BIOS: Technology Means Business

Director is Macromedia's professional-grade tool for creating multimedia CDs and DVDs, kiosks, and Web or intranet interfaces. It's extremely powerful and capable of producing outstanding results, but its steep learning curve will likely deter non-experienced developers. The software is well suited to creating educational and entertainment materials, and the upgrade offers numerous improvements - including better speed, support for both Macromedia's Lingo and JavaScript syntax scripts, better integration with other Macromedia software, and the ability to embed, control, and playback DVD-Video inside Director-produced content. There's also an Author Once button that lets you publish content to both PC and Mac platforms in one go. Experienced users of Director should welcome the new features, especially when creating cross-platform interactive applications for training, sales or promotional materials, but those new to multimedia authoring should try the 30-day trial first (see link below) before committing to such an expensive financial outlay.

Pros: Extensible architecture; improved media support
Cons: Unintuitive; relatively expensive; eclipsed by Flash

Director MX 2004 allows you to create impressive multimedia content and applications for CDs, DVDs, kiosks, and the Internet - but only after you've taken the time to get to grips with its powerful, yet unintuitive features. Thankfully, there's a new reference panel to help simplify working with behaviours, Xtra extensions, and application programming interfaces (APIs) for both Lingo and JavaScript syntax, as well as tooltips and context-sensitive help.

Targeted at businesses with in-house multimedia developers, as well as design agencies, Director MX 2004 offers design tools and supports scripting languages and cross-platform publishing. It also allows you to embed most major media formats in your multimedia projects, including DVD-Video, Windows Media, RealMedia, QuickTime and Macromedia Flash content, in addition to audio, bitmap, and 3D formats.

Director MX is designed for experienced multimedia developers, so you shouldn't expect to get great results quickly. This is highlighted by the fact that the software works with other programs, including Macromedia's Flash and Fireworks MX 2004, and its authoring environment and playback engine allow you to write scripts to add interactivity and automation to your projects using Macromedia's Lingo scripting language and JavaScript syntax. You can also use third-party Xtra extensions or write your own to control external devices, such as joysticks and cameras, and to perform operating system-level tasks.

Director's user interface is designed around a movie metaphor. For instance, each project is presented as a movie, with a cast of characters, a score, a stage where the action takes place, and a director (you, the author). Each media element that appears in your movie (sound, video, images, text, buttons, and so on) is referred to as a member of the movie's cast. In Director, the Cast window is where you view the list of media elements that appear in your movie. As with a real movie, each Director movie has a score. However, the score of a Director movie contains more than just music. The Score window in Director contains information about when and where each of the cast members appears on the Stage. The Score describes the action that happens in the movie.

The action in a Director movie takes place in a window called the Stage. To create a Director movie, you add cast members (media elements) to the Cast window by creating them in Director, or by importing them. You then place them on the Stage as sprites. A sprite is simply a copy of a cast member that appears on the Stage. Then you refine the actions of the sprites by editing them on the Stage or in the Score.

It sounds fairly complicated, and it is to a certain extent, but you typically work in four of the windows that appear in the default workspace: the Stage, the Score, the Cast, and the Property inspector. From the Cast window, you import, create, and edit the cast members, or media elements, of your movie. In the Property inspector, you control the properties of the cast members. With the Score and the Stage, you control how, where, when, and for how long those media elements appear in your movie.

Director MX 2004 introduces a range of new features, with a particular focus on saving authoring time. Integration with other software, media types, and multimedia development processes has been improved, and you can now access Flash MX 2004 content from within Director. Director now also supports scripting in JavaScript syntax and Lingo in the same movie, and you can drop components, such as calendars and user interface elements into movies to cut the time that it takes to develop interactive features.

The workspace can now be arranged in multiple configurations and saved, and you can create workspace settings that include Movie in a Window (MIAW) windows that are docked alongside other windows. You can also embed, control and playback DVD-Video files inside Director movies, sprites and channels can now have custom names, and absolute references to sprites are no longer necessary, which should help to minimise broken scripts. After you complete a movie, you can now publish across platforms in one step, creating either stand-alone applications or Web-based Shockwave content that runs on Mac and Windows. Director movies can be viewed in either a projector, which plays on a computer as a stand-alone application, or in Shockwave Player format, which plays in Shockwave-enabled Web browsers.

Links:
Director MX 2004 Web site
Director MX 2004 30-day trial