DIRECTOR MX 2004

Director MX 2004 is the latest incarnation of Macromedia’s powerful multimedia authoring tool. In the fast-pace world of multimedia, Director is as old as the hills. It entered the scene in 1984 as Videoworks; a humble beginning for the product, as its main features consisted merely of black and white fi gures and monophonic sound. Unfortunately, Videoworks 2 wasn’t a vast improvement.

Then came Videoworks Interactive, which saw the genesis of Director’s Lingo scripting language – a simple form of BASIC that offered uncomplicated interaction. The name was changed to Director 1.0 and John Thompson, the principal engineer at Macromedia at that time, modified the scripting language and named it Lingo.

Ten years later, Director MX 2004 can be used to create an astonishingly diverse range of products, including CD/DVD interfaces, kiosk content, 3D games and more. This latest release has some new powerful additions: JavaScript syntax scripting support, crossplatform publishing, DVD-Video support, a large range of support for media fi le types, MPEG-4 and MP3 streaming,
built-in DVD Event Manager and DVD Controller, panel docking, Sprite/Channel naming, and the ability to pull content directly from the Internet. The list goes on…

NEW FEATURES
Those who are new to Director and have experience in Web development will fi nd the new support for JavaScript syntax quite useful. This will essentially transport you past the usual learning curve associated with a new application. However, experienced Director users will fi nd little, if any use for this new functionality.

The new ability to publish both Mac and PC Projector fi les is quite useful, at least in theory. Before this release, users were required to buy PC and Mac versions of Director if they wanted to make their content available on both platforms. It seems as though Macromedia realised this was an error in its strategy (to put it mildly) and moved to resolve the issue in this latest upgrade.

However, when we tried exporting a Mac Projector and opening it on a Mac, all of the file association information had been lost and the Mac didn’t know how to open the file. In addition to this bug, Director MX 2004 only enables you to create OS X Projectors.

One of Director MX 2004’s many useful new features is the ability to drag fi les from your hard drive directly into the Cast window. This is handy when you need to import a huge number of fi les into Director and don’t want to do it one at a time. In addition to this drag-anddrop
functionality, you can now link to content from the Internet, which will really change the way people build multimedia content for CD/DVDs and kiosks. Gone are the days of burning the disc and worrying that your application will look dated in a few months’ time.

When importing a file, simply click the Internet button and type in a URL. Now whenever the application loads, it will grab the fi le from the URL you entered. A real-world example of this would be in creating press-pack CDs for journalists. It would be ideal to place heavy video and audio fi les on the CD, but allow for the press releases to be pulled from the Internet whenever the CD is launched.

In addition to this Internet file-linking feature, Director MX 2004 continues to improve its extensibility – largely with the help of a technology called Xtras. These plug-ins are simply purchased and dropped into the Macromedia\Director MX 2004\Xtras folder on your hard drive. There are literally hundreds of Xtras available, enabling you to change screen resolution, export images, add transitions and special effects, send messages to mobile phones, encrypt fi les, show custom dialogs, send fi les using FTP and much, much more.

Some Xtras that we found tremendously helpful were the Buddy API and DiskJockey CD-ROM Builder. The Buddy API Xtra enables users to save fi les and create folders on their hard drive. CD-ROM Builder makes deploying commercial-strength CD-ROM presentations even easier. Overall, this extensibility really makes the program worth the investment. You’ll fi nd that it empowers you to create applications for your clients which you can sell at a premium.

Another feature that Macromedia deems relevant is the new panel docking capability. We have always found the Director user-interface a little messy and poorly thought out, so this feature was a welcome idea. In practice, though, it isn’t as impressive as it could be.

What is impressive is the primary new feature of Director MX 2004: its support for DVD-Video. This will really open up the DVD content market. You can now embed, control and play DVD-Video inside your Director applications. Macromedia has built a new component called the DVD Controller, which is very similar to the video scrubber component that shipped with Flash MX. This has Play, Pause, Fast-forward, Rewind, Menu, Title and Return buttons. You can choose three different controller styles, but most professionals will want to create a custom skin for their DVD Controller.

The most powerful DVD content feature in Director MX 2004 is the capability to trigger events during DVD movie playback. An example of an event is the fi ring of URLs. This will open up new possibilities in creating Webenabled DVD interactive applications. During DVD playback, you could open up content in another window that is synchronised with the video, such as related images or helpful text. According to Macromedia, many popular DVD titles are now using this capability, including A Beautiful Mind, Matrix Reloaded, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

POWER TOOL
Director MX 2004 is a very powerful application that will enable you to create almost any multimedia application you can dream of. Those who believe that Director is just an expensive version of Flash and not worth bothering with will be missing out on a huge number of clients who need powerful cross-platform multimedia applications. There really is power in Director that you just can’t achieve with Flash alone. JavaScript syntax scripting support, cross-platform publishing, DVDVideo support, MPEG-4 and MP3 streaming, built-in DVD Event Manager and DVD Controller, support for over 40 media fi le types, Sprite/Channel naming and the ability to pull content directly from the Internet all make Director MX 2004 an essential tool for you or your studio.

Is it worth upgrading from Director MX to Director MX 2004? Only if you’re planning on making DVD-Video an essential part of your business plan, or you’re an expert with JavaScript and can make use of the new JavaScript support. However, if you haven’t purchased Director before and already have multimedia clients, it really is worth the rather hefty investment.

[tags]DIRECTOR MX 2004[/tags]