Converting Director to Flash???
by Dan Mingo
on
Jun 30, 2008 at 4:12:56 pm
This is a follow up to a question I had earlier, but I am curious if anyone knows of a program that can convert the shockwave file that director outputs to a flash playable file?
Re: Converting Director to Flash??? by Brodd Nesset on Jul 2, 2008 at 7:36:15 am
There isn't.
Director can wrap Flash files, but there is no other way around.
If your Director file is an animation you can output it as a Quicktime movie (with minimal compression), and then import this into Flash via its video encoder which will make into an FLV. For an interactive application, you need to rebuild it in Flash.
Regarding your previous question, I'd opt for Flash or indeed ordinary webdesign (HTML / CSS) too.
- For a free standing Kiosk Director is still king, somewhat. Also applications running off a disk / server.
- Director is great for training DVDs; it's used as the authoring tool even on those made for Flash ;)
- For Real time 3D with true interactivity (a 3D game for instance) embedded in a webpage, Shockwave is pretty unique still.
An observation I've made recently while (reluctantly) moving over to Flash, is that most of what Director developers tend to "hate" in Flash Actionscript is related to AS2. I took the plunge and dived into AS3 - is still diving - and: it has put the fun into programming again for my part!
Which is kind of funny. AS2 is messy and inconcistent; however you can do a lot of amazing things with the right hackish attitude. This is the same as with Lingo (unfortunately; it wasn't always that inconcistent). You can put AS2 snippets everywhere, making debugging almost impossible and reusable code a joke. Similar to Lingo - but in Director we at least have a debugger in the authoring tool!... ;) AS3 is strict (literally, and in a programmatic sense), and there is much more typing to do compared to Lingo. There's a lot of overlap with Java thinking, so AS3 is 'serious' now. This actually attracts quite a few Java developers, and also .NET and other 'heavy duty' developers can actually understand ActionScript now. This is of course intentional and a strategic choice. I learned to program with Lingo, when such a language would have been far too abstract, so this should scare me off. There must have been some right thinking behind Lingo then, which has made the transition much easier for me. While both Lingo and AS2 are 'semi OOP' (object oriented programming), I think Lingo has made it fundamentally correct, while AS2 somehow is fundamentally wrong - perhaps. Anyway, my Lingo experience certainly isn't wasted; when moving into AS3 and proper OOP I had a head start. I never got a firm grip on AS2 (I only could do what I needed), and I'd recommed anyone to just skip it now. Even if 90% of the cool Flash stuff you see around still is made with AS2; because for a multimedia developer with no Lingo experience, you stick to what you know (AS2). For a frustrated Lingo'ist I'd recommend AS3 however. Despite the differences and far more abstract attitude, it makes programming serious fun again.
In AS3, the concept of Sprites was introduced into Actionscript. It could have been the turning point? Or full circle. I mean; Sprites are the first thing you learn in Lingo... Welcome.
Her lips said "no!" but her eyes said "read my lips".
Re: Converting Director to Flash??? by David Richter on Jul 24, 2008 at 10:01:42 pm
Ah the ode to Director. A truly amazing program for its time. Until of corse Macromedia and then Adobe let it site on the shelves a wee bit too long. Now Flash is the rising star and Director is the aging celeb, but I digress. You can put Flash in Director but not the other way around. The idea of exporting to Quicktime and then compressing to FLV is your best option outside of recreating in Flash. Though if you have to re-create, at least you have a template to work from.
Re: Converting Director to Flash??? by Dan Mingo on Jul 25, 2008 at 1:45:38 pm
Well I appreciate the input. I've opted for the easy way out since what I am trying to make can be simple in nature. So I am going to buy the latest DVD Encore from Adobe and create a interactive DVD and export it to flash. Saves the time of learning flash and saves me the time of creating a DVD and a Flash project. Love Adobe products and they just keep making workflow better.
Re: Converting Director to Flash??? by Dan Mingo on Mar 26, 2009 at 6:30:13 pm
If you have the latest version of Adobe Encore you should be able to export your project as a .swf flash file. I don't actually own this, I have played with it a few times and it seems to work pretty well. Thats really all I can help you with or all I know. Sorry.
