Cinapse says it was built by ADs and producers, it has a dedicated page comparing itself with Movie Magic Scheduling, and its whole site is pitched at 1st ADs, UPMs and producers on union television. The testimonials come from DGA and DGC ADs on network and streaming series, and the headline feature is that the whole AD department can work in one schedule at the same time. In December 2025 Wrapbook bought it, with a stated plan to connect scheduling to budgeting, payroll and hot costs.
Storiara is aimed lower down the budget scale. It takes a script, extracts the elements with AI, and walks you from breakdown to board to budget to call sheet in one project. The fair summary is that Cinapse is a better scheduling tool, and Storiara covers more of prep.
Scheduling depth
If the question is purely "which board is better for a 1st AD," Cinapse wins, and it isn't close on complex shows. Its comparison page lists:
- episodic logic and pre-shoot days (a testimonial on the home page also mentions an episodic DOOD)
- start-of-day banners, unit break banners and multi-unit day breaks
- stripboard, breakdown sheet and calendar views
- private stripboards and schedule revision colors
- linked elements, PDF and CSV reports with filtering, weather and sunrise/sunset updates
Version history, private categories, published schedules and set updates are marked as coming soon on the same page.
That list covers the work of cross-boarding a block of episodes, where Episode 104's scenes at the police station shoot on the same days as Episode 101's. Storiara has none of the episodic or multi-unit logic and no schedule revision colors.
Storiara's board is a single drag-and-drop stripboard per story. You set the shoot dates and the daily start and end time, drop scenes into days (quarter-day steps for scenes, minutes for individual shots), and it blocks a drop that would run the day past your maximum length. A sidebar shows cast, crew, location and prop availability in 15-minute slots. It won't stop you from scheduling someone who marked themselves unavailable; it only shows you.
For a 10-day feature with one unit, that is enough. For a 22-episode season with a second unit, it isn't. Cinapse also works offline, which Storiara doesn't: Storiara shows an offline fallback page when the connection drops, and nothing can be edited until you are back online. An AD who boards on a flight to a location scout will notice.
Where the elements come from
Cinapse expects the breakdown to arrive with the script. Its integrations import Final Draft .fdx files with tags and Scriptation tags, and it imports new script versions as rewrites come in. The WriterDuet entry mentions PDF import. In practice that means a script coordinator or AD has already tagged props, wardrobe and vehicles in Final Draft or Scriptation, and Cinapse builds strips from those tags.
Storiara does the first pass for you. Upload a PDF, Word file or .fdx and it parses scene headings without AI (INT/EXT, set and DAY/NIGHT from the slugline), measures each scene's length in eighths from the PDF page layout, then runs AI extraction for characters, extras, locations, props, wardrobe, and music and effects. Every extracted item is checked against a quote in the script, and you can add anything it missed by highlighting text and picking a category. If nobody on your team has time to tag the script by hand, that difference matters more than any scheduling feature.
What happens after the board
Cinapse stops at the schedule, and says so through its integrations. Call sheets go out through an export to SetHero. A budget export to Saturation, a background breakdown export to Everyset, and a Wrapbook scheduling-plus-finance experience are all listed as coming soon. Wrapbook's acquisition letter talks about hot costs generated from the live schedule, but that isn't a shipped feature on the site today.
Storiara carries the same project further:
| After the board | Storiara | Cinapse |
|---|---|---|
| Cast DOOD | Auto-filled SW/W/WF/SWF/H/I, manual T, R, WD, PW codes | Episodic DOOD (per a customer testimonial) |
| Budget | Top sheet with accounts such as 1400 Cast and 3300 Camera, cast paid days from the DOOD, Excel export | Not available; Saturation export coming soon |
| Call sheets | Per day, email now or scheduled, public link, weather | Export to SetHero |
| Incentives | Funding page matches locations and budget against a built-in program list and estimates value | Not available |
What each costs on a real shoot
Cinapse has two pricing tracks. Personal plans are for your own workspace: Starter is free with one stripboard per project and three report exports, and Professional is $49.99 a month (or $29.99 on the Picture Lock rate for sign-ups from June 1 to December 1, 2026, locked for two years). Production plans bill the production per shoot day, with prep, hiatus and holidays free:
- Independent: $19.99 per shoot day, 4 seats included, extra editors $3.99 and viewers $0.99 per shoot day
- Studio: $49.99 per unit per shoot day, 10 seats, extra editors $4.99 per shoot day
Take a 24-day indie shoot with eight weeks of prep, a 1st AD, 2nd AD, UPM and producer editing, and two department heads viewing.
Cinapse Independent: 24 x $19.99 = $479.76 for the four editing seats, plus 2 viewers x $0.99 x 24 days = $47.52. Total $527.28, billed at wrap.
Storiara Producer for four editors over three months: $39.99 + (3 x $19.99) = $99.96 a month, x 3 = $299.88. Department heads who only need the call sheet can use its public link.
For short shoots Cinapse's per-day model is cheap. A four-day short on Independent is $79.96 for the whole production, prep included, which is less than two months of Storiara Producer. For long prep periods with few shoot days, Cinapse is also favorable. Storiara's price doesn't change with shoot days, so it gets relatively cheaper as the shooting period grows.
Choose Cinapse if
- you are an AD on an episodic, cross-boarded or multi-unit production
- several people need to edit the schedule simultaneously, sometimes offline
- the script arrives already tagged in Final Draft or Scriptation
- budgets and call sheets are handled by other tools anyway
Choose Storiara if
- you are an indie producer or small team doing breakdown, schedule and budget yourselves
- the script is an untagged PDF or Word file
- you want the budget and call sheets to come from the same project as the board
Whichever you pick, a one-line schedule and a stripboard template are useful for checking the software's output against how you would have boarded it by hand. The film scheduling software roundup compares both with Movie Magic and Gorilla, and ADs leaving Movie Magic should also read the Movie Magic Scheduling alternatives page. More matchups are on the compare hub.