Macromedia Director 8

Intermediate Level Course

Ink Masks

• Using the Ink Mask feature will allow you to create parts of a bitmap cast member to become clear (Transparent) which will allow you to see through it to other Cast Members.

Onion Skins

• Onion Skins allows you to view one or more cast members as a reference while you are in a new cast member.

Tweening

• Tweening is applied between two keyframes that hold before and after states of a sprite property.

Path of a Sprite

• Director displays sprite paths that are lines on the Stage to show the movement of a sprite. Sprite Overlay Settings dialog box control the Sprite paths.

Recording

• Animation can be created by recording the movement of a sprite by simply dragging it across the Stage.

Animated Sequences

• Animated Sequences are related to a series of cast members that alternate between each other on the stage.

Flash Movies

• Flash is a vector-based animation development tool that produces compact animations suited for use in shockwave movies.

Importing Digital Video

• To control the media in a digital video Use cast member properties, to specify how it will be framed or if it will play direct-to-Stage, as well as set other important options.

Digital Video Properties

• The Property Inspector window is where you will find the Digital Video Properties. The Digital Video Properties can be set to influence various aspects of appearance and playback performance.

Editing Video

• Reorder a sequence require complex video editing tasks of a specialized program, within Director you can perform very simple tasks.

Animated GIF

• You can import and integrate an animated GIF into a Director movie just like a digital video clip. Director supports the GIF89a and GIF87 formats.

Importing Sounds

• Importing a sound, it becomes a cast member. For the sound cast member to play in your movie it has to be placed in the score’s sound channels:

Sounds in the Score

• Placing Sounds in the Score is same way that you control sprites. Sounds are placed in either of the two sound channels within the Score.

Sound to Actions

• You can more or less match sound with scenes by inserting sound to concur with the action. This can be done by using only the sound channels. For short internal sounds it works great.

Compressing Sounds

• To Compress all internal sound cast members, you can use Shockwave Audio (SWA). You can also link to external compressed Shockwave Audio files.

Create external Shockwave Audio files

Set Linked Sound to Stream

• The shorter the preload time, the less bulk you add to the initial download file. The longer the preload time, the longer the sound can play continuously while the rest of the movie loads.

Control Panel

• Using the Control Panel will allow you to rewind and play, or step forward and step backward to adjust volume and set loop playback through the frames of your movie.

Movie Tempo

• The Movie Tempo is calculated in frames per second (fps). Your movie is played as a default at a particular tempo, or speed, which can be adjusted.

Target Tempo Vs. Actual Tempo

• The target tempo is the setting that you place in the tempo channel, which can function as a maximum tempo.

Locking Playback Speed

• You can lock that speed if you are determined to have the proper tempo for your movie, so that it’s being used by whatever computer your movie happens to be shown on.

Pauses in a Movie

• When Setting pauses in a movie you can create a pause using the tempo channel. A movie can be paused for a specified number of seconds.

Transitions within Scenes

• Transitions allow you to move smoothly from one scene of the movie to another. Without transitions, scenes cut suddenly from one to another, creating a jerking effect.

Using Shockwave

• Does you’re web site look too dull? Does it look like everyone else’s? Just include a shockwave movie. That will surely put some life into your site and you’ll definitely get positive feedback on it.

Publish Settings (Default)

• The Publish Settings dialog box incorporates the following tabs,

• Formats• General• Shockwave• Compression• Shockwave Save• Image

Playing a Shockwave Movie

• Use the Publish command to create a Shockwave movie that can play in a Web page. Your original movie is left in DIR format. Shockwave can also be created as a movie in the DCR format.

Generate a Shockwave movie

• When previewing your Shockwave movie and you are using any linked media or external casts the files have to be contained in the dswmedia folder inside the Shockwave Player folder, along with the .DCR and HTML files

Organize files for Web delivery

• Situate all your Shockwave movie file, HTML document, any Shocked external casts, and linked media in to the same folder.