Using Director > Cast members and Cast windows > Managing external casts |  |

Managing external casts

An external cast is a separate file that must be explicitly linked to a movie for the movie to use its cast members.

If you link an external cast to a movie, Director opens the cast every time it opens the movie. If you don't link an external cast to a movie, you must open and save the file separately. You can use unlinked external casts as libraries to store commonly used elements for authoring, such as scripts, buttons, and so on; see Creating libraries.

When you distribute a movie that uses an external cast, you must include the external cast file. For disk-based movies, the cast must be in the same relative path in your files as it was when the movie was created. For Shockwave movies on the Web, the cast must be at the specified URL.

To create an external cast:

1 | Choose File > New > Cast.
2 | Type a name for the new cast.
3 | Specify that the cast be stored as an external cast.
| If you don't want to use the cast in the current movie, deselect the Use in Current Movie option.
4 | Click Create.
| The cast is created, and a Cast window for the cast is opened in List view. See Using the Cast window.
5 | Choose File > Save while the Cast window is active, then save the cast in the desired directory.

To link an external cast to a movie:

1 | Choose Modify > Movie > Casts.
2 | In the Movie Casts dialog box, click Link.
3 | Locate and select the external cast you want and then click Open.
| You can link to casts on your local disk or to casts stored at any URL. Click Internet to enter a URL for a linked external cast.
4 | Click OK.

To unlink a cast from a movie:

1 | Choose Modify > Movie > Casts.
2 | In the Movie Casts dialog box, select the external cast.
3 | Click Remove.

To save a movie and all open casts, linked or unlinked:

Choose File > Save All.

Note: To use a cast member from an external cast without creating a link to the external cast, first copy the cast member to an internal cast or to a (different) linked external cast.