Subtitles of the Movie

If you have Flash MX or later installed on your system, you can launch the Flash authoring application from within Director. This is a great way to edit your Flash Cast Members right here within Director so you don't have to change anything. To edit your Flash, do one of the following. You can double click on the Flash Cast Member in the Cast or you can double click on a Flash Sprite on the Score or on the Stage. You can also select Edit, Launch External Editor. Do this while a Flash Cast Member is selected. That'll bring up this Editing and Progress dialog. Editing Flash in Adobe Flash CS3, press Done when finished or Cancel to revert to the previous state. Flash will open up. Notice that it shows you here editing from Director. If you're a Flash use, you'll notice that this is a little bit different. Now, you can go ahead and edit this graphic. Let's go ahead and do that by taking my shape and let's modify this shape so that it's very obvious that I've changed it. Let's give this a spiky kind of typeface look and let's go ahead and click on Done. Flash closes out that file. Back here in Director, you'll notice that sure enough those changes that I applied to this Flash content, in this case they're minor changes but they could have been major changes, are now incorporated in the Sprite itself. So this saved me the trouble of deleting this Flash Cast Member and then re-importing a new member and then placing that Sprite on the Stage. Now, in Flash MX or later is installed on your system and the Flash source file, which is the fla file, is specified here in the Property Inspector, click on the Sprite of the Flash, click on the Flash Tab there and you'll notice that there is a box for the source fla file. This file that's specified here in the Property Inspector is the one that Flash will start with for editing and changes are immediately reflected in Director. When the Flash file is saved back in Flash, if the source file is not specified here in the dialog box, a dialog box can appear if you click on the Browse Button right here and then you can then point to the location of that Flash file. If Flash MX or later is not installed on your system, the Flash Properties dialog box will open instead. And one last editing technique that I should show you is you can also add Flash to your list of external editors. Do this by choosing Edit, Preferences, Editors and you'll notice that right here, because I do have Flash installed, my editor for Flash content right here, notice external, Adobe Flash CS3. But if it was not labeled there or listed there, I could select the Flash content, click on Edit and then I have an option here of using an internal editor or using an external editor and if Flash is not listed here I would browse to a location of my Flash application and then choose the Flash Executable File to make that my new external editor for Flash content right here. Once you've selected your Flash editor. Click OK and now when you double click on Flash content, you'll get this dialog, Mix Editing in Progress. Click on Done to finish that. Obviously what will happen is that Flash will launch and it will open up the source file here where you can then complete your edit and then click on the Done button when finished. Now, there's one more method for controlling, manipulating and changing the way that Flash is presented in Director and that is to use the Lingo or JavaScript. Both of these scripting languages gives you precise control over the way that Director streams and displays Flash content. You can also use scripts to check and control Cast Member streaming, to zoom and colorize Flash content, as well as to pan Flash images. When a movie is playing, Lingo or JavaScript syntax can change the Flash Cast Member's properties. However, some Cast Member properties, such as the Flash rectangle and the Frame Rate are valid only after the Flash content header has streamed into memory. The various scripting reference topics in the Director Help Panel will give you a list of other syntax and commands that lets you manage how Director uses Flash content. So for more information, I recommend that you see that Scripting Reference. That'll conclude this section of the tutorial on how to use Flash content in Director 11. Let me now move on to the next section of the tutorial covering basic navigation with behaviors where I'll cover how to attach behaviors, several movies on how to work with behaviors including a rollover behavior, radio button behaviors, animated behaviors and much, much more.