User Guide

Using RealMedia content in Director 261
RealMedia sample file
If you have RealOne Player or RealPlayer 8 installed on your system and are familiar with
Director, viewing and using RealMedia files in Director is incredibly quick and easy. Before you
begin reading this document, please view the RealMedia sample file included on the Director MX
CD or the videotest.rm file included in the RealPlayer program installation folder.
To view the sample file:
1 Start Director.
2 Select File > Import.
3 Browse to one of these test files:
■ If you have the Director MX CD, select a file in the Macromedia\Support\RealMedia
folder.
■ If you don’t have the Director MX CD, select the videotest.rm file in the RealPlayer 8 or
RealOne Player installation folder.
4 Click Import.
The file appears in the Cast window.
5 Drag the file to the Stage and select Control > Play.
After you view the sample file, you are ready to start laying out the other elements of your movie.
About RealMedia streams in Director
Director includes the following RealMedia support:
• The RealMedia tab in the Property inspector
• RealMedia behaviors
• Script elements for RealMedia, including methods and properties
• “The RealMedia viewer” on page 270
Director supports RealAudio and RealVideo stream formats, but does not support other formats
that RealPlayer supports, such as SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language),
RealPix, or RealText. Although some of these formats may work with the Xtra for RealMedia,
there might be significant problems with playback.
RealMedia cast members
RealMedia cast members are always linked cast members; they reference an external stream via a
URL (of type HTTP, RTSP, or PNM) to a location on the Internet or a local file on your hard
disk or network file server. RealMedia cast members are always of type
#realMedia.
Sprites created from RealMedia cast members are treated as regular sprites and can be rotated,
skewed, stretched, flipped, colorized, composited with other sprite layers with ink, and
manipulated with the new Lingo or JavaScript syntax elements for RealMedia in addition to
standard sprite and cast member script.
All RealMedia properties and methods invoked on a RealMedia sprite invoke the corresponding
cast member’s properties and methods. This is because Director plays back RealMedia files at the
cast member level rather than the sprite level. For more information, see “RealMedia stream
playback” on page 263.