The central empty window is the Stage window, where the end result of your work is displayed. It's the screen on which Director movies are projected.
If you create a self-running piece of software, the Stage window is the
universe in which that software will exist. Quite
literally, this is where the action is.
The theatrical metaphor that dubs director's playback screen the Stage continues with the Cast window. Actually, it is here that the metaphor begins to break down: the Cast might more accurately be called the Cast/Scenery/Props/Musical Instrument Department.
Essentially, everything that goes
into a multimedia
production can reside in the cast:
cast members
The score window is where the whole project really takes shape. When Director runs a movie, all it's doing --for the most part-- is interpreting the information in the Score and whisking elements on and off the Stage accordingly.
It is possible
to create commands that overrule Score information (Lingo).
As you can see, the
Score resembles a spreadsheet with lots of individual cells divided into rows and colums.
The rows are called channels,
the colums are called frames. Each column has a number associated with it, and each
channel begins with either a number or
a distinctive icon.
To the new user, the Control Panel seems like a mix of the obvious and the arcane, If you've ever operated a cassette or videotape deck, the purpose of the main arrow buttons are clear. But what about the other items?
Most important is that the Control Panel shows the frames per second (fps) rate. The top one is the predefined
fps, the bottom one shows the actual tempo. This is important for online movies of course, but not for this practical assignment.
draft version 0.5 (12/3/2001)
What can you do to the Stage? You can change its color and size, and you can reconfigure
it in a number of ways to
suit the needs of a project. You can change the Stage size of any movie at any time, but each movie can
have
only one Stage configuration. If you want your project to incorporate Stages of different shapes and sizes, you'll
need
to create several movies and link them together.
The Cast window
All
cast members come into being in one of two ways: You can create them directly in Director, or you can import
them from documents
by other applications. In either case, unless you specify otherwise, each is automatically
assigned a location in the Cast
database and given a cast member number (you can also give them names if you like).
Once in a Cast, a cast member can be cut, copied,
pasted, deleted, relocated, and modified. Any changes made to
a cast member are automatically reflected in that cast member's
appearance on the Stage. This means, for example,
that if a cast member 12 was originally a blue dot and you change it to a red
one, all instances of the dot in the
Director movie will be changed from blue to red.
The Score window
Score information is organized in a strictly linear fashion, even when the project is a nonlinear interactive
movie.
Each frame maps out a certain instance in time during the planned playback; it's not a specific time but a
relative
one. For instance, frame 15 isn't necessarily 15 seconds in your movie, and it doesn't necessarily
represent 1 second in
Stage time. Frame 15 is simply a set of instructions Director should place on the Stage before
frame 16, but after frame 14.
The Control Panel
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