Interactive QuickTime Authoring, Part 6

If this were, say, 1977, you just might see a TV commercial that goes something like this:

"Do you know me? I used to be the top dog of multimedia authoring before my parents decided to toss me in the back seat with my brother Authorware. That's why I carry the American Express card." Then you'd see that famous green card, blank of course, magically be filled in with the name "Macromedia Director," complete with accompanying old-school clackety-clack typewriter noises.

But this is 2003, and for those of you who may have only been in diapers (or even not yet alive) during the run of that particular ad campaign, suffice it to say that Director isn't quite the superstar of Macromedia's product line now that a little upstart called Flash has come along and stolen the interactive spotlight. But that doesn't mean Director isn't still alive and kicking. Far from it. It's still enough of a player to have earned a "MX" upgrade, and it's got plenty of rich QuickTime goodness packed between all the layers of luscious chocolate and creamy nougat, which is why we're all here today anyway.

What It Does

Just in case you're among the uninitiated, Director is a multimedia authoring program with a rich and storied history dating back to mid 1980s (under it's original name, VideoWorks). Although it's been a tad rudderless of late, Director remains a top choice for general multimedia production, especially for CD ROM titles, and also features web playback capabilities through Macromedia's Shockwave player. Why "rudderless?" Well, from the outside looking in, it seems as if Macromedia were having a hard time figuring out how to position Director in light of Flash gaining more and more features before finally settling on the idea that Director should basically pick up where Flash leaves off. "Flash Plus," if you will. Among other things, Director can incorporate and "talk to" Flash MX movies, and Director retains several advanced features Flash lacks, such as interactive 3D, a better conduit to the host OS, better performance with long-form video clips, and the ability to interact directly and natively with a variety of digital video formats (QuickTime included). And while Director itself doesn't require QuickTime as an installed component like some of the other programs we've examined so far in this series, with QuickTime present Director is capable of some pretty cool stuff in the interactive video arena.

How It Uses QuickTime

You don't need the most recent version of Director to enjoy its tight integration with QuickTime. In fact, QuickTime has been available to Director users since 1993, which is an absolute eternity in computing time (and, as some would argue, regular ol' people time as well). So while I'll be using Director MX here, frankly, you'll likely be able to take advantage of most, if not all, of the QuickTime features present in Director MX even if you're a few versions behind the latest and greatest.

Overall, digital video support in Director is pretty advanced across the board, whether your format of choice falls to AVI, RealMedia or QuickTime, but Director's QuickTime support still gets the most care and feeding (to be fair, however, RealMedia support is gaining on QuickTime). There are a couple of ways to work with QuickTime from within Director, and it all comes down to how much Lingo you want to learn that will determine the ultimate level of interactivity between your Director projects and any QuickTime assets you may wish to include.

Method 1: The easy way

If you're not Lingo-istically inclined, that's OK. There are plenty of QuickTime options available directly from Director's Property Inspector. A few strategic clicks here and there, coupled with Director's built-in QuickTime behaviors, and you can create things like custom QuickTime players without writing a single lick of Lingo code.

Once you import a QuickTime clip and place it on the stage, the QuickTime sprite gets its very own special tab in Director's Property Inspector (fig. 1). From there, most of the settings are pretty obvious, and you actually have quite a bit of control over how your movie plays, from whether or not video and/or audio tracks are active to a choosing your own frame rate. The one setting that really makes for some interesting effects is the DTS setting. By default, DTS (which stands for Direct To Stage, incidentally) is checked so that your QuickTime clip plays on top of whatever other sprites are present on the stage in what amounts to its own little protected space. Why? Two words: Perf Ormance. But, if you're willing to risk it, you can uncheck the DTS option and add stuff like inking modes and tweens to your QuickTime clips, which can make for some interesting composites if you know you have horsepower to spare.

Figure 1

Director also includes some QuickTime-specific drag-and-drop behaviors, which you can apply to other sprites on the stage to create a custom player. Drag an instance of the QuickTime Control Button behavior onto a sprite, and you get a menu of playback functions you can assign to the sprite (fig. 2). Or, you can combine the Constrain to Sprite behavior with the QuickTime Control Slider behavior to create a custom progress bar and slider. All without any Lingo knowledge whatsoever.

Figure 2

Of course, you can't really change any of these settings as your movie plays, so it really does help to know a bit o' the Lingo if you really want to integrate QuickTime with the rest of your Director projects and have QuickTime respond to other movie elements or user interactions. That's why I'll now switch gears and discuss...

Method 2: The slightly-less-easy way

If you have some facility with Lingo, whole new QuickTime worlds are available to you. In addition to everything I mentioned above, Director hosts Lingo scripts that control just about every aspect of QuickTime playback (fig. 3), including a whole host of QuickTime VR commands. Of course, I could go through each and every piece of QuickTime Lingo and tell you what everything does, but that's usually what manuals are for. So wouldn't it be oh-so-much better if I just gave a few examples of the types of things you can do with QuickTime Lingo? I thought so.

Figure 3

• Using Lingo to determine where the QuickTime clip is along its timeline, you can match scenes within the clip to Director's own playback. This is useful for creating features like closed-captioning or highlighting content in greater detail as the clip plays.
• If you have a QuickTime clip with multiple audio tracks, you can assign Lingo to buttons on your stage to dynamically enable and disable tracks, allowing you to create, for example, a multilingual presentation from a single QuickTime clip.
• You can tell hotspots in a QTVR panorama or object movie to activate sprites or otherwise alter Director's playback.
• Lingo can dynamically set the Direct to Stage setting on a QuickTime clip, enabling you to create transition sequences between clips using Director's tweening and blending, while still taking advantage of higher-performance QuickTime playback when you need it.

You get the idea. There's almost an infinite number of possibilities when you add some Lingo knowledge into the mix, which ultimately lets you draw on the best parts of both QuickTime and Director to create some really enhanced multimedia projects.

So Now What?

Considering that it's been around in one form or another since the days of the original Macintosh, it's pretty safe to say that Director MX is available right now. The full version runs $1,199.00, with upgrades priced at $399.00. While I'll leave my thoughts on pricing unwritten for the purposes of this article, Director is always worth serious consideration if you're in the market for a powerhouse program that can handle both interactive QuickTime authoring as well as general multimedia production.

NEXT TIME - Frankly, I'm not sure yet what's on tap for next time, or if there will even be a next time. Needless to say, stay tuned...

Filed under: Feature on July 11th, 2003

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