User manual ADOBE DIRECTOR

[. . . ] Using ADOBE DIRECTOR 11. 5 ® ® © 2009 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Copyright Using Adobe® Director® 11. 5 for Windows® and Mac OS If this guide is distributed with software that includes an end user agreement, this guide, as well as the software described in it, is furnished under license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license. Except as permitted by any such license, no part of this guide may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Please note that the content in this guide is protected under copyright law even if it is not distributed with software that includes an end user license agreement. [. . . ] When you use setPlayList(), any previously set queue of sounds is replaced by the new playlist. After queuing sounds, you can still control whether the queue is obeyed. You can select to interrupt loops with the breakLoop() method or to pause playback with the pause() method. The playNext() method lets you skip immediately to the next sound in the queue. For more information about sound methods, see the Scripting Reference topics in the Director Help Panel. Playing external sound files In addition to playing sounds you have imported as cast members, you can also play external sound files that have not been imported. ❖ Use the sound playFile() method. For more information about this method, see the Scripting Reference topics in the Director Help Panel. Playing external sound files from disk minimizes the amount of RAM that is used to play sounds. However, because the computer can read only one item from disk at a time, loading cast members or playing more than one sound from disk can cause unacceptable pauses when you use the sound playFile() method. Controlling sound channels Use Lingo or JavaScript syntax to make actions in a movie dependent on whether a sound is playing. Lingo or JavaScript syntax lets you determine whether a sound is playing in a particular sound channel and control how a channel plays sound. For more information about the following methods and properties, see the Scripting Reference topics in the Director Help Panel. • To determine whether a specific channel is playing a sound, use the isBusy() method. • To turn off the current sound in a specific channel, use the setPlayList() method with [ ] as the new play list. This deletes the entire sound queue and leaves the current sound playing. • To fade a specific channel’s sound in and out, use the fadeTo() method. • To control a specific sound channel’s volume, specify the volume property. • To control the left-to-right panning of a sound, specify the pan property. About Windows Media Audio Microsoft® Windows Media® Audio (WMA) is an audio codec designed by Microsoft for use with streaming content at CD quality. It’s designed to resist data loss that can cause signal degradation and can improve download times for audio. WMA is similar to MP3, with two main advantages: it works better with low bit-rates (8-64 kbts per second) and it can, in general, produce better quality sound at a given bit-rate than MP3. It is generally recommended for music and general sounds, but not for voice. You can use WMA content in Director through the Windows Media feature. For more information about using WMA and Windows Media in general, see “Using Windows Media files in Director” on page 260. Last updated 9/8/2010 USING DIRECTOR 11. 5 Sound and Synchronization 247 About Shockwave Audio Shockwave Audio is a technology that makes sounds smaller and plays them faster from disk or over the Internet. Shockwave Audio can compress the size of sounds by a ratio of up to 176:1 and is streamable, which means Director doesn’t have to load the entire sound into RAM before it begins playing. Director starts to play the beginning of the sound while the rest of the sound is still streaming from its source (from a disk or over the Internet). [. . . ] The request succeeds if the cross-domain policy file in the Server allows access to the domain. For more information, see loadPolicyFile() in the Scripting Dictionary. In Adobe Director, cross-domain checking happens based on policy files, placed on the servers. This means that even the URLs accessed by the SWFs were being checked by the Shockwave player against the policy file. [. . . ]