Supported Formats
Premiere.Studio works with the most common screenwriting file formats. Here's a quick reference for what you can bring in and what you can send out.
Format reference
| Format | Import | Export | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fountain (.fountain) | Yes | Yes | Open plain-text standard. Full round-trip support |
| Final Draft (.fdx) | Yes | Yes | Industry standard XML format |
| Yes | Yes | Print-ready, Courier font, industry margins | |
| Plain Text (.txt) | Yes | Yes | Read as Fountain on import; exported as simple text |
Fountain
Fountain is an open standard where formatting is expressed through plain-text conventions. Scene headings start with INT. or EXT., character names are written in uppercase, and parentheticals go in parentheses. The format is human-readable even without a screenwriting app.
Premiere reads and writes Fountain natively. If you're coming from Highland, WriterSolo, Slugline, or any other Fountain editor, your files will feel right at home.
Final Draft FDX
FDX is an XML format created by Final Draft, the most widely used professional screenwriting software in the industry. Premiere supports the core FDX elements, so you can move scripts between the two apps.
Some advanced Final Draft features may not transfer:
- Character navigator data
- Custom element styles (their text comes in as action)
Scene headings, action, characters, parentheticals, dialogue, transitions, shots, scene numbers, dual dialogue and ScriptNotes all come across. The title page travels as simple labelled lines (Title:, Author: and so on) rather than a laid-out page, so expect to tidy it after moving between the two apps.
Premiere generates PDFs that match industry standards:
- Courier Prime 12pt font
- 1.5" left margin, 1" top, bottom, and right margins
- Title page
- Page numbers, and scene numbers once you've numbered your scenes
- MORE/CONT'D for split dialogue
- Revision colors and asterisk marks (when you're working in a revision)
These PDFs are production-ready. You can send them directly to agents, producers, actors, or department heads.
You can also bring a PDF script in. A PDF holds no structure, so Premiere works out scene headings, action and dialogue from where the text sits on the page, and shows you what it found before anything is saved. A scanned PDF (pictures of pages rather than text) can't be read.
Plain Text
A straightforward text export: your script laid out with simple indents, without fonts, bold or italics. Useful when you need to paste your script into an email, a document, or any app that doesn't understand screenplay formats.
A note on round-tripping
If you export from Premiere to Fountain and import the file back, your script's text and structure should come back identical. Revision colors, scene colors and breakdown tags aren't part of the Fountain format, so they aren't saved in the file. Fountain round-trips are the most reliable way to move scripts in and out of Premiere.
FDX round-trips preserve the core elements, but a few things have no place in an FDX file: section headers and synopses are left out, and lyrics come back as action.