Using Director > Using Interactive Media Types > Using Flash Movies |  |

Using Flash Movies

You can incorporate Flash vector-based animation in your Director movies, projectors, and Shockwave movies for the Web simply by importing a Flash movie into Director and using it like any other cast member. Effects that once required multiple versions of a bitmap cast member—such as blending one shape into another—can now be accomplished with a single, small Flash movie.

Director can import Flash 2.0 or later. It supports new features of Flash 4, including editable text.

In Director, you can control nearly every Flash movie property—including playing, rewinding, and stepping forward and backward through any Flash movie, adjusting quality settings, and turning sound on or off—using Lingo commands.

In Flash, you can create cross-platform Windows and Macintosh movies and then play or manipulate them in Director. You can create Flash movies that communicate with your Director movie by sending events that Director scripts can capture and process. You can store entire Flash movies in the Director cast file, or you can link to external Flash movies. Director automatically loads the Flash movie it encounters in the Score into memory from disk, from a network drive, or from anywhere on the Internet.

Flash movies are particularly effective for use in Shockwave movies because, as vector-based media, they are extremely small and therefore load much more quickly than most other media types. Because Flash movies are vector-based, you can scale and rotate them while still maintaining their sharpness. For example, you can create splash screens for your Director Shockwave movies that load with lightning speed and entertain your users while the rest of the Director movie streams into memory, or you can create interactive maps in Flash that users can pan across or zoom in on to reveal details with vector-based precision.