Using Director > Packaging Movies for Distribution > About distribution formats |  |

About distribution formats

Before deciding how to distribute a movie, it helps to understand how Director plays movies. Director movies play either with the Shockwave player or through a projector player. The Shockwave player is a system component that plays movies in Web browsers and also outside browsers as stand-alone applications. A projector player can only play movies independent of a Web browser.

You can distribute movies as Shockwave movies (with the DCR extension), projectors, protected movies (DXRs), or Java applets. You should not distribute source movies (DIRs) unless you want your users to be able to change the movie in the Director authoring environment.

| A Shockwave movie is a compressed version of a movie's data and does not include a player. Shockwave movies are created primarily to distribute over the Internet for playback in a Web browser. Another reason to create a Shockwave movie is to compress it for distribution on a disk when the movie is contained in a projector. In addition to compressing the data, saving a movie in the Shockwave format removes all information necessary to edit the movie.
| A projector is a movie intended for play outside of a Web browser. A projector can include a player (called the Standard player), Xtras, multiple casts, and linked media in a single file. A projector can also include several different movie files. Configured in this way, a projector can be a completely stand-alone application.
| You can use the Shockwave player projector option to make a much smaller projector. A Shockwave projector uses an installed Shockwave player on the user's system to play a movie instead of including the player code in the projector itself. If no Shockwave player is installed on the user's system, the user must download a copy. A Shockwave projector is excellent for distributing movies on the Internet that you don't want to play in a Web browser.
| You can also reduce the file size of a projector by turning on projector options that compress the movie data, the player code, or both. In Windows, compressing the player code reduces the minimum projector size from approximately 2.1 MB to 1.1 MB for a projector, and to about 60K for a Shockwave projector.
| On the Macintosh, compressing the player code reduces the minimum projector size from approximately 2.5 MB to 1.2 MB for a projector, and to approximately 12K for a Shockwave projector.
| Protected movies (DXRs) are uncompressed movies that users can't open for editing. These can be useful when you want to distribute uncompressed movies on a disk, but you don't want users to edit the source file. Protected movies may play faster than Shockwave movies from a disk because they do not need to be decompressed. These movies are preferable if disk space isn't limited. Like Shockwave movies, protected movies do not include the information necessary to edit the movie or the software that plays the movie. They can be played only by a projector, a movie in a window, or the Shockwave player.
| A Java applet created by Director is a movie converted to Java. Java applets do not require the Shockwave player and provide an alternative for playing simple movies at Web sites where plug-ins are not allowed. Not all Director features are available when saving as Java; you have a number of authoring issues to consider when converting a movie to Java. For a complete description of Java authoring issues, see Save as Java in the Director Support Center. You cannot include Java applets in a projector or play them as a movie in a window.

Note: To edit a movie packaged for distribution, you must edit the source file (DIR) and create a new movie in one of the distribution formats. Always save your source files.