Lab 1: Adobe Director Introduction - WordPress.com

Adobe Director Introduction

What is the Adobe Director. • Program features. • Understanding the Director metaphor. • Viewing Director window. •

Adobe Director Introduction

What is Adobe Director Adobe Director is an authoring tool that allows you to create your own self-running and self-contained multimedia programs.

Adobe Director Introduction Program features ●

●

● ●

Director movies can contain animation, sound, special effects and even video. Every movie has several unique qualities, including stage size, position, color and much more. Interactivity which includes user feedback and navigation. Director movies can be as simple as an animated logo, or as complex as on-line games, websites or chat room.

Adobe Director Introduction Understanding the Director metaphor The Director user interface is designed around a movie metaphor. ●

A project

movie

●

Multimedia elements

●

Space

stage

●

Score

Storyline

●

Multimedia designer

actors (cast)

Director

Adobe Director Introduction Viewing Director window

Adobe Director Introduction Viewing Director window ●

The Score

organizes and controls movies content over time in channels and

frames. It also controls special effects such as transitions. ●

The Cast

displays all the media that you use, such as images, text, sounds,

digital video. It can be viewed as series of icons (as above called Internal Cast) or in list view mode. ●

The Stage

the 'screen' on which Director movies is projected and is used to

determine where all the visible media in a movie appears. ●

The Control Panel

provides a set of controls similar to those on a VCR.

Adobe Director Introduction Viewing Director window ●

●

●

The Property Inspector is used to view and change attributes of any selected object or multiple objects in your movie and also the overall movie properties. The Tool Palette contains a set of tool to create shapes such as lines, rectangles,and simple buttons such as radio, check box and command buttons. The Score The most important window for your movie where you place your cast members in the order they are going to appear.

Adobe Director Introduction Viewing Director window The Score is made up of: 1. Channels: rows in the Score that contain effects (timing controls, transitions, sounds) and sprites (visual media). 2. Sprites: instances of cast members on the Stage. 3. The sprite channels: represent how sprites are displayed and controlled over time. Sprite channels are numbered, allowing visible media to be layered on the Stage. 4. Frames: are the numbered columns in the Score. A frame is a single step, or moment in time in the movie, like frames in a traditional film. 5. The playback head: shows which frame is currently displayed on the Stage. By clicking any frame in the Score, the playback head will move to that location in the movie. ●

Adobe Director Introduction Steps of Multimedia Authoring Step 1: plan the project carefully Figure out the goals of the project, the look and the feel(GUI), length and size, interactivity and distribution form. Storyboard can be used for this purpose. Step 2: Assemble Media Elements in the Cast Import media such as text, graphics, digital videos, animation and sound and store in the cast. Or create new media elements using the internal tools provided.

Adobe Director Introduction Steps of Multimedia Authoring Step 3: Position media elements on the stage and sequence them on the score Use stage and score together to arrange the media elements from the cast in space and time. Step 4: Add interactivity behaviors and scripting Interactivity behaviors (ready made scripts) allow you to create and add buttons, arrows, navigation, animation, and control elements of your movie easly.

Adobe Director Introduction Steps of Multimedia Authoring Step 5: preview and test the movie with the control panel use the control panel to preview and test the movie to make sure it runs the way you want it to. Make refinements and adjustments in the score as needed. Step 6: Package the movie if you are satisfied with the way your movie runs, you can package your production as a stand-alone projector movie (*.exe) or as a shock-wave file so user can play it back on a web page. Always remember to save you production file from time to time.