TechNote (Archived)

Director Profile Settings - the Director.ini file

This document describes profile settings in the DIRECTOR.INI file.

Note: The defaults shown here are built-in to the Director application, so including the .INI file is requiredonly if you wish to override any of these settings. When using an INI file with a Director projector, give the INI file the same name as the projector, but with an .INI extension. For example myProjector.INI. The DIRECTOR.INI file is installed with Director and is located in the Director application folder.

For use with Shockwave, you must name your .INI file "shockwave.ini", and place the file in the Shockwave folder (for instance, c:\windows\system32\macromed\shockwave 8). For information about the LINGO.INI file see What is the LINGO.INI file? (TechNote 827)

Memory

[Memory]

ExtraMemory=400
Amount of kilobytes over and above physical memory for use by a projector.

SwapFileMeg=0
Amount of megabytes of SwapFile space to enable during authoring. Default is to allow swapfile space of up to 1/2 of the available physical RAM.

Palette

[Palette]

Animation=0
While performing an animation of the palette in 8-bit color mode, Director reserves all colors in the system. It is obvious when this happens, as the desktop and other applications will repaint in black and white. If your movie does not often change the palette, this may not be a problem, but if it changes the palette frequently, this desktop flashing can ruin your animation.
1: Reserve colors before first palette effect, but do not release them until the animation is done.
0: Default behavior. Reserve colors only during the palette effect.

SystemFriendly=0
This property only functions in a projector
1: When in 8-bit color, a fixed palette of the web 216 colors plus ten additional grays will be used by the projector. Colors from the movie will be re-mapped to the nearest available color
0: Default behavior. When in 8-bit color, changes in the palette channel are propagated to the system palette. That is, the screen colors will change.

Settings

[Settings]

SingleInstance=1
This property only functions in Windows Director and Projectors.
1: If the application is already running, attempts to launch a second copy will bring the existing copy to the front of your desktop, without launching a new copy.
0: Default behavior. Multiple copies of the application can run concurrently.

EscapeOk=1
This property is only used by projectors. Overrides the projector's escape lock setting.

FullScreen=1
This property is only used by projectors. Overrides the projector's "full screen" setting, from Create Projector's Option's Dialog.

UseTitleBar=1
This property is only used by projectors. Overrides the projector's "show title bar" setting, from Create Projector's Option's Dialog.

BackgroundAnimation=1
This property is only used by projectors. Overrides the projector's "animate in background" setting, from Create Projector's Option's Dialog.

SwitchColorDepth=1
This property is only used by projectors. Overrides the projector's "reset monitor to match movie's color depth" setting, from the Macintosh Create Projector's Option's Dialog.

CenterStage=1
This property is only used by projectors. Overrides the projector's "center" setting, from Create Projector's Option's Dialog.

ResizeStage=1
This property is only used by projectors. Overrides the projector's "stage size" setting, from Create Projector's Option's Dialog.

SleepTime=0
This property is used to indicate a millisecond "sleep" duration in order to utilize less processor time when the application, projector or Shockwave is the foreground application in use. This property must be set to an integer value between 0 and 1000, a value of 0 indicates no additional sleep time and results in the same behavior as projectors today (this is the default value if not specified) whereas a value of 1000 indicates that each cycle the projector should sleep for a full second (1000 milliseconds).

BackgroundSleepTime=0
This property is used to indicate a millisecond "sleep" duration in order to utilize less processor time when the application, projector or Shockwave is executing as a background application. This property must be set to an integer value between 0 and 5000, a value of 0 indicates no additional sleep time and results in the same behavior as projectors today (this is the default value if not specified) whereas a value of 5000 indicates that each cycle the projector should sleep for a full five seconds (5000 milliseconds).

Note: The SleepTime and BackgroundSleepTime settings are not found in the Director.ini file by default, you must manually add them if desired. For more information on SleepTime and BackgroundSleepTime please see Improving projector performance and CPU usage.

[Lingo]

DisplayFullLingoErrorText=1
This property is used by shockwave and projectors.
1: Lingo errors generate a more descriptive text in the error alert.
0: Lingo errors generate a "script error. continue ?" yes/no alert.

Global Sound Settings

[Sound]

Note: Almost all of these settings apply ONLY to the Macromix soundDevice (the soundDevice = "MacroMix"), and will not have any effect if the soundDevice is "DirectSound" or any other sound device. Settings in the [Sound] section apply to all sound cards.

SpoolBufferAlloc=0
When to allocate spool buffers
0: means allocate/de-allocate dynamically, when sound starts/stops.
1: means allocate spool once at startup and keep for entire session.

LowSpoolBufferMs=2500
Length of one 8bit spool buffer, in milliseconds.

HighSpoolBufferMs=1500
Length of one 16-bit spool buffer, in milliseconds.

SpoolBufferCount=2
Number of spool buffers to use. Must range from 2 to 10.

MixMaxChannels=8
Maximum number of channels supported by the sound mixer. The actual number you can mix depends on the processing power of your computer.
Must range from 1 to 8.

MixWaveDevice=0
DeviceID of waveOut device to use for playing. Must range from 0 to (# of devices - 1).

SoundLevel0=0	waveOut volume of lingo soundLevel = 0
SoundLevel1=24770	waveOut volume of lingo soundLevel = 1
SoundLevel2=35030	waveOut volume of lingo soundLevel = 2
SoundLevel3=42903	waveOut volume of lingo soundLevel = 3
SoundLevel4=49540	waveOut volume of lingo soundLevel = 4
SoundLevel5=55388	waveOut volume of lingo soundLevel = 5
SoundLevel6=60674	waveOut volume of lingo soundLevel = 6
SoundLevel7=65535	waveOut volume of lingo soundLevel = 7

MixMaxFidelity=99
Sets a limit on the fidelity of sound output. For best performance, use the default setting of 99 (switch on-the-fly), or choose the lowest value possible of the three fixed sound formats (0, 1, 2):
0 = 22.05k samples/sec, 8-bit, mono
1 = 22.05k samples/sec, 8-bit, stereo
2 = 44.1k samples/sec, 16-bit, stereo
99 = Switch formats on-the-fly. The first sound in a run of overlapping sounds determines the format for that run. The format used is the lowest of the three output formats (0,1,2 above) which is as close as possible in fidelity to the sound to be played, while still being supported by the installed sound card.

Default Sound Settings

DLLNameComment= Un-comment this to enable QuickTime 3 Sound Mixing
DLLName=QT3Mix.dll

[Low Mono Default Sound]

Settings in the [Low Mono Default Sound] section apply when the target output format is 22K, 8-bit, mono. The target output format depends on the capabilities of the sound card as well as the setting of MixMaxFidelity. These settings are used when the installed sound card is not known to Director and is not specified explicitly in the the <SoundCardName> sections. Settings in the <SoundCardName> or Override sections will override these values for specific sound cards, or for all sound cards, respectively.

MixBufferMs=200
Length of each mixing buffer, in milliseconds.

MixBufferBytes=0
Length of each mixing buffer, in bytes. Setting this value to non-0, along with setting MixBufferMs=0, lets you specify the buffer size in bytes rather than milliseconds.

MixBufferCount=4
Number of mixing buffers to use. Must range from 2 to 16.

MixServiceMode=0
0 means use timer interrupts to drive mixer. Interrupt settings will be applied from MixIntPeriodMs and MixIntResolutionMs.
1 means use polling to drive mixer. This may cause sound to drop out when CPU cycles are being hogged by other tasks, disk accesses, etc.
2 means use the waveOut buffer-completion callback to drive mixer. If this mode is set, it is best to use MixBufferBytes to specify a fixed buffer size which is a multiple of 1024. This mode is not supported by all sound cards.

MixIntPeriodMs=200
Interrupt period, in milliseconds. Only used when MixServiceMode is zero.

MixIntResolutionMs=50
Interrupt resolution, in milliseconds. Only used when MixServiceMode is zero.

[Low Default Sound]

Settings in the [Low Default Sound] section apply when the target output format is 22K, 8-bit, stereo. The target output format depends on the capabilities of the sound card as well as the setting of MixMaxFidelity. These settings are used when the installed sound card is not known to Director and is not specified explicitly in the the <SoundCardName> sections. Settings in the <SoundCardName> or Override sections will override these values for specific sound cards, or for all sound cards, respectively.

MixBufferMs=200
MixBufferBytes=0
MixBufferCount=4
MixServiceMode=0
MixIntPeriodMs=200
MixIntResolutionMs=50

[High Default Sound]

Settings in the [High Default Sound] section apply when the target output format is 44K, 16-bit, stereo. The target output format depends on the capabilities of the sound card as well as the setting of MixMaxFidelity. These settings are used when the installed sound card
is not known to Director and is not specified explicitly in the the<SoundCardName> sections. Settings in the<SoundCardName> or Override sections will override these values for specific sound cards, or for all sound cards, respectively.
MixBufferMs=200
MixBufferBytes=0
MixBufferCount=4
MixServiceMode=0
MixIntPeriodMs=200
MixIntResolutionMs=50

Sound Card-Specific Settings

[Low Mono <SoundCardName>]

Settings in this section apply when the target output format is 22K 8-bit mono, and you're using a particular sound card. The target output format depends on the capabilities of the sound card, as well as the setting of MixMaxFidelity. You can have any number of these
sections. Replace "<SoundCardName>" (including the angled brackets) with the actual name of the sound card you want to set defaults for. To find the name of your card, launch the Sound Mapper application, and look in the Playback field. Director maintains a built-in table of settings for many popular sound cards. Settings in this section take precedence over Director's built-in settings.
MixBufferMs=200
MixBufferCount=4
MixBufferBytes=0
MixServiceMode=0
MixIntPeriodMs=200
MixIntResolutionMs=50

[Low <SoundCardName>]

Settings in this section apply when the target output format is 22K 8-bit stereo, and you're using a particular sound card. The target output format depends on the capabilities of the sound card, as well as the setting of MixMaxFidelity. You can have any number of these sections. Replace "<SoundCardName>" (including the angled brackets) with the actual name of the sound card you want to set defaults for. To find the name of your card, launch the Sound Mapper application, and look in the Playback field. Director maintains a built-in table of settings for many popular sound cards. Settings in this section take precedence over Director's built-in settings.
MixBufferMs=200
MixBufferCount=4
MixBufferBytes=0
MixServiceMode=0
MixIntPeriodMs=200
MixIntResolutionMs=50

[High <SoundCardName>]

Settings in this section apply when the target output format is 44K 16-bit stereo, and you're using a particular sound card. The target output format depends on the capabilities of the sound card, as well as the setting of MixMaxFidelity. You can have any number of these sections. Replace "<SoundCardName>" (including the angled brackets) with the actual name of the sound card you want to set defaults for. To find the name of your card, launch the Sound Mapper application, and look in the Playback field. Director maintains a built-in table of settings for many popular sound cards. Settings in this section take precedence over Director's built-in settings.
MixBufferMs=200
MixBufferBytes=0
MixBufferCount=4
MixServiceMode=0
MixIntPeriodMs=200
MixIntResolutionMs=50

Sound Override Settings

[Low Mono Override]

Settings in the [Low Mono Override] apply when the target output format is 22K 8-bit mono. The target output format depends on the capabilities of the sound card, as well as the setting of MixMaxFidelity. These settings will override Director's internal settings, any defaults specified in the Default Sound sections, as well as settings for specific cards. Change these settings only if you want to force Director to use certain values regardless of the sound card installed in the computer. It is not recommended that you modify these settings for movies which you are going to distribute, as they will override Director's internal settings which are already optimized for various sound cards.
MixBufferMs=200
MixBufferBytes=0
MixBufferCount=4
MixServiceMode=0
MixIntPeriodMs=200
MixIntResolutionMs=50

[Low Override]

Settings in the [Low Override] apply when the target output format is 22K 8-bit stereo. The target output format depends on the capabilities of the sound card, as well as the setting of MixMaxFidelity. These settings will override Director's internal settings, any defaults specified in the Default Sound sections, as well as settings for specific cards. Change these settings only if you want to force Director to use certain values regardless of the sound card installed in the computer.
It is not recommended that you modify these settings for movies which you are going to distribute, as they will override Director's internal settings which are already optimized for various sound cards.
MixBufferMs=200
MixBufferBytes=0
MixBufferCount=4
MixServiceMode=0
MixIntPeriodMs=200
MixIntResolutionMs=50

[High Override]

Settings in the [High Override] apply when the target output format is 44K 16-bit stereo. The target output format depends on the capabilities of the sound card, as well as the setting of MixMaxFidelity. These settings will override Director's internal settings, any defaults specified in the Default Sound sections, as well as settings for specific cards. Change these settings only if you want to force Director to use certain values regardless of the sound card installed in the computer. It is not recommended that you modify these settings for movies which you are going to distribute, as they will override Director's internal settings which are already optimized for various sound cards.
MixBufferMs=200
MixBufferBytes=0
MixBufferCount=4
MixServiceMode=0
MixIntPeriodMs=200
MixIntResolutionMs=50