Director To Go

Dennis Chominsky is Studio Manager at P/FS New Media in Wayne, NJ. An expert Web designer, he teaches at Future Media Concepts, NYC's premiere certified Adobe and Avid training center.

1. What's New with Director.


Director. Director. Director.



2. Preplanning Projects from the Ground Up.


Defining the Project. Strategy: How to Approach the Project. Defining Your Target Audience. The 3Ss: Scripts, Schematics, and Storyboards. Working within the Boundaries of System Requirements. PC, Macintosh, or Both. Gathering the Files. Choose Your Weapon: Selecting the Appropriate File Types. Prepare to Test, Test, and Re-Test. Customized Settings. Utilizing Third-Party Programs. Be a Neat Freak: Manage Your Movie. Leave a Paper Trail. Repurposing Media for Multimedia Projects.



3. Building Better Navigational Tools with Interactive Applications.


Controlling the Speed of Your Movie. Using the Wait Feature. Long Wait Times for Presentations. Adding Basic Interaction. Director: A Nonlinear World. Jumping Around with Markers. Naming Markers. Adding Comments to Markers. Next, Previous, and Repeat with Markers. Making Sense of Behaviors. Using the Behavior Library. Customizing Behaviors. Adding Comments to Behaviors. Saving Custom Behaviors. Setting the Default Editor. Building Interactive Applications Using Behaviors. Controlling Playback with Behaviors. Creating Rollovers with the Behavior Inspector. Sprite Navigation with Behaviors. Adding Behaviors to Other Sprites. Frame Navigation with Behaviors. I Quit.



4. Diving into Director with Lingo.


How Does Lingo Work? Understanding Lingo Handlers. The Most Common Script. Go To Another Location. Working with Constant Images. Looping Sections. Playing Other Director Movies. Automatic Returns to a Director Movie. Interactive Changing Cursors. Lingo Conditions: True or False. One Sprite, Two Functions. Can Scripts Make Decisions? If Shortcuts Needed, Then Use Case. Setting Values and Variables. Global vs Local Variables. Lists. Advanced Technique: Tracking Sections. Creating Popup Menus/Dropdown Lists. Checking Sprites Bounding Box with Lingo. Editable Text. Analyzing Lingo Commands and Comments. Building a Help Section. Setting Constraints for Moveable Sprites.



5. Creating Killer Visual Effects.


Launch and Edit. Designing Effective Navigational Elements. Creating Flashy Button Designs. Trimming Down Navigational Elements. Designing Buttons with Third-Party Help. Creating Rollovers with Character. Using Shortcuts to Create Highlight Buttons. Cool Example Using Rollovers. Line 'Em Up. Designing Custom Cursors. Setting the Cursor's Registration Point. Adding a Border to Custom Cursors. Duplicating Behaviors. Enhancing the Links. Adding Visibles through Rollovers.



6. Adding Life through Animation and Layering.


Frame-by-Frame Animation. Animate Multiple Cast Members in a Single Sprite. Cast to Time. Creating Film Loops. Tweening. Keyframes. Tweening Animations. Rotating Your Sprites. Tumbling Sprites In and Out. Going Too Far. Advance Tweening: Using Multiple Keyframes. Layering Your Sprites. Creating Better Transitions. Inks. When to Anti-Alias Objects. Masks. Separating Images from the Background. Advanced Layering. Comparing the Background Transparent and the Mask Inks. Do You Like to Work in Photoshop? Applying Filters to Sprites. Onion Skinning. Optimizing Your Design Techniques. Combining Animation Techniques.



7. Techniques Every Developer Can Use.


Moving and Stretching One- and Two-Frame Sprites. Exchanging Cast Members. Registration Points for an Even Exchange. Reversing an Animation. Adding Print Capabilities. Playing Selected Frames. Working with External Executable Files. Cut, Copy, and Paste Shortcuts. Working in the Score. Locating the Playback Head. Troubleshooting Techniques. Adding Just the Right Color. Optimizing Your Graphics. Changing Image Color Depth. Creating a Limited Time Demo. Top Secret: Adding a Password. Helping Users with Tooltips. Making Movies Special with Xtras. Finding the Movie Xtras.



8. Avoiding Audio and Video Nightmares.


Optimizing Digital Media Files. Tempo Controls. Wait for Cue Point. Working with Digital Media Files. Audio. Video.



9. It's All Finished, Now Deliver It.


Preparing Your Movie for Distribution. Testing Your Movie. System Requirements for Playback. Different Ways to Save Your Work. Cleaning Up Director Movies. Creating a Projector. Customizing Projector Options. Creating Small Movies. The Benefits of Creating Test Projectors. Protecting External Movies for Distribution. Saving as Shockwave Movies. Which Files to Include. Xtras. Installation Programs. Creating Screen Savers. Exporting Director Movies as QuickTime Movies. Made with Macromedia Logo. Exporting Your Movie as a Digital Video File or Bitmapped File.



10. Shock It for the Web.


Multimedia's Evolution on the Web. Preparing a Movie for the Web. What Is Shockwave? Creating a Shockwave Movie. Director on the Web: The Pros and Cons. Setting Your System's Default Browser. Embedding Movies with HTML. Navigating to a Website. Retrieving Shockwave Movies from the Net. Audio on the Web. Shorter Wait Times with Streaming Media. Video on the Web. Don't Forget the Plug-Ins. A Cup of Java to Get You Going. MIME's Roll In All This. Adding a Little Flash to Your Website. Tips for Optimizing Your Web-Bound Movies. Testing your “Internet” Movie.



11. Enhancing Your Movie.


Upgrading from PowerPoint. Creating Hyperlink Text in Director. Setting a Time Limit. Accessing Media on CD-ROM from Desktop Projector. Determining CD-ROM Drive Letters for Windows Systems. Rollover Workarounds. Supporting Files with Third-Party Applications and Xtras. Advanced Lingo Techniques: Creating Custom Codes. Integrating QuickTime VR. A Custom Tailored Look Through Localization.



Index.