Instant Adobe Story Starter: Develop professional scripts, ready for production

First, you must establish an Adobe ID before you can proceed any further. Adobe IDs are free to create. When you are on the main page for Adobe Story — https://story.adobe.com/en-us/index.html, you will see the Create Free Account option.

Follow the steps to finish this process; the Create an Adobe ID dialog box is shown in the following screenshot:

Once your Adobe ID is created and you verify your e-mail account, Adobe Story (free version) will become available for you to sign in. On the top-right corner of the Adobe Story screen you will see the Upgrade Now option. Click this button if you choose to use Adobe Story Plus. Otherwise your installation journey ends here. This button is shown in the following screenshot:

If you choose to upgrade to Plus, your home screen in the online version of Adobe Story will have a new link. On the right-half of the screen next to the Story logo, you will see the Install Desktop Application button. This is where you go in order to set up Adobe Story on your home computer; this button can be seen in the following screenshot:

A prompt will appear asking you if it is ok to go ahead with the installation; as shown here:

You can either choose to save the file and install it later or open it directly; these options are shown in this screenshot:

Once you choose to open the file, you will be asked to choose the location of where you want Story to be installed. For Macs, the default will be Applications and for Windows, Program Files. Refer to the following screenshot:

Either turn it on or off. When it is on, you can control how often Story saves your document. It is recommended to keep this enabled, you never know when something may happen to cause you to lose work that hasn't been saved.

Simply choose if you wish to have all updates sent directly to your e-mail.

Available only for Adobe Story Plus (categories, projects, scripts, and so on) onto a FTP or SFTP server, providing you have the required permissions that server may require. If needed, you will be able to use the backup file that is created on the server to restore all data.

If you have access to a web server, Adobe Story allows you to connect to it through either an FTP or SFTP connection. Story will send backups of your documents to the server just in case something may go wrong.

The different parameters that need to be filled in—also shown in the previous screenshot—are explained as follows:

Along with the documents backed up, all of their organizational information is saved as well. Everything will be restored to its original location.

A notification will appear after every backup or restore operation that occurs. The success or failure of this process will be displayed in the notification.

The steps to set up the Back up or the Restore option are as follows:

The Script Editor option allows you to control the layout when editing a document.

The previous screenshot is an example without any of the options enabled.

The same script, but with the Show outline view checkbox enabled is shown in the following screenshot.

The outline view creates a column on the left-hand side of the screen which lists all of the Scenes within the full script. By double-clicking on a specific scene, you will be brought to that exact location in the script (shown in the following screenshot). It makes editing much more organized and easier to access.

We have now enabled the Expand scenes in outline view checkbox. By turning this feature on, you are able to preview the content of each individual scene in the outline column. A new scrollbar appears on the far left-hand side, allowing you to scroll through the entire scene without having to move from your current position in the script.

You can either choose to utilize the Use Start of Day Breaks option, which points out the start of a day's worth of shooting for visual projects, or the Use End of Day Break option, which marks the end of a day's worth of shooting. These options are used for noting how much work you intend to cover during that day. These are not for lunch breaks within a full scheduled day of work.

The following screen is what is considered the Home screen, it is the initial screen that you are greeted with upon logging into Adobe Story. From here you can view video tutorials and access community resources:

The PROJECTS screen is shown in the following screenshot. This serves as the outline home for all of your created projects. Here you can access and create documents that are integral to your overall project:

The AUTHORING view, as shown here, is where all the content for a script is created. Think of it as the word processor portion of Adobe Story.

Navigating between views

In the following screenshot, you can see the icons for each of the different view points shown previously:

In order to travel between the three different viewing options, refer to the menu bar on the upper-left corner of the screen. AUTHORING is initially disabled. In order to enable it, when you're in the PROJECTS view, double-click on a script in order to bring up the AUTHORING view. When a script is open, a number will appear in a parenthesis next to AUTHORING. The number will change depending on the amount of scripts that are currently open.

You have the option to customize the columns that are displayed. On the right-hand side of the screen, after the last column, there is an arrow. Click the arrow and a checklist relating to all the columns appear. You can choose to toggle on/off which ever information you may or may not want to view when in the PROJECTS view. This is shown here:

If you are jumping back and forth between various links that are useful, Adobe Story allows you to insert them into Story by using the option shown in the following screenshot:

This is located on the bottom-right panel in the PROJECTS view.

The scene properties panel can be accessed when you're in the AUTHORING view. When you enable the Show scene property panel checkbox, a new column appears on the right-hand side of the screen. When you select a scene from the outline column, all of its information will appear in the property column. Adobe Story gives you a wide variety of options to help organize each scene to the best of your ability.

You can view the SCENE PROPERTIES, COMMENTS, and TAGS options when you enable this checkbox.

The SCENE PROPERTIES option is shown in the following screenshot:

You can manually choose the time or Story will automatically set it.

In the previous screenshot, Running Time is selected. Auto set is based on the page length, going by the assumption of a single page equals 1 minute of play.

You can also set the time of day in which the scene takes place by using the Time of Day field shown in the following screenshot:

This panel contains the following features or options:

If at a later date you wish to change the name of your project, you are able to do that as well; here are the steps:

You can adjust the specific information in regards to your project as well. There is a gear-like icon on the right-hand side of your highlighted project; this is only available in Story Plus.

When this icon is clicked, the following window is opened, where we can fill in all our production information:

Once you delete a project, it is removed permanently. However, all of its contents are then placed in the DELETED section.

Once you delete contents within the DELETED section, they are removed forever.

After deleting a project, you may wish to restore those contents and move them to a newer one. But you must create a new project with the same name as the one that was originally deleted. Follow these steps to restore a project:

To create a new category, in the PROJECTS view, select Projects | New Category and enter the name for the category.

To add projects to the category, you can simply drag the project from the project menu to the category you wish to add it to as shown here:

Select Projects | Rename, press F2, or double-click the category.

Follows these steps to remove projects from categories:

To delete a category:

Scenes are subdivisions of a screenplay/script. An individual scene describes a series of actions set to a specific location, time, and characters involved. Breaking a single script into multiple scenes is necessary to keep proper organization for the overall project.

Script outline

The OUTLINE panel on the right-hand side in the AUTHORING view displays all of the different scenes in the entire script. The scene heading represents the scene in the script and when you click on the heading, the contents of that particular scene will be displayed below. You are able to copy content from the outline to the main editing panel.

Whenever you complete a scene, it is added to this panel without any additional work from you. If you wish to go to a specific scene in the script, you can simply double-click the desired scene in the OUTLINE view and the editor will jump to the required area in the document.

It is also possible to reorder scenes by dragging a header title and moving it to a desired location.

If you want to delete a scene, you can just click the X icon for that scene in this view.

The colored dots shown after the header represent the characters that participate in that scene. The six most frequently appearing characters in the script are listed here. The first dot represents the character that appears the most across all the scenes. If you want to display the name of the character the dot represents, just move your cursor over the dot. The OUTLINE panel is shown here:

In Adobe Story, moving between scenes is simple and can be done without having to scroll through the entire document just to arrive at your desired destination. Here are the steps to navigate to and fro among the scenes:

In normal word processors, you would have to set up the margins and layout based on the industry-standard format, manually. In Adobe Story, the program does it for you. In order to implement a particular element of a script, all you have to do is hit Enter to move to the next line and a small window will appear on the editor, like so:

From here you can choose which element you would like to use. When you do, the document will automatically format it to the correct position.

You can also choose an element manually from the drop-down menu on the upper-right corner of the editor; as shown in the following screenshot:

In the following screenshot, a sample scene is shown where some elements are used:

Refer to the following table where the elements used in the previous screenshot are described:

Similar to how you can jump between scenes in a script, you are able to jump between elements. Follow these steps to do so:

Storyboards are drawn representations of how scenes play out. They are the outline for visual direction, working alongside the script to produce the desired result.

You can view and manage storyboards from the Scene Properties panel. You can add one or more storyboard images for each individual scene.

Before moving to revisions, we need to be able to know how to insert and track changes made to a document. This is how it is done:

You have to be in the Authoring view in order to make a revision. Production revisions highlight certain pages where changes have been made. The script becomes locked and all changes are highlighted in the revision style you choose. On the title page, a note is inserted on the bottom-right corner giving the date of the last revision. This is also done on the footer of every page where there is a change. The color changes and borders will not be exported in a PDF.

Before starting a revision, make sure that you have done the following:

Now, after completing the preceding steps, follow these steps:

You must be in the online mode for the Autotagging feature to work. It will not work in the offline mode.

This is how it's done:

Once you enable Autotagging, the script will be locked. You will have to wait until the process has completed before being able to edit the document; the following screenshot shows the message being displayed:

Follow these steps to search for words or phrases with a specific tag:

To view tags associated with a word or a phrase, you can do either of the following:

Before you start, make sure you have registered yourself with Adobe Story using the web or desktop application.

Use the same combination of e-mail address and password used on the full application with the iOS version. Accept the TOU before attempting to log in.

If you want to log out, select Account and then select Log Out.

The ten most recently read files will be displayed upon logging in to the Adobe Story application.

As long as you have author, co-author, or reviewer permissions, you will be able to review a script.

Metadata is something you hear about often when it comes to web design. In HTML, metadata is used to help convey proper information of content to search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The data consists of content written in plain text that contains keywords that relate to the overall content of the page. In video production and with Adobe Story, it is more or less the same concept.

Any text content that transcripts from the script and text descriptions are utilized as metadata. These textual elements (words) are essential in the script's formatting. Scenes, characters, dialogue, actions, and so on are all identified through the use of metadata. Character names or specific actions such as "slap" are examples of metadata. If you search for the word "slap" in a program such as Premiere Pro, all scenes containing this word (element) will be brought up. This data is captured only when the script is exported as an ASTX file.

Metadata can be added either automatically or manually by other software in the Adobe Production Premium suite.

Your exported scripts from Adobe Story can be brought into Adobe OnLocation:

OnLocation is a direct-to-disk recording, logging, and monitoring solution. The software captures all metadata information from the Adobe Story document once it is imported.

Shot lists are created automatically thanks to the imported metadata. These lists will be available in the Project panel.

The shot list matches the scenes in the imported Adobe Story script. Link movie clips to shot placeholders.

In OnLocation, drag a movie clip onto a shot placeholder in order to merge the Adobe Story metadata with the actual video. Adobe Story metadata is supported in the following formats:

MPEG-2 DV, MPEG-2 HDV, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO 25, H264 DV (.mp4), XDCAM, and XDCAM EX

Metadata that has been merged with the video clips are all carried over during the import process.

The benefits from this import process help tremendously with the post-production process becoming more efficient.

Locate media assets using details such as, filename, date, time, and camera setting.

Speech Search in Premiere Pro helps search within media assets to locate and jump to keywords in spoken dialogue. The search is made more accurate due to the embedded Adobe Story script.

Metadata speeds up normally time-consuming processes. It helps to quickly locate all the clips in a project that contains a particular word.

Rough cuts can be created based on speech-analysis text in Premiere Pro. Add In and Out points directly in the Speech Analysis section of the Metadata panel. It is faster to mark In and Out points in text as opposed to doing it in the actual movie clip.

You can use Adobe Media Encoder to batch encode multiple versions of source content to a variety of video formats across various media. Media assets retain all metadata captured from Adobe Story scripts.

By using Adobe Media Encoder to create web video formats such as F4V, the metadata makes it easier for users to search its content. Users can even look for scenes that were shot at specific locations.

In Encore, the metadata can be used as the basis of DVD and Blu-ray subtitles and chapter titles. It creates a database for searching by using the metadata from speech analysis text in Premiere Pro. The interface from Web DVD will allow users to search within the DVD using keywords.

Scene numbers, shot numbers, and shot duration are only displayed if they are enabled in the script.

An example of a Statistics breakdown report in Excel is shown here:

You can include the following when wanting to generate a report from multiple documents:

To create a report from multiple documents do the following:

You have the ability to choose to have either end-of-day breaks or start-of-day-breaks. A day break is what marks the end of the day or start of one in a schedule. It also displays the total number of pages in the scenes for a specific day. By doing this, you get an idea of just what you will be trying to cover in a span of a day.

A banner is what is referred to as any sort of break away from an end-of-day break. An example of this would be a lunch break.

In a schedule, do one of the following:

If a scene is going to be split up throughout multiple days, Story gives you the option to split a scene in the schedule:

When you enter the scene's start time (S. Start) and scene's duration (S. Dur) for a strip, Story calculates and shows the following:

There are many advantages of using Adobe Story as your scriptwriting software. Story does a wonderful job of pulling in all the different, varying aspects that go hand in hand with developing a project and throws them all into one program.