Building Movies for Movie Player

When you author a movie to run on a Multimedia PC, you must consider the wide range of potential delivery platforms. Your product might run on PCs ranging from the base Multimedia PC (with an 80286, 10-MHz processor and 16-color VGA video adapter) to more powerful machines (equipped with 80386 or 80486 processors and 256-color VGA video adapters). These differences in CPU speed and palette handling can cause unexpected results when you play your movies.

The following guidelines summarize authoring tips for the Movie Player:

To play movies well across varied platforms, limit the complexity of the animation, especially if the movies include synchronized sound. Complicated animations are computation-intensive and can cause gaps and skips in concurrent sound playback. Avoid palette effects and limit those inks used for matte, copy, and white transparent.

To display complex, 256-color animations, limit your delivery platform to systems with 256-color VGA adapters. Play the movie in full-screen mode; don't try to share the screen with other applications. Your movie player application should take over the static colors, as described later in this chapter.

Finally, it's important to note that the Movie Player supports a subset of the MacroMind Director features and has changed others slightly. A movie that runs on the Macintosh may not appear exactly the same on a Multimedia PC. Before you design the animation sequences for your presentation, create test files to exercise the various Director features you wish to include. In particular, test transitions, inks, and tempo commands. Run the files on a range of delivery machines to see how CPU speed and data streaming rates affect performance of the Director feature.

When you test your movies, look for timing or synchronization problems. Note any color changes that occur. Record your comments and make the necessary adjustments to the original file.