Subtitles of the Movie

Let's now move on to the important technique of importing bitmaps into Director 11. Importing bitmaps is similar to importing other types of media but there are some important differences so let me review those differences here. If you import a bitmap with a color palette or a color bit depth different from that of the current movie, the image options dialog box will appear with some questions for you. Let me demonstrate that by importing an eight-bit GIF image that I've prepared here. Because it's a GIF image, Director's asking me to select format. Animated GIF, which will contain actually multiple GIF images or a single bitmap image. This is a single bitmap image so I'll select that option. Click OK. Here's the image options dialog. Notice that the default right there is image eight bits because this is an eight-bit image. That generally is the default. I can also choose to remap my color palette. The default is the current file color palette, which is windows, but I can change that to rainbow, grayscale. Let's choose Web 216 and also trim any white space on that GIF image and dither. Dithering will actually simulate the appearance of more than 216 colors by placing two colors adjacent to each other to simulate a third color. And I can choose the same options for any remaining images. I can import more than one image at a time. I Click OK. The image is placed on the Stage and also in the Cast Window, Director can also import images with alpha channel transparency effects. These are 32-bit images. If you reduce the image to a lower color depth, Director will remove all the alpha channel data. Typically you'll do this alpha channel transparency in Photoshop or a similar image editor. Let me demonstrate that technique by importing in some regular bitmaps that are 24-bit. Notice that I can add more than one image at a time. And if I import these, Director will ask me about color depth. Notice the default is 32 bits. In this case, these images are 24-bit. So I have a 24-bit option. But if you did have color transparency information, you'd want to stick to the 32-bit color. Click OK. Same for remaining images. Click OK and then Director brings in those images. In this case to the library. Now, when importing bitmaps, you should always consider that they display on the screen at your monitor's resolution, which is generally 72 dpi, perhaps 96 dpi for some monitors. High-resolution images that you place on the Stage in Director might appear much larger than you expect. So in other words, if you have a 300 dpi image, they may appear larger than you would think that they would in Director. Other applications, particularly those focused on creating images from print let you work on the screen with high-resolution images at reduced sizes, but not with Director. However, with Director you can scale higher-resolution images to the right size. This might reduce the quality of the image. Also, high-resolution images use extra memory and storage space, even after they've been scaled. So my recommendation is to always reduce your dpi settings in Photoshop or Fireworks or any other image editor that you're using to 72 dpi before importing them into director. Director supports JPG compression at run time for internal cast members that are imported through the standard or include original data for editing import options. Those import options, I should point out, are here in the Import Files dialog down at the bottom of the dialog. The options are Standard Import, link to external file or include original data for editing. The last one is import pict file as pict. But if you choose the first and third options, Director will support JPG compression at run time. A JPG that's imported with either of these options contains both the original compressed bits and the decompressed bits. After it's imported, the JPG file decompresses in the authoring environment. The cast member size displays the member's size and RAM after it's decompressed and since the amount of RAM required to display a JPG file is larger than its size on disk, you can expect that the JPG cast member size will be larger in the cast properties window. Let's go ahead and import bitmap one. With the include data for editing. Click OK. And let's drag a copy of that file. Now, notice what happens if I double click on this image. It'll open up the image in the Paint window right here, but if I try to edit this image, Director warns me I'm attempting to change a cast member that has original data for editing. It's recommended that you use an external editor to edit this cast member. If you choose to continue in the Paint Window, the member's data for external editing will be deleted. So you probably want to launch an external editor. You can set up which editors will launch with each type of file format in the preferences. This time I'm going to open up the image in Fireworks. I can edit this work in Fireworks, change it to my heart's content and then when I'm done, notice that it says editing from Director. This is the advantage of using Adobe products in a production flow like this is that this is a smart file. It knows that it's come from Director and I can edit it. Notice that when I'm done I can click on the done and it basically updates it in Director for me. And notice that there are my changes that I made. I erased portions of the photo but it's been updated here in Director. So in this case, the original data that I brought in when I imported the image has been saved. So I can use it to edit this image in an external editor. Now, Director also supports a full range of bitmap filters. These are plug-in image editors that apply effects to image files. So let me now move on to the next movie and demonstrate the use of bitmap filters in Director 11.