MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX 2004-USING DIRECTOR, Use Manual, Page: 23 / 500

Creating new casts 23
Casts can be internal—stored inside the movie file and exclusive to that movie—or external—
stored outside the movie file and available for sharing with other movies. When you create a new
movie, an empty internal cast is created automatically, and when you open the Cast window it is
in the default List view. For more information about Cast window views, see
“Switching from one
Cast window view to another” on page 26 .
Cast window in List view
External casts are also useful for creating groups of commonly used cast members. You can use
external casts as a way of switching large groups of cast members in a single step. For example, you
could switch the text cast members in your movie from English to French by simply switching the
cast that the movie uses, rather than each individual cast member.
Using external casts can keep the movie size small for downloading because an external cast can
download separately from the movie file if or when it is needed.
Creating new casts
Before assembling a large number of cast members, it’s good practice to create the casts that are
necessary to keep them organized. You can sort casts by type, edit cast properties, and use external
casts for storing and sharing common media elements.
You can create as many casts as necessary; the number of casts does not affect the size of a movie
for downloading.
You can include as many as 32,000 cast members in a single cast, but it’s usually best to group
media such as text, buttons, and images logically in a few different casts for each movie.