User manual ADOBE SHOCKWAVE PLAYER

[. . . ] i ADOBE® DIRECTOR® 11 USER GUIDE ADOBE DIRECTOR 11. 0 ii User Guide © 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. Adobe® Director® 11 software User Guide 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. [. . . ] The playNext() method lets you skip immediately to the next sound in the queue. For more information about sound methods, see the Director Scripting Reference. 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. Play external sound files that aren’t cast members • 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. About Shockwave Audio Shockwave Audio is a technology that makes sounds smaller and plays them faster from disk or over the Internet. ADOBE DIRECTOR 11. 0 244 User Guide 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). When used properly, the Shockwave Audio compression and streaming features provide fast playback of high-quality audio, even for users with relatively slow modem connections to the Internet. Compression quality in Shockwave Audio Although Shockwave Audio uses advanced compression technology that alters original sounds as little as possible, the more a sound is compressed, the more it is changed. Set the amount of compression by selecting a bit rate setting in any of the Shockwave Audio Xtra extensions. The bit rate is not related to sampling rates you might have used in other audio programs. Try compressing the same sound at several different bit rates to see how the sound changes. Select the bit rate that is appropriate for the intended delivery system (56K modem, ISDN, CD-ROM, broadband, hard disk, and so on), the type of movie, and the nature of the sound. Voice-over sound quality, for example, might not need to be as high as that of music. [. . . ] If no setPref method has already written such a file, the getPref() method returns VOID if called from Lingo or null if called from JavaScript syntax. For more information about this method, see the Scripting Reference topics in the Director Help Panel. Specify text in a browser’s status area • Use the netStatus method. For more information about this method, see the Scripting Reference topics in the Director Help Panel. Note: Some browsers do not support this method. Testing your movie Regardless of how you create your movie, test it thoroughly before releasing it to the public. Make sure you test on systems with all common types of Internet connections, especially on slow modems and at busy times of day. [. . . ]