TechNote (Archived)

DVD video capabilities in Director MX 2004

The DVD platform has gained great popularity and has long been a requested feature for Director to support. Director MX 2004 introduces support for the DVD video format. Director can now access and display the video on a DVD or DVD-ROM as a new media type. This gives greater flexibility to developers that want to use higher quality video or audio in their Director / Shockwave projects. It is important to note that this does not equate to being able to export a Director movie as a DVD video or DVD menu for playback on a set-top (TV) DVD-Video Player.

Features and Functionality

Director can link to the video media on either hybrid DVD-ROM/Video or DVD-Video discs, as well as DVD video files stored on a hard disk.

The three main DVD features in Director MX 2004 are:

DVD-Video support
DVD Controller Component
DVD Event Manager

DVD-Video Support

The user will need to have DVD Player software installed. If the video is stored on a DVD disk, then the user must have a DVD drive and DVD player software installed in order for Director to access the video. If the video is stored on a hard disk, then only the DVD player software is needed to utilize the video in Director. Please see DVD authoring issues and hints in Director MX 2004 (TechNote 19151) for more details on the system requirements for playing DVD in Director.

Users can also interact with the DVD video sprites including the ability to click on interactive menu items and buttons.

Developers can react or control DVD through many new events, methods, and properties in Lingo or the JavaScript syntax.

DVD Controller Component

This component makes it easy to create a DVD playback controller. Simply drag and drop the component to the stage and the user can control the DVD playback. This allows quick development of DVD controls without having to code them from scratch.

DVD Event Manager

This tool is designed to help in creating presentations that respond to DVD events. This tool can be found in the Goodies folder on the Director CD.

Using DVD assets in Director

DVD can be added to a Director file from the Director menu by choosing: Insert > Media Element > DVD. A DVD member can also be created using Lingo, by using the movie object_movie.newMember(#dvd) (see the "newMember" keyword in the Director Scripting Reference).

DVD can be previewed in Director using the DVD tab of the video window.

Video can be very resource-taxing on computers, and DVD-Video is no different. It is very important to be aware of the minimum system requirements for the DVD features and properly test on the audience's lowest common denominator computer environments. DVD support for Macintosh users is on Apple Macintosh OS X v 10.3 and above.

DVD members always play DirectToStage (DTS). This means that other Director elements (such as text or graphics) cannot be positioned on top of the DVD video.

To protect DVD copyrights, DVD media cannot be screen captured. The image property cannot be used with DVD member for the same reasons. Similarly, DVD media in a Director movie cannot be run through Macromedia Breeze to prevent copyright or broadcast violations.

DVD decoders and DVD Player software

Director MX 2004 was tested with WinDVD, PowerDVD, and ATI DVD decoder software for playback of the DVD assets in Director.

On Windows, Director also utilizes DirectShow for its DVD support implementation. On Macintosh OS X 10.3, Director works with Apple's built-in DVD framework.