Understanding
the Power of Director white paper (PDF, 275 KB)
Director gives you the power to create the most media-rich, high-performance content for:
- CD/DVD
- kiosk presentations
- Internet
Offering comprehensive capabilities for multimedia authoring, Director is differentiated both by the breadth of multimedia file types that can be integrated and controlled, and by the ease with which the resulting content and applications can be deployed for optimal playback across platforms.
Although Director and Macromedia Flash are complementary, each has been designed to address specific, distinct requirements:
Macromedia Director
As a multimedia authoring tool designed to create rich interactive content for both fixed media and the Internet, Director can incorporate photo-quality images, full-screen or long-form digital video, sounds, animation, 3D models, text, hypertext, bitmaps, and Macromedia Flash content.
Macromedia Flash
As a vector-based program designed to create and display small files on the web, Macromedia Flash accomplishes this feat by limiting the types of images and media that can be displayed.
Director also provides a rich suite of tools to control how and when these elements appear, move, sound, and change while the movie plays. While Macromedia Flash is typically used to create content, Director is usually used to aggregate and shape many different multimedia files into a single coherent presentation.
The power of Director is multiplied by the addition of custom features and functionality through Xtra extensions, all part of the extensible plug-in Director MX architecture.
You can:
- Create full-featured applications that access, launch, and control other applications from within the Director MX executable.
- Build your own or choose from hundreds of existing Xtras to extend your work.
Director MX 2004 also enables developers to create accessible content for people with disabilities, or easily repurpose existing Director content to meet government accessibility guidelines.
Use Director MX 2004 When You Want To:
Create streaming, interactive, multiuser content using:- Interactive 2D and real-time 3D animation
- Video: DVD-Video, RealVideo, Windows Media, Apple QuickTime, AVI
- Sounds: RealAudio, MP3, AIF, WAV
- Graphics: JPG, GIF, PNG, PSD, BMP, and more
- Macromedia Flash
- Text and fonts
- Xtras
Deploy to fixed media. The performance, media-handling, and extensibility of Director make it ideally suited for deploying content on CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, kiosks, and other fixed media, as you can:
- Get optimal content playback. While fixed media content often involves hundreds of megabytes of data, the advanced Director dynamic memory management enables quick loading and unloading of this data into system memory for smooth playback.
- Create fully featured applications that can access, launch, and control other applications from within the Director executable.
- Enjoy greater control—such as read/write access to the user's disk—as well as control over devices like joysticks.
Get maximum performance with large files. Quickly load and unload hundreds of megabytes of data into system memory with the advanced memory management of Director. The result? A consistent, smooth playback for end users.
Take control with the extensibility of Director. Launch other applications from within Director, use such input devices as joysticks, and integrate custom functionality for the absolute best user experience.
Make your website more compelling and effective by adding interactive, real-time 3D. Use interactive 3D to:
- Enhance the quality of online games and entertainment
- Make experiences, such as shopping and learning online, more enjoyable and practical
- Increase sales and reduce returns
Use media-heavy content such as bitmaps, sound, and long video streams. Make media-rich content that's both lightweight and high-performance with the advanced compression, extensive media support, and fast-rendering engine of Director MX 2004.
- Director supports many image formats (like GIF) that you can use to create small, non-photo-realistic images.
- Director and Lingo, its programming language, were designed to quickly animate many sprites (bitmaps, vectors, etc.) on the Stage for high-performing content.
Deploy cross-platform accessible content for people with disabilities that does not require a screen reader. Director MX 2004 is ideal for creating accessible CD/DVD-ROMs, kiosks, and web-based applications that run on systems based on both Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. Visually impaired Internet users frequently use screen-reading software, which reads aloud the contents of a web page. Because Director MX 2004 uses native text-to-speech capabilities within the OS, you can create accessible self-voicing content that works without screen readers or other assistive technologies. This is important in situations where it's impractical to ins tall expensive screen readers, such as in public libraries and museum kiosks.
