Gross, Chapters 4-7

Chapter 4

• The registration point of an image determines where it will appear on the stage if it is dragged on. It may also have implications for animation. You may change the registration point of an image through the Paint interface.
  
  
• Cast members may be exchanged by using the Exchange Cast Members tool in the toolbar at the top of the screen.
  
  P. 100: "Always place a transition in the frame where the next sprites appear on the stage so the transition effect can reveal the sprites." I.e., transitions need to be set on the first frame of the new content they announce or reveal.
  
  
• Transitions are themselves cast members.
  
  
• P. 104: Sprites for internal sounds must extend through every frame in which the sound is expected to play. (This does not apply to external sounds, which have no direct representation in the Score.)
  
  
• P. 105: Notice that in a sequence of three sounds, all in a single channel, there must be a blank frame between first and second, second and third.
  
  
• P. 108: By setting up a sprite in the Tempo channel, it is possible to arrest the sequence of a Director movie until a QuickTime element has finished playing.

Chapter 5

• P. 116: The Behavior channel is used for Lingo scripts. The most common forms of Lingo scripts are called handlers. A handler is a set of procedures activated by some condition such as an interface event (e.g., mouseUp) or a call to the handler from some other script.
  
  
• P. 118: "go to the frame" means in effect hold on the current frame, since "the frame" is a constant that stores the number of the current frame. Director has no problem at all returning to the same frame many, many times (no worries about infinite loops at this point).
  
  
• Important Safety Tip: Don't script a "go to the frame" behavior on a frame that also has a transition. Director will lock into infinite repetition of the transition and will not accept any input.
  
  
• P. 120: Note the use of blank frames to make the score easier to understand. Placement and size of sprites in Director movies often depends on this requirement rather than anything to do with the movie content.
  
  
• If you need to set a specific delay in a Director movie, set a Pause in the Tempo channel rather than adding frames. This is more precise.
  
  
• P. 124: Markers may be added to the score to set destinations for branching instructions. If you create a marker inadvertently (a common occurrence for me), drag it straight up off the marker channel and it will disappear when you release the mouse button.
  
  
• P. 127: When referring to a marker you must put its name in quotation marks and spell it correctly -- though there is no case sensitivity in Lingo.
  
  
• P. 129: Quit in Lingo means the same thing as Quit on the File menu -- terminate the application. If you want simply to stop the current movie, use Halt.
  
  
• P. 130: The sad truth about Projectors, or stand-alone Director movies, is that you must own Director for a specific platform (MacOS, Windows) in order to produce a Projector that will play on that platform -- a fact deeply resented by small design firms everywhere.

Chapter 6

• P. 141: To change the tweening effects on a sprite range, select the entire range.
  
  
• P. 143: Decrease movie tempo before attempting to record mouse movement.
  
  
• Is it just me, or was this exercise extremely hard to do?

Chapter 7

• P. 150: Gross suggests a smaller movie size (304x230) for his Shockwave exercise, pointing out that a smaller window means less information and hence faster streaming. If you were creating content for delivery over slow modem lines, this would be good advice. We'll be pushing things a bit in this class.
  
  
• P. 153: An important disclosure: the tempo set in the Tempo channel is a request, not a command. The computer running your movie may not be able to play it as fast as you want. Keep this in mind if you are developing your movies on a relatively fast machine.
  
  
• P. 160: You can play back a selected part of a movie by specifying Loop Playback and clicking the Selected Frames Only button.
  
  
• P. 163: Because of the stacking order in Director (top=behind), moving sprites with the Up arrow moves them down visually in the score -- down vertically in the score means up in terms of the three-dimensional Z-axis for stacking purposes.
  
  
• P. 164: Another important safety tip -- moving sprites up and down in the score can shuffle them into the midst of other sprite sequences. Watch what you are doing.