What is Director?

1. What is Director? • A tool for creating interactive CDs or interactive media and games on the Web. • Combines graphics, sound, video and other media together. • A reflection of a theatre production. • Actors go to the stage whenever they have a role to play and leave it when they leave when they are done.

2. Macromedia Director Main windows1. The Stage • It is the visible portion of a movie on which you determine where your media elements appear. • Where all the action take place. • The screen that the user will see. • To create the look and feel for your movie. • Use to display movie; text and graphics. • If it isn’t on the stage, you aren’t going to see it.

4. Macromedia Director Main windows2. Score • The heart and soul of Director. • Divided into 2 areas; the effects channels and the sprite channels. • The Score organizes and controls a movie’s content over time in rows that contain the media, called channels. • Use to organise and tell cast members where and when to appear on the stage and what to do. • It lets you know what is on the stage, what images are playing, what transitions are in use and so on. • The Score includes special channels that control the movie’s tempo, sound, and color palettes. • The Score also includes frames and the play head.

6. Macromedia Director Main windows3. Cast • Home for all media elements.Cast members are the media in your movie, such as sounds, text, graphics, and other movies. • In addition assets that you use such as scripts, palettes, fonts, and transitions. • Can have hundreds of cast members in one cast. • Can have more than one cast in one movie; can be both internal and external. • Members are waiting to be called out to the stage.

8. Macromedia Director Main windows4. Control panel • Control panel: The Control panel governs how movies play back in the authoring environment. • Rewind, Stop and Play buttons on the Toolbar. • Controlling the number of frames per second and the loopback

9. Macromedia Director Special effects channel • Tempo: • The tempo channel allows you to set or change the frame rate, measured in frames-per-second (fps) as well as setting stop points. It can also be used to synchronize a Director movie with audio or video. To add a tempo change, double click the tempo channel on the frame where you would like the change to occur. • Color Palette • Note: Color palette changes do not work on web presentations. They are only useable for stand-alone projects. The color palette channel allows you to change the selected set of colors during a presentation. This can create interesting visual effects, or can allow you to have access to colors that are not available in your starting palette. See the Director manual for more information on this feature. • Transitions • Transitions are very useful for moving from one section of a movie to another in a visually interesting way. There are 51 different transitions available, and most of them can be set to last a varying length of time. You can also vary the smoothness of the transition. • Audio Channels • Director provides two channels for audio. You can place any standard audio file in your cast, and then drag it to the audio channel. If you simply place the cast member there, it will play for the duration of the audio sprite and then stop--meaning that it can easily cut off before the file is finished. • Alternate Audio Option: • Another option altogether is to bypass the audio channel by using Quicktime audio files. Quicktime audio and video files are treated like regular cast members/sprites in Director, and can be placed at any point in a sprite channel. You can still use the loop option on these sprites, and this allows them to take up as little as one frame. • Script Channel • The Script Channel is the place to add scripts affecting entire frames. See the Simple Scripts section for more information on these frame scripts.

10. The Property Inspector Click to change to graphics view • The Property inspector provides a convenient way to view and change attributes of any selected object, or multiple objects, in your movie • The List View Mode icon in the Property inspector lets you toggle between a List and a Graphical view.

11. Stage properties • Stage Size • To change it: Choose Modify > Movie > Properties to display the Property Inspector.Click the button for the stage size and set the new size. • You should set the stage size before you start creating your movie because if you change it after you finish developing your project all the images and graphics will not fit the stage. • Stage Background Colour: Same as above Choose Modify > Movie > Properties or choose Window > Inspector > Property or (Control+Shift+D), Click on the Color tab and change the color.

12. Sprites • A sprite is an object that controls when, where, and how cast members appear in a movie. • Sprites are created by placing cast members on the Stage or in the Score. • Creating a Director movie consists largely of defining sprites’ properties, where they appear, when they appear in the movie, and how they behave. • Different sprites can be created from a single cast member and each sprite can have its own values for different properties, however • changes to a cast member will change the sprites created from that cast member.

13. The Toolbar 1 of 3

14. The Toolbar 2 of 3

15. The Toolbar 3 of 3