four main windows

• Stage -- where the action is
• Cast -- that play their role(s)
• Score -- for the director
• Control Panel -- for playback

movies and actions

• Director files are called movies.
• All actions in a Director movie take place in the Stage window.
• An action is created in the Score window. The process of experiencing the action is known as playback; clicking the Play button on the Control Panel sends a cursor known as the playback head through the Score, which effectively runs your movie by sequentially processing the Score information.

cast members

• The multimedia elements are stored and accessed in the Cast window. They are known as cast members. Some cast members are embedded, which means that they reside entirely in the director movie. Others are linked, which means that the actual data remains in an external file.

the score -- timing and channels

• Each column in the Score represents a relative moment in time. Cast members placed in cells in a column will show up on the Stage at that given moment during playback.
• Each channel in the Score represents a layer on the screen. There are specialized channel for sounds, transitions, tempos, and color palettes.

the cast -- members and sprites

• Onscreen text can be created in three different ways: as formatted text, as a field, and as artwork.
• The distinction among cast members, sprites, and sprite segments: Cast members are media elements in a Cast database, sprites are their representations on the Stage, and sprite segments are those representations in sequence across the timeline of the Score.

the stage -- alignment

• The registration point is what Director considers the physical center of a bitmap cast member. You can relocate the point in the Paint window to affect where the cast member appears on the Stage.
• Each physical element placed on the Stage has a bounding box, a square area that's as large as the outer perimeter of the object itself. It's always a rectangle, and it appears only when a sprite is selected. You can change the proportions of the box to change the appearance of a sprite, without changing the original cast member from which the sprite is derived.

the stage -- animation

• The main method of animation in Director is step recording. It involves placing the same cast member in multiple Score frames, in slightly different positions.
• Step recording is made somewhat easier with auto-animation tool such as Extend Sprite, Sprite tweening, and Space to Time.
• Other ways to introduce a sense of animation are through the use of ink effects to vary modes of display for individual sprites, and by modifying the size of the sprites.

tips

• Sprite sequences can be saved and reused as a unit, known as a film loop.
• For straight lines and shapes (as well as buttons), the Tool Palette is as alternative to the Paint window.
• When inporting new cast members from external files, make sure the pop-up menu in the Import window is set to the type of file you're looking for. Otherwise, the file may not appear in the list.
• To swap in a new cast members while retaining the Stage placement of the old one, use the Exchange Cast Members command.
• Markers are useful tools for identifying and navigating the frames in your movie.

etcetera

• The tempo channel can be made to repeat indefinetely by enabling the Loop option in the Info window.
• Transitions can apply either to the overall Stage or only to those elements that are different in the two frames straddled by the transition.