finished project too.
In other words, don’t beat me up if I’ve just missed a setting somewhere. I can’t see what I can be doing wrong, though. After all, importing is not brain surgery.
And for the record, Scrivener is version 2.0.2 on a MacBook Pro, i7, 2010.
Well, that certainly shouldn’t be happening! How are you importing? Are you using File > Import > Plain Text Formatted Screenplay…? Would it be possible to send me the plain text file?
Thanks for your quick reply. Yes that’s the import path I’m using. Unfortunately I can’t send you the file because of the confidentiality clause in my contract. I know it’d be safe with you but I’d be having nightmares for weeks breaching the legal papers…
Instead I did a test with another script but that one imported fine… Very strange. All in all, three out of five different scripts failed to import. Now I’ve spent hours copying and pasting a few pages at a time to new and clean Screenwriter files until I came to the point where it won’t import in Scrivener which turned out to be on page 93. But there is nothing visibly strange on that or other pages in that area. So I assume the problem is buried somewhere inside the xml file.
Now, looking through the exported text file, some areas look a little funky. For example, it adds another O.S or V.O parenthetical wherever those are used like this: (O.S) (O.S). So my conclusion is that the culprit must be the export function in Screenwriter.
I tried to export to rtf and then import it back to Screenwriter but that just crashed Screenwriter. Then I exported to pdf and from it copied the entire script and pasted it back into a new Screenwriter file which I exported to a text file… And lo and behold! It imported perfectly in Scrivener. Phew!
Despite the unstable export function in MMS I still prefer it over Final Draft. So my big wish is that there will be a similar two-way path between it and Scrivener as between Scrivener and Final Draft. Maybe that will happen someday…
Keith, Scrivener looks awesome. I can’t wait to start working with it now. I have no idea how to get the project back into MMS when I’m done, though… But I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.
Spinningdoc, thanks for the template! I’ll go back and re-export the script with that one now.
I’ve found compiling the Scriv script into an rtf then getting MMS to do an aggressive import works pretty well. You’ll have to check it, naturally, and all the structuring stuff in MMS just doesn’t transfer, but basically, it does the trick.
Oh, great. I’ll try that. I think MMS over all is fantastic. I’ve used it for years and years. But it’s always been difficult to export and import with it and it’s still a little buggy after all these years.
One thing you could do is open the plain text file up in TextEdit and use Find and Replace to scramble the text - e.g. replacing the vowels for random letters, then some consonants with other random letters. 10 quick find & replaces should make the file unreadable but it will still have the same structure, so you won’t have to worry about breaking any contracts by sending it to me because it will no longer contain any readable text, but it should still show me the problem. (Make sure it still has problems importing after scrambling it, before sending it to me.)
Great, thanks. Okay, it seems just to be the text file encoding. Scrivener expects UTF8 files, but this is saved using Mac OS Roman encoding (which is strange, because I tested with some MMS files). I’ve changed the code for 2.0.3 so that it will try Mac OS Roman encoding if UTF8 fails, but in the meantime, you can open the file in TextEdit and use Save As to save the file as a .txt file using UTF8 encoding (choose the encoding from TextEdit’s pop-up button at the bottom of the save panel). It will then import into Scrivener. (The formatting when imported still seemed off, but that may just be because this was a scrambled file - the importer expects a regular plain text screenplay format, as it is very difficult to interpret the format exactly.)
Thanks, Keith! That works. I’ve checked the files now and here’s another aspect of the problem.
If I export the script to text the resulting file is saved as a Mac OS Roman encoded file. But when I export the script to pdf, copy and paste the entire script from the pdf into a new MMS file and then export it to text the resulting file is saved as a UTF-8 encoded file (this is what I did yesterday). So there seems to be something in the original MMS file that prompts the exporter to use Mac OS Roman. But when the MMS file is brand new and fresh the exporter uses UTF-8. Now, I’m not even going to try to understand all this stuff I’m just relaying the information
Aside from this, the UTF-8 file imports fine in Scrivener, keeping the right format and all. The exported text file is not entirely clean, though. I still get double parentheticals with both exports so I’m going to write MMS support about it.
Glad that helped. I’m not sure why MMS sometimes exports as Mac Romand and other times as UTF8, but as long as Scrivener 2.0.3 can deal with both it should be fine. I have seen the double-parenthetical thing on exporting from MMS - it does seem that their exporter has a few minor issues.
