MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX 2004-USING DIRECTOR, Use Manual, Page: 451 / 500

About distribution formats 451
About distribution formats
Before deciding how to distribute a movie, it helps to understand how Director plays movies.
Director movies play either with the Shockwave Player or through a projector player. The
Shockwave Player is a system component that plays movies in web browsers and also outside
browsers as stand-alone applications. A projector player can only play movies independently of a
web browser.
You can distribute movies as Shockwave content (with the DCR extension), projectors,
Shockwave projectors, or protected movies (DXR extension). You should not distribute source
movies (DIR extension) unless you want your users to be able to change the movie in the Director
authoring environment.
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Shockwave content is a compressed version of a movie’s data and does not include a player.
Shockwave content is created primarily to distribute over the Internet for playback in a web
browser. Another reason to create Shockwave content is to compress it for distribution on a
disk when the movie is contained in a projector. In addition to compressing the data, saving a
movie in the Shockwave format removes all information necessary to edit the movie.
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A projector is a movie intended for play outside of a web browser. A projector can include a
player (called the Standard player), Xtra extensions, multiple casts, and linked media in a single
file. A projector can also include several different movie files. Configured in this way, a
projector can be a completely stand-alone application.
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A Shockwave projector makes a much smaller projector. A Shockwave projector uses an
installed Shockwave Player on the user’s system to play a movie instead of including the player
code in the projector itself. If no Shockwave Player is installed on the user’s system, the user
must download a copy. A Shockwave projector is excellent for distributing movies on the
Internet that you don’t intend to play in a web browser.
You can also reduce the file size of a projector by turning on projector options that compress
the movie data, the player code, or both. In Windows, compressing the player code reduces the
minimum projector size from approximately 2.1 MB to 1.1 MB for a projector, and to about
60K for a Shockwave projector.
On the Macintosh, compressing the player code reduces the minimum projector size
from approximately 2.5 MB to 1.2 MB for a projector, and to approximately 12K for a
Shockwave projector.
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Protected movies (.DXR extension) are uncompressed movies that users can’t open for editing.
These can be useful when you want to distribute uncompressed movies on a disk, but you don’t
want users to edit the source file. Protected movies may play faster than Shockwave content
from a disk because they do not need to be decompressed. These movies are preferable if disk
space isn’t limited. Like Shockwave content, protected movies do not include the information
necessary to edit the movie or the software that plays the movie. They can be played only by a
projector, a movie in a window, or the Shockwave Player.
Note: To edit a movie packaged for distribution, you must edit the source file (DIR) and create a new
movie in one of the distribution formats. Always save your source files.
Using linked media on the Internet
When you distribute a movie on the Internet for playback in a web browser, the linked
media must be at the specified URL when the movie plays. Otherwise, the user receives an
error message.