How does director compare to flash

[sirtimbly]

I know flash and actionscript on an intermediate level. I know almost nothing about Director. I am taking a class right now where we are supposed to learn Director. The professor is completely lost and has not even opened up Director once. So what I wan't to know is, how does Director Compare to Flash? Ease of use, features, scripting, everything. Is this program the crappy old version of Flash that it seems like to me or am I completely missing the point?

[senocular]

apples and oranges. Its hard to compare and they aren't really meant to be the same tool so though you may see similarities, they won't be the same and there will be things about Flash you wish director had and things in director you wish flash had. In general, though, Director will seem, as you said, a little archaic, so don't expect too much.

[Desire]

ive started to use director at college and personal since i learnt flash first kinda think director suxs eggs. so far ive not seen director do anything flash cant do but then again 1 lesson a week and in 3 weeks in, i aint gonna know much but watever i just think its rather nasty.

mind you since i started college i deceded not to buy a mac so something fishy could be going on here. *light bulb goes off* ARGH COLLEGE IS CORUPTING ME! ARGHH

*runs off into the distance*

[senocular]

director supports more media, epecially in terms of video (not just flv), can use "xtras" or pluggins (which affect playback, not just the authoring environment), has native support for 3D (with hardware accelleration), dynamic sprite filters or "inks," much more control over bitmap elements and with that the ability to rasterize the current screen visuals and manipulate them as any other bitmap element, greater control in motion tweening (though that still doesn't make it an exceptional animation tool), better memory management... and the list goes on...

[philler]

Flash is used for animation etc. on the internet whereas Director is mostly used for creating interactive CD-Roms or any other type of offline media.
Reason for this is that Flash file sizes are a lot smaller than Director.

They work very well together though, so quite often I use Flash to create an animation for a button or something and then import it into Director. I've never really done it the other way round though..

[.soulty]

yeah director is not a old crappy version of flash, thats for sure.

From what i have learnt, director can be used for

-shockwave gaming (3d elements imported by plugins),
-interactive kiosk (eg touch screen information panels you can see at card machine or museums)
-DVD authoring.
etc...

Director handles Large video files much better than flash does as well as bitmaps (without the need of compression, also handles tiff+alpha) like sen mentioned, which results in larger file sizes as philler mentioned but is why it is mostly used for interactive cd's and offline medias.

all in all two different apps.

::: also as philler mentioned you can use a flash with director such as a navigation which in flash you can use action script to call directors commands using the getURL command in flash and calling the lingo of director.. when both are used you can get some really powerful results.

[DDD]

I have done dvd's with director. And I use it for 3d simulations and vr. While you can do this in flash with a loaded video, director offers way more native 3d support. If your instructor has never opened Director I would not take the class. It is very involved and has its own language (lingo).

[signifer123]

Well someone told me somewhere on some forum flash was a "lite" version of director but that just makes sense to me maybe someday i'll lok into director when flash gets bigger and mroe director like or perhaps evenbetter surpases director in offline and runs a bunch of differnt things offline and online the ultimate dream!!!!!

[DDD]

signifier you willbe waiting a very long time because they are 2 different programs, 2 different purposes and cater to 2 different crowds. I would say just try it so you can understand what it does and is used for. It is no way comparable to flash IMO. BTW Flash is MM's flagship program, and has by far surpasses director.

[mlk]

I'd put it that way: flash is mainly used for vector graphics display whereas director focused on bitmap (raster) images.

example of director applets: http://www.forgefx.com/casestudies/prenticehall/

By the way, more people have the flash player than the director player...

[eyezberg]

Flash is used for animation etc. on the internet whereas Director is mostly used for creating interactive CD-Roms or any other type of offline media.
More or less, if you look at shockwave.com, you'll see Director used for online games quite a lot...

Reason for this is that Flash file sizes are a lot smaller than Director...
Nope, you can load assets into a small director file at runtime (shared libraries etc), it's the Flash plug-in which is much smaller, and installed by default on all modern computers with the browser.

Read this article (http://dotcom.monster.com/articles/tools/) for comparision etc..
Most of the stuff sen' said...
Director is becoming less popular, as most stuff that could be put on CD has been done (museums,etc..) apart from kids learning stuff and it's the only, expensive tool there is; Flash is becoming more and more popular, and the new features of the next player generation (code-name Maelstrom, see my site for article..) will further improve that!

[philler]

Nope, you can load assets into a small director file at runtime (shared libraries etc), it's the Flash plug-in which is much smaller, and installed by default on all modern computers with the browser.


That's what I meant, didn't explain myself very well, sorry 'bout that.

Still, I would use Director any day over Flash when it comes to creating CD-Roms and such, I doubt Director will ever become extinct because it still has a lot of features that are specific to offline media that Flash hasn't.

[senocular]

Flash is getting Director-like features more and more with every release. I don't see it matching up to Director, but its starting to be a contender for simple CDROMs and is being used more and more for them.

[DDD]

If I was MM, I would consolidate them. But then Flash would be astronomically priced. Eyez posted a good example of Directors use. I am not an AS guru, but it would be difficult to pull that off in flash. But then again I bet Sen could do it with 4 eyes tied behind his back.

[senocular]

pfft without all my eyes Im just a normal human being!