Director Tutorial

Score and Control Panel

 
The Control Panel feature in Director works like the controls to many other applications. The Control Panel allows the user to control the playback of the movie, with buttons for play, stop, volume, and moving forward and back.  The top left box displays the current frame number as the movie plays. The top right box displays the ideal frame playback rate which can be set by the author. The actual speed at which Director plays the movie is also displayed in the bottom right box. The buttons on the far right control the loop feature. The loop option allows the author to control whether the movie repeats or plays only once. This feature only works in the Director environment. To control looping of the Director in a Shockwave file, Lingo programming must be used.

In this example, the movie is at frame number 160, 
running at 14 frames per second.








 

 
The Score component of Director allows each of the cast members to be arranged and sequenced to behave properly on the stage. The Score dialog box can be controlled by  zooming to reduce or magnify the view and by displaying multiple Score windows. The Score’s appearance can also be controlled by using File > Preferences > Score. In changing the appearance of the Score window, cast member information and a preview of the script can also be viewed. 

 
The Score dialog box contains rows of cells. These cells are called channels. There are two sets of channels. The upper section of channels contain commands for tempo, color palette, transitions, sounds, and Lingo scripts.  The tempo channel controls the number of frames per second during playback. Tempo can also be set in the control panel. The color palette option allows for a choice of color palettes to be used. Transitions allow the user to apply effects for scene changes such as wipes and dissolves. Sounds can be inserted in either of the two  audio channels. Some actions in Director movies can be automated, or scripted. Director’s scripting language is called Lingo. If a cast member in the score window is associated with a script, you can view the Lingo script by double-clicking the status box in the upper left corner of the score window.

 
The lower set of channels are numbered and contain the sprites used in the movie. The number of channels in the score for each movie can be controlled by the Property Inspector. Cast members or sprites are placed in channels either by dragging into the Score or onto the Stage. 
 

 

 
 
Markers are the first channel in the Score, and are useful in determining the location of a specific point in the movie. Markers can be inserted to define navigation points in the movie. By marking a frame in the Score, reference can then be made to this marker in behaviors or scripts to refer to exact frames. Marker names are more reliable to use as navigation references than are frame numbers, which can change if frames are inserted or deleted in the Score.
 

 

 
The numbers across the top of the Score window represent the frame number. As the playback head moves across the Score, the frame currently displayed on the Stage is highlighted by the red bar.  By clicking on any frame in the Score, the playback head can be moved to that frame. The playback head can also be moved to a certain point in the movie by dragging backward or forward through the frames. 

 
 
 
Sprite Labels give extended information about the sprite as it is used in a particular frame. By changing the views of the sprite labels in drop down box in the upper left corner of the Score window, details of the sprite are revealed.