multimedia:

Multiple Movies in Director:   back to top

Director movies link to each other much like you link to markers within a movie (it is also analogous to linking from one web page to another). You can put the relevant script on a sprite (so you can click on it to go to another movie), or you can put the relevant script in a frame in the scripting channel (so Director will go to another movie when the playback head leaves that frame).

Examples of Lingo commands to go to another Director movie:
(The following three different examples all assume that the other Director movies are in the same folder. )

go to movie "linkmov2.dir"
-- goes to and plays the movie linkmov2.dir from the start

go to frame 26 of movie "linkm.dir"
-- goes to and plays the movie linkm.dir from its twenty-sixth frame

go to "start" of movie "mymov.dir"
-- goes to and plays the movie mymov.dir from it's marker called "start"

Examples of Scripts to go to another Director movie:
(The following three different examples all assume that the other Director movies are in the same folder as the current movie.)

on mouseup
   go to movie "treehouse.dir"
end
-- when you click on the sprite this script is attached to, Director goes to and plays the movie treehouse.dir from the start

on exitFrame
   go to frame 9 of movie "pregnant.dir"
end
-- when Director leaves the frame this script is attached to, it goes to and plays the movie pregnant.dir from its ninth frame on

on mouseup
   go to "keeplearning" of movie "openminded.dir"
end
-- when you click on the sprite this script is attached to, Director goes to and plays the movie openminded.dir from it's marker called "keeplearning"

Advantages of using multiple movies:

• better performance - if your 50 MB project is not in one 50 MB Director movie, but instead is in ten 5 MB movies that link together, the project less likely to slow down in animations or when trying to play sound or video

• shorter scores - more movies means that each movie has a shorter score, which some people find easier to work with

• organization - you can put certain sections of a project into certain movies (put all the wildflower sections into a movie called "meadow.dir", for instance)

• makes group work much easier - Question: a) if more than one person is working on a Director project, how can they both work on the same file at once?, and b) what happens if they are each making changes to a file at the same time on two separate computers?!? Answers: a) they can't, and b) bad things will happen when they both try to upload their changes.
  Having a project in multiple movies means that one person can work on one Director file, and another person can work on another Director file. As long as all group members are careful never to work on the same movie at the same time, things should work out.

• this multiple movies principle is present in other areas of new media - similar principles can be at work in Flash (for example) and other new media environments, so learning about multiple movies in Director can help you understand what is going on in other non-Director contexts

Recommendations:

• Ideally, keep each movie to 5MB or under (this helps keep performance high even on slower machines). However, if you can't manage this, and you are working with multiple movies for the first time, 10MB or under should be fine if you can't manage the 5MB limit.
  For our classes, please try not to hand in a project over 30MB in size in a single Director movie. If your project is getting larger than 30MB as you work on it, you should make every effort to start a new movie for the new part(s) of the project.

• All the movies should have the same size stage, or the user will be surprised by sudden changes in the size of the stage (unless you are using stage size changes as a deliberate aesthetic technique, and you have good reasons for doing so).

• All the movies should have the stage set to the same position on the screen. This allows you to run the project through Director, and see all the movies' stages in the same place. To do this, you set each movies' stage to the same location on the screen, and then save the change to that movie. (Unless, of course, you are using stage position changes as a deliberate aesthetic technique, and you have good reasons for doing so).
  This is something you could also set in the projector options if you make a projector, but setting the projector options does not affect how it plays through the Director program.
  Be aware that if you run multiple movies through Director, even if you've set all movies' stages to center, the position will still vary based on the resolution set for the monitor. If you created some movies with small stages while the monitor was at 800x600, and set all their stage locations to be centred - then running the movies through Director at 1024x768 will show the movies off centre, because the centre setting is still thinking 800x600.
  In a projector, however, checking the option to have all movies to play in the center means that they will always be centred no matter the resolution setting of the monitor.

• Using multiple movies means that the audience won't know which movie comes first, so the movie that people should start with should be named something obvious, like start.dir

• Do not try this technique of multiple movies in Shockwave. It is possible to use similar techniques, but they are more involved than this and the entire operation must be approached in a different manner!

Multiple Casts in Director:   back to top

When a Director movie uses an external cast, the cast must always be in the same location relative to the movie, or the movie will give an error and not be able to use the cast members in the external cast. So copy both the movie(s) and external cast(s) together (maintaining the same relative location between them) wherever you move your project. Internal casts are saved as part of the Director movie.

You can create new casts by either:

• going to Modify > Movie > Casts , and click the New button
  OR
  
• in the Cast window, holding down on the button at top left and choosing New Cast...

When you do either of these things, a dialogue box comes up and you get to name your new cast, and choose whether it should be Internal or External. If you choose External, you have to choose whether to use it in the current movie or not. Whichever you choose, you have to click Create to create the cast.

External casts are stored externally to the director movie, even when they are used by the Director movie (linked to by the Director movie). External casts can be used by multiple director movies, so they are good for storing cast members needed by many different movies (that way you don't have to have those cast members duplicated into internal casts in all those movies, so you save storage and memory overall). Save the external cast into the same folder as the director movies.

Whenever you change the casts that a Director movie has internally, or links to, you must save your changes to the Director movie!

When you create an external cast, you must save it separately from the movie:

1. Bring up the external cast's cast window
2. Click on the window
3. File > Save As...
4. Name it with the filename extension .cst --> like something.cst
5. Now the cast file will have been saved. If you hadn't clicked on the open external cast window first, it would have saved the Director movie, not the external cast. If you want to save the Director movie now, click on the Stage and then save...

You can see the casts a Movie has though pretty much the same steps you start with to make a new cast.

When creating or importing new cast members, be aware that they will show up in whichever cast was last selected or clicked on. Make sure to select the cast you want to have the new cast members in before creating or importing them.

To make it so a movie can use an external cast that has already been created/saved as a separate file:

1. Modify > Movie > Casts , and click the Link button
2. then choose the external cast file
3. then say OK to the Casts window
4. then save the Director movie

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