User Guide
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CHAPTER 24
Using Shockwave Player
Macromedia Director MX 2004 movies can use the Internet in various ways: hosting multiuser
sessions such as chats and games, streaming movies and sounds, retrieving data from the network,
and interacting with a browser. Whether it is distributed on disk or downloaded from the
Internet, a movie can use an active network connection to retrieve linked files, send information,
open web pages, and perform many other network activities.
To make a movie appear in a user’s browser, you can save it as Macromedia Shockwave content
and embed it in an HTML document. The movie can play from a local disk or an Internet server.
When the user opens the HTML document stored on an Internet server, the movie often begins
streaming to the user’s system, and begins playing when either a specified number of frames has
been downloaded, or waits until all of the movie is downloaded to the local disk. (The movie
begins streaming if you have set the Shockwave streaming playback option to ON. If the default
streaming option is left at OFF, the movie begins playing after the entire movie has been
downloaded to the local drive. For more information, see “Setting movie playback options”
on page 471.)
You can also distribute a movie over the Internet as a projector—a packaged movie that the user
downloads and executes. A projector plays as a stand-alone application, not in a browser. For
more information, see “About distribution formats” on page 451.
When you author a movie, consider how the movie is to be distributed and played on users’
systems. If the movie streams from an Internet source, you might need to modify the movie for
the best streaming performance and to use the behaviors that are built in to Director to make the
movie wait while certain cast members download. Controls and script methods offer ways to
send and retrieve media and other information, interacting with a browser, and monitoring
downloading.
About streaming movies
When you distribute a movie on the Internet, streaming provides an immediate and satisfying
experience for your users. If you don’t enable streaming, your user must wait for the entire movie
to download before it begins to play. A streaming movie begins playing as soon as a specified
amount of content reaches the user’s system. As the movie plays, the remaining content
downloads in the background and appears when it is needed. Streaming can dramatically decrease
the perceived downloading time.