What software is used to make multimedia teaching courseware for competitions now?

Director is another heavy weapon of Macromedia. It can be said that most of the best multimedia products in the world are developed by directors. Regardless of multimedia design experts, teachers, engineers and artists, directors will find it an ideal creative tool. Director can not only make multimedia teaching CDs, but also make vivid web pages, multimedia interactive demonstrations and excellent animations. Director can be widely used to make interactive multimedia teaching demonstrations, online multimedia publications, online movies, online interactive multimedia query systems, cartoons, enterprise multimedia image display and product promotion, games and screensavers. In addition, Director also provides a powerful scripting language Lingo, which enables users to create complex interactive applications. It has some characteristics:

1, animation, sound, images and other multimedia elements can be easily synthesized together.

2. If you want to make it interactive, just drag and drop the designed behavior. If you are proficient in your own jargon, then you can be the best multimedia gamer. Set behavior is near 100. You can realize the interactive function by dragging and dropping.

3. Up to 1000 channels can be set, that is, 1000 media elements can be placed in these channels and can be controlled independently. It's like 1000 actors performing on the stage.

4. There is no limit to the number of actors. Director 7 supports an unlimited number of actors (that is, various media elements, such as words, pictures, animations, sounds, animations, etc. ), and users can create more colorful works.

5. Strong sound control ability, the time axis has two channels, and then through argot, you can control up to eight sounds at the same time.

6. Open Architecture (MOA) allows any Director developer to use Lingo, JavaScript or C++ to make Xtras to extend it. Director. These integrated Xtras are used to establish new transition effects, connect databases and control some devices.

7. In terms of virtual reality creation, Director also has its own uniqueness. Many international companies have begun to use the virtual reality technology in Director to make advertisements on the Internet.

8. Technologies such as database access and network linking can be integrated into multimedia applications.

The earliest version of Director appeared in 1985 (that is, the second year of Macintosh computer), which was called video work at that time, and there was only Macintosh version. With the help of the graphical user interface environment of macintosh at that time, video works were easy to learn and easy to use, and won a high reputation in animation production. 1987, video work 2 is online.

1989 Macromedia was revised, and Video Works II was renamed as Director 1.0. Since then, Director has been officially named, and the icon on the screen has also changed from the original camera to the director's chair.

199 1 year, Director released the second edition: Director 2.0, which was greatly improved by adding Lingo language, enabling users to make interactive multimedia with Lingo instead of just linear animation and display as in the past.

1992, which introduced Director 3.x and added QuickTime function. This makes the situation that we had to rely on programs to control external video recorders to play images no longer exist, and all media can be fully integrated digitally. At this point, Director has almost become synonymous with multimedia production on Macintosh. There are also playback programs on Windows and SGI.

? 1994, Director 4.0 released two versions of Macintosh and Windows at the same time, becoming a real cross-platform editing software. This makes many Windows users ecstatic. This version has enhanced the interface appearance and argot language.

1996, director released the fifth edition: director 5.0, supporting Windoes 95. It has two important concepts. One is Xtra, which is an external module provided by a third party to enhance the function of Director, similar to the plug-in of Photoshop. Xtra is a cross-platform, cross-application and compilable extension, which makes Director supported by developers. The other is the shock wave. With Shockwave technology, the files generated by Director can be put on the Internet, so that wonderful interactive programs that could only be enjoyed on a single computer can be watched on the Internet.

In 1997, Director introduced 6.0, followed by 6.5. This version is mainly enhanced in technology, for example, the number of channels is expanded to 120 (originally only 48), which enhances Lingo language; On Macintosh, QuickDraw 3D and QuickTime VR are supported.

At the end of 1998, the director released 7.0, which integrated a development package and directed 7 Shockwave Internet Studio. As can be seen from this name, Macromedia is ready to gain the dominant position of Internet multimedia. This version not only enhances functions and argot, but also focuses on enhancing Internet functions, such as integrating Fireworks, a tool for making web pages, and upgrading shockwave to 7.0.

At the end of 2000, Director introduced the new function of 8.0, Director 8 Shockwave Studio.

Free creative environment

Compared with the previous version, the most attractive feature of Director 8 is that it provides users with a more free and efficient working environment. In a series of recent software product updates, Macromedia has made great efforts to unify the styles of various softwares. Director 8 abandons various object property inspectors in the previous version, but puts all settable object properties in a floating panel called Property Inspector.

In addition to adding auxiliary line function, Director 8 also provides users with stage amplification function and locking wizard function. By using the stage magnification function, users can set the stage display ratio at will in the range of 12%-800%, thus bringing great freedom to some detailed work in creation. Locking wizards allows users to lock wizards that will not be changed for the time being in the development environment, so that they can directly select wizards to edit in the stage window.

Director 8' s actor window ("actor window") has also been greatly changed. By default, the list display mode is adopted, and the actor's name, serial number, type and bonus script are displayed at the same time. This new display mode of the actor window breaks the restriction of the member serial number in the actor window due to the position change in the previous version of Director. In the list display mode, users can sort the actors by name, serial number, attached script, type and modification time. The new actor window can greatly improve the efficiency of creating large projects.

In editing bitmap objects, Director 8 regards Fireworks3 as the default external editing program, and enables the two softwares to communicate with each other through the function of "design notes". Users can directly call Fireworks3 in Director 8 to edit the original file in PNG format of bitmap objects. Director 8 can accurately identify the Alpha channel in the PNG file with 32-bit color depth and transparently process the image.

Increasingly mature jargon

Lingo has developed into a mature scripting language since Director4. Director 8 strengthened Lingo's control over voice actors and bitmap actors. In the aspect of bitmap object processing, Director 8 has greatly enhanced Lingo's ability in pixel processing, thus realizing the real-time image special effects generated by operation under the condition of network low-bandwidth data transmission. In terms of sound, the newly added Lingo instruction in Director 8 supports multiple sound streams and accurately supports the loop point and prompt point of sound objects, so that users can pause, continue or cycle the sound objects freely, which is easily similar to the function of a music player.

In addition, the behavior library with user interaction function has also become the standard script automatic generation function in Director 8. Users can download and expand the latest director special effects scripts online. Fig. 5 shows a set of behavior libraries for making an image processing program displayed by the director 8 by controlling pixels in the bitmap.

In Lingo script editing, Direcotr8 provides the function of connecting script files. Users can save scripts as external text files, then edit the text files with familiar script editing software, and choose the appropriate external script editing program, which can bring a lot of convenience to script writing.

Network-oriented publishing model

Shackwave Player8.0 included in Director 8 Shackwave Studio not only strengthens the support for the above Lingo script function, but also allows users to set the size of the movie window of Shockwave according to the percentage of the browser window size, and can automatically zoom the movie window when playing the movie of Shockwave.

In Director 8, the original function of "saving shock wave" was replaced by the function of "publishing" completely facing the network. Director 8 added a lot of fine settings when showing movies (as shown in Figure 7). Users can set the compression ratio of JPEG image files used when publishing movies to control the size of Shockwave movies. You can also use a custom movie instead of the "Load ..." screen in Shockwave Player 7 and play it between movie downloads.

From the background support of Shockwave, the "Multi-user Server 2" running on the server side can accommodate 65,438+0,000 users to log in at the same time, and the software versions running on Windows NT and UNIX are introduced. Therefore, the development of Shockwave will gain the most freedom and broad space.

On June 5438+ 10, 2004, Macromedia announced that it would launch a new version of the multimedia creation tool Director MX2004.

Director is one of the oldest application software of Macromedia, which can be traced back to the era when multimedia content was mainly spread through CD-ROM instead of Internet. The main markets of this software are enterprises developing customized education and training software and developers developing simple games and animations for MacromediaShockwave players.

The new Director MX2004 adds support for T language, which is more convenient for developers who are not familiar with MacromediaLingo format. This move is similar to the company's recent launch of a modified Flash development tool to imitate the working mode of Java developers. MiriamGeller, director of product management at Macromedia, believes that increasing support for T language enables developers to write scripts in industry-standard scripting languages, while saving time for developers to learn new languages.

The new Director software supports more media formats, including Microsoft WindowsMedia and DVD video. The software also has an interface with the latest web design and development tools (such as MacromediaFlash MX 2004). DirectorMX2004 has simpler output and faster Flash content processing, and provides prefabricated modules for user interface development.

Geller said, "What we are concerned about is something that can really make people work efficiently and adapt to application tools faster."

Other functions of the tool include making projection files of Mac and Windows computers in one step; Support most video, audio, bitmap, 3D and vector graphics formats; And a customized user interface.

In 2005, Adobe acquired Macromedia, and the director became a subsidiary of Adobe. Adobe Director CS3 is expected to be released in the second half of 2007.

What characteristics will the new director have? Adobe is still making a decision. Planned: multi-user support, user interface, workflow improvement, support for Intel? In terms of hardware, it supports Unicode coding standard (double bytes). Director is a market-leading product with a loyal and stable user base. Adobe will continue to invest in Director and vigorously develop a new version of Director, focusing on current and future multimedia development technologies. The future director will be named "Adobe Director". Adobe plans to use Director as the preferred environment for game development, and increase the use of Shockwave Player on computers, game consoles and mobile devices. Adobe will, as always, support the expert group currently engaged in the development of the new version of Director.