Background

Director Fundamentals provides multimedia developers with the knowledge and hands-on experience required to build rich media sequences for the web and CD-ROM. This two day course is a practical, hands-on course which covers working with animations, building interactivity, working with Shockwave, using the power of Lingo and utilising databases.

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to create, import and sequence media elements in Director, publish animations for use on the internet and in multimedia productions and understand the essentials of the Lingo programming language.

This Macromedia authorised course is designed to enable you to harness the power of Macromedia Director quickly and easily.

Course Content

DAY ONE

DIRECTOR BASICS
Creating a storyboard
The cast
Importing cast members
Working with sprites
Using inks to alter the relationship between sprites
Editing cast members
Using the Paint window
Internal and external casts
Using the library palette

USING THE SCORE
How the score is structured
The control panel
Making the score easy to read
Adding markers

ANIMATED BULLET LISTS
Basic animation techniques
Using the Timeline
Tweening techniques
Working with key frames
Recording with cast to time
Previewing your animation
Reversing animations

TRANSITIONS, SOUNDS, AND VIDEO
Adding and editing transitions
Drag and drop behaviours
Using blends in the score
Using the sound channels
Using the vector drawing tools
Importing movies
Controlling digital video
Video in an igraphic window

ADDING INTERACTIVITY
Using the Behaviours Inspector
More animation techniques
Keyframes and layers
Markers and navigation
Using Lingo scripts for navigation
Advanced navigation techniques

FILM LOOPS AND BUTTONS
Built-In Behaviours
Custom Cursors and Buttons
Fonts and menus
Shockwave for Director
Importing Flash files

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

DAY TWO

ALPHA CHANNELS AND MASKS
Sprite properties and palettes
Importing 32 bit images
PSD vs PNG

LEARNING LINGO
Useful Lingo scripts
Adapting Lingo scripts
Different types of scripts
When to use different scripts
Handlers and Events
Navigating with Lingo
Advanced Navigation
Controlling Sprites with Lingo
Optimising Scripts
The Object Inspector

SYNCHRONISING WITH DIGITAL VIDEO
Cropping digital video
Optimising your movie
Cross platform issues
Keyboard control

WORKING WITH DVD VIDEO
DVD support
DVD events manager

WORKING WITH COLOUR
Changing colour palettes in a movie
Remapping casts to a new palette
Editing colours palettes

DATE CONVERSIONS
Creating Hypertext
Monitoring Director
Using Speech xtra

EXPORTING FROM DIRECTOR
File size issues
Websafe colours
The Shockwave format
Testing your movie

WINDOWS SHORTCUTS
MACINTOSH SHORTCUTS

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS