MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX 2004-USING DIRECTOR, Use Manual, Page: 471 / 500

Setting Shockwave playback options 471
Setting movie playback options
To change basic streaming settings for a movie, you use the Movie Playback Properties dialog box.
You can turn streaming on and off, specify a number of frames to download before playing the
movie, and make Director display placeholders if cast members are not downloaded yet. The
Movie Playback Properties dialog box also includes options for locking the current tempo.
Leaving streaming off (the default setting) makes sense for some types of movies. For example, a
game that requires all cast members to be available at once might not be suitable for streaming.
Other movies work best if the media for a certain number of frames downloads before the movie
begins playing. This option is especially useful for streaming movies that were not originally
designed for streaming.
Placeholders are rectangles that appear in place of media elements for cast members that have
not yet been downloaded. Placeholders are useful when testing to indicate places where media
is missing.
You can specify streaming options any time before saving a movie as Shockwave content.
Note: If you want to test how a movie streams from a server before you save the movie as a
Shockwave movie, use File > Save and Compact to make sure the data in the movie is properly
ordered and that redundant data is removed.
To set movie playback options:
1
Select Modify > Movie > Playback to define streaming options.
2
To let the movie stream automatically, select Play While Downloading Movie.
3
To make the movie wait for all media elements (internal and linked) for a specified range of
frames, enter the number of frames in Download __ Frames Before Playing.
By default, movies download the first frame only. Adjust this setting to the number of frames
that is best for your movie.
4
To make the movie display placeholders for media elements that have not been downloaded,
select Show Placeholders.
The placeholders appear as rectangles when the movie plays.
5
To lock the movie to its current tempo settings, select Lock Frame Durations. For more
information, see
“Locking frame durations” on page 159 .
To set Shockwave playback options, see the next section.
Setting Shockwave playback options
To view Shockwave content, your users must have the Macromedia Shockwave Player, which
comes preinstalled on many computer systems. The player is also available for free downloading
from the Macromedia website at
www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/ .
The Shockwave Player includes a volume control and a standard context menu that appears when
a user right-clicks (Windows) or Control-clicks (Macintosh) a movie. You can select specific
playback options to include for your users when you save your movie as Shockwave content.
Shockwave content loops by default. To cause Shockwave content to play only once, add the
Hold
on Current Frame
behavior to the last frame of the movie.