Sorry for the delay, been snowed under at work! Finally got a chance to respond...
Yeah printing with Director is the only thing I hate about it, surely there must be easier ways! Still, we're stuck with the limitations for now! Unless the new release, Director 11, has improved printing capabilities? (Note to self: must investigate...!)
Anyway drifted off from my point there!
I had thought about using flash, but there are roughly 50 high res images that need to be printed at the same time via a single button hence the information overload, it seems, but the method that seems to use less memory is a simple linking to external file option where the high res images are linked rather than imported directly into the movie and this seems to be more consistent and uses less memory, not to mention reducing the movie file size greatly (by a few hundred MBs).
Since we are on the topic of printing I would like to expand on this - might come in useful for others -
the client also mentioned numerous times that in addition to the printing issues discussed above, printing the actual movie stage (there is a button on the stage to allow them to do this using a simple printStage command from PrintOmatic Lite) resulted in odd prints, namely when printed in black and white and thus resulted in a dramatic loss of quality with just a few identifiable lines/shapes here and there. Now...anyone can see that printing in black and white will obviously result in some detail being lost but to only print very vague lines etc seems a bit extreme (as this doesn't happen on my own printer) and I'm thinking this is a printer/hardware issue at their end.
You said you got good results using flash to print from the stage - but would this have any effect on the printed result itself, whether its printed in colour or black/white? I would presume that flash is just a better way of sending the data to the printer?
There's a good link here from PrintOMatic that COULD be the source of the problem:
http://www.printomatic.com/technote.cfm?technoteid=3
See also a quote below from client for your reference (ignore the doc references):
QUOTE:
Doc 1 shows the selected screen and subsequent menu options on selecting the print button on the DVD interface. The screen prints fine on the colour printer connected to X's computer. However, whatever settings are selected on X's black-and-white printer, the resulting print always bitmaps and prints in line only (as the example emailed previously).
Doc 2 shows a print screen, this time pasted into MS Word (plus another screen to show the relevant printer settings). When this print screen is printed from MS Word, it prints in greyscale, ie it prints OK.
Hope this will help you to identify and resolve the problem. To me this suggests that the button on the DVD interface is not capturing and/or sending the data to the printer correctly.
UNQUOTE
What do you guys reckon? Printer/hardware problem? Director printing problem? How much control can Director really have over the end users printer settings?
It would be good to be accurate in updating the client on what can or cannot be done from Director. One can't say that it is a printer/hardware issue if it 100% isn't.
Would be interested in hearing your views.
Many thanks,
Darren
