Macromedia's Director 6.5 Multimedia Studio

Emedia Professional, Oct, 1998 by Stephen Ellerin

For 3D rendering, switch to Extreme 3-D to draw, extrude, and render complex 3D images and backgrounds. Extreme 3-D lets you create three-dimensional objects, arrange those objects into a scene or animation, and customize lighting and surface materials.

Sounds may be recorded or edited using Sound Edit 16 (Macintosh version) or Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge XP (Windows).

Director 6.5 also imports graphic files from Freehand or Flash, the company's new vector-based drawing program (neither is included, unfortunately, in the Studio). You can set any external program as Director's default editor for its corresponding file-type; double-clicking on an object takes you directly to your designated editor and, upon completion, returns the edited object to Director.

Also new in version 6.5 is QuickTime 3 and QuickTime VR 2 support. You can mask and rotate QuickTime movies, combine QuickTime and Director sprites, and mix Director sounds with QuickTime audio. Using Lingo, you can also control QuickTime VR's most significant properties, such as pan, tilt, node, field of view, and hot spot detection.

For ActiveX users, Director acts as an adapter for ActiveX/OCX controls, which enables them to function as sprite Xtras in Director.

THUMBS UP AND DOWN: PROBLEMS AND PROMISES

Naturally a product suite of this size does not come without overhead. Macromedia recommends at least 16MB of system RAM for each program in the studio that you wish to open simultaneously. In addition, be prepared to provide over 400MB of hard disk space to install the complete studio, including examples and tutorials. To make matters worse, version 6.5 requires that you have version 6.0 installed, yet the upgrade installs a completely new version claiming an additional block of space. Apparently, Macromedia planned the upgrade in this way to prevent overwriting any third-party Xtras specific to version 6.0.

On the bright side, in version 6.5 you can edit an animation's path directly on Director's stage, at any key frame. And creating real system cursors is now as simple as dragging and dropping images from a library. The latest version also lets you import PowerPoint presentations with their original text, colors, shapes, and animations, and enables you to add interactivity, transitions, sound, and true animations.

Synchronizing video with sound is always a problem, since different computers can play the same clip at different speeds. To facilitate synchronization, Director 6.5 supports cue points from imported .WAV files or from sounds created in Sound Edit/Sound Forge. By coordinating key points in your movie or video with cue points in your sound file, you assure that the violin music stops when your animated fiddler raises his bow.

Veteran Director developers will find Director 6.5 easier than ever to use. Sprites are now unified objects that span many frames; just drag a sprite's endpoint to establish its end frame. When you move a sprite directly around the stage, you now move it in every frame in which it appears.