Macromedia Director 8

Richard Price

Macromedia Director has been around for a long time and just gets better with each version.

Now with Director 8 Shockwave Studio, Macromedia is cementing its place at the forefront of multi media presentation.

In spite of all the Shockwave hype, it really is nothing more than a trendy name for Director or Flash content that is viewed on the Web. The Shockwave player is available free and has become a Web standard on both Windows and Mac platforms.

Surprisingly, the program doesn’t come with the latest Shockwave player so you can’t even access the tutorial files.

All you get from the installation CD is a hyperlink to the Macromedia site where you can download the latest Shockwave player. This probably helps Macromedia’s claim that 100,000 people a day download Shockwave.

It is a nuisance if your connection is a bit slow and added 25 minutes to my installation time.

Director 8 is a professional authoring enviroment, providing everything you need to create powerful interactive multimedia content, not just for the Internet but also as stand-alone applications on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.

Director 8 Studio, consists of the following components:

Director 8; Shockwave player 8; Macromedia Fireworks 3 for bitmap and vector graphics; Sound Editors (Peak LE for the Mac and Sound Forge XP for Windows) to create and edit CD quality stereo sound; a Shockwave Multiuser Server 2 license allowing up to 1000 simultaneous users.

Director 8 is a complicated program. Fortunately, the basic steps needed to create a simple movie are easy to master.

Using a simple movie metaphor, you, the director, work with a cast consisting of various media elements that can be arranged on the stage. You use a score, or timeline to help you to synchronise events.

The workspace can easily get very cluttered, so make sure you have the biggest monitor you can afford.

Users familiar with Director will notice a number of enhancements.

The Property Inspector provides a centralised location for quick editing of multiple sprite, cast member and movie properties.

Director can now incorporate over 40 different media types including Flash, Apple Quicktime and MP3.

The layout and animation controls have been enhanced and you can also launch and edit linked scripts in various text editors.

The cast window allows sorting and in-line name changes as well as customizable fields to facilitate asset management.

You can also now zoom in and out of the stage window while authoring to make precision adjustments. Or use the new pasteboard area around the screen to simplify the placement of animations that start and end off screen.

Lingo, the scripting language in Director 8 includes over 800 commands and should be familiar to anyone with Visual Basic or Javascript experience.

Director also now allows you to link behaviours to a movie when it opens, and using linked scripts you can share behavious between projects.

Director 8 Shockwave Studio is available for both Mac and Windows.

It retails for AU$1895. Registered Director 7 users can upgrade for AU$675. Users of previous versions can upgrade for AU$895.

Windows users need a 200MHz Pentium II, Windows 98, NT4 or later,

Mac users need a 180 MHz Power Mac, Mac OS 8.1 or later.

You also need at least 64MB RAM, 100 MB free disk space and a 256-colour display capable of 800 x 600 resolution.

By Richard Price, Editor, EnergyME.com

For information on getting a product reviewed email richard@energyme.com