Using Director > Sound, Video, and Synchronization > Sound, video, and synchronization overview |  |

Sound, video, and synchronization overview

You can give your movie added appeal by including a soundtrack, a voice-over, ambient noises, or other sounds. Adding digital video to your movie creates even more interest. Digital video not only offers high-quality real-time image animation and sound but also supports new types of media such as QuickTime VR.

With Director, you have control over when sounds start and stop, how long they last, their quality and volume, and a number of other effects. Using Shockwave Audio, you can compress sounds for easier distribution and stream them from an Internet source.

Director supports QuickTime video for Windows and Macintosh, and Video for Windows (AVI). QuickTime is a multimedia format in its own right. It offers sophisticated sound features and can include graphics in many formats, including basic navigation of QuickTime VR2 files. For a list of supported QuickTime formats, see Apple Computer's Web site at www.apple.com. To use QuickTime, you must also obtain QuickTime 3 or later from Apple.

Director's media synchronization features let you synchronize events in a movie to precise cue points embedded in sound and digital video.

Sound and video make significant demands on a computer's processing power, so you may need to manage them carefully to make sure they do not adversely affect your movie's performance.

Lingo gives Director more flexibility when playing sound and digital video and can help overcome performance concerns. You can use it to play sound and digital video in ways not possible with the Score alone. Using Lingo, you can do the following:

| Turn sound on and off in response to movie events.
| Control sound volume.
| Control the pan of a sound relative to the pan of a QuickTime VR movie.
| Preload sound into memory, queue multiple sounds, and define precise loops.
| Precisely synchronize sound, digital video, and animation.
| Turn digital video on and off on demand and control individual video tracks.
| Control QuickTime VR.

Note: You can export movies or portions of movies as QuickTime or AVI videos. See Exporting digital video and frame-by-frame bitmaps.