Topic: Director vs. Flash

It was bound to happen.
The request for the snazzy flash intro sits on my desk.
We own Director and I know how to use it. However it doesn't export SWF. Just shockwave.

I want to know if there are any advantages to using a SWF instead of a shockwave file. How does file size compare, etc?

Is it worth buying yet another program (Director is around 900 bucks) that does virtually the same thing (as I understand it)?

This little intro will be vector and pixel btw if that matters.
Thanks for any input.

I've used them both, and have always preferred flash over director. It doesn't seem to have quite as many capabilities with respect to animation, but the scripting language (which is based off of the same standard as JavaScript) makes a lot more sense and the final result, being mostly vectors, and not a combination of lots of separate types of things, seems cleaner to me.

In addition, raster images can be converted to vectors through a command in one of the menus.

I think it's cheaper, too...

Flash. But you already knew what I would say.

Well, I'm not familiar with either program, so I can't answer your question. But I thought I'd reiterate this point for those who attempt to:

quote:

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We own Director and I know how to use it...

...I want to know if there are any advantages to using a SWF instead of a shockwave file.

---

So really it seems the only factor you need input on is the final output...?

Of course, if the company is willing to foot the bill, you might as well buy Flash as it seems a more flexible and powerful overall solution.

from what i've seen there's a sizable difference between director and flash file sizes, flash being much more quickly downloaded. the flash plug-in also has a much better marketshare than shockwave so you'll isolate fewer viewers. i wouldn't even think of using shockwave for an online presentation unless it involved some sort of heavy computational game (probably needing true 3d). otherwise for online work flash is the way to go.

chris


KAIROSinteractive

Don't know enough about Director to comment. In many ways Director is far more powerful than Flash. You woudn't reach for Flash over Director if you were doing a no-holds-barred CD for instance.

But - for a "snazzy Flash intro" - for a web site - that's what Flash was built to do, and it does it well.

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We have done so.
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Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

Thanks for the feedback. Does anyone know if there is anyway for me to work on this in Director, export as shockwave, import the original file in flash and export as SWF, so that I can compare the file sizes? Or do I have to create it from scratch in Flash?

I found this, this, this, and this which I thought was nice, but I still don't have an inkling about the file size thing.



[This message has been edited by Jeni (edited 02-03-2003).]

i can't find a shockwave file option under the import menu in flash so my money's on no there...

chris


KAIROSinteractive

I've worked on both for years. I started programing on Director...well along time ago(It was only available on the Mac) then I started using flash when I got into web work. Director was the first of the two programs as far as Macromedia is concerned. It began life as an advanced Powerpoint. Macromedia purchased futureSplash which became flash later.

Director is the more powerful of the two programs. Its file size is also a lot larger. Its designed so you can create very advanced interactive programs with many different media types(flash, several kinds of video, raster graphics, verious sound formats, etc. It can also access and manipulate many more file types through xtras(extensions). Hell, you can build some pretty robust applications in Director. It is also great for 3D games. It animates raster graphics real well.

The shockwave plug-in has about one-tenth the market penatration of the flash plug-in and its a bigger download for the enduser. I really only use director now for clients requiring CD-Roms. Most games, other than 3-D, can now be done in flash. As for the authoring enviroment, I actually like a lot of director's features. I can test scripts without exporting the movie and I can program one central script for the whole app without having to create 20 different clips to hold the scripting.

Flash cannot import shockwave files, unless they made some changes that I'm not aware of(never say never). It works the other way - I usually use director to "unify" lots of different media types and make the interface.

As for an Intro, use Flash. I'm guessing your talking about a splash page. Most users don't want to wait for a 200K+ intro to download to see your site- if they have the plug-in. You can keep a flash Intro under 50K easily if you don't use any raster graphics.


-tiki, cell 478

Yup, flash is an animation and web media scripting application. The footprint for the plugin is small and the speed is quite good.

Director on the other hand is like a bastard verion of Java. It's an IDE that you can use to develop just about any kind of application given the experience and knowledge of how to extend it through xtra's and the like. It's quite fast to develop in too and it can run on the web and has a bunch of nifty networking and hardware rendering 3D capabilities to sweeten the deal. Furthremore, director supports embedded flash movies and since Direcror MX it can talk to them through lingo.

The down side is it's speed. While director is 1000 times faster than flash at bitmap manipulations and the like, it's about 5 times slower than Java at the same operation. The trade off is that you can script a convolution matrix image filters with Director in about 3 lines of code, Java on the other hand takes a bit longer. Lingo is also quite annoying for anyone coming from a c language background as lingo's syntax roots stem from verbose languages like Visual Basic.

Director's main use is for multimedia development on the Mac and PC, kiosk presentation and "specialised" web projects. Flash on the other hand is targeted at the internet from the ground up. It may have been a spin off from director but it's been re-structured several times and the recent versions are a powerful package in their own right.

So, if it's web based and you don't need the power of something similar to Java then you should be using flash. As for file sizes between flash and shockwave; shockwave is usually used for bitmap heavy tasks thus its file size will be a lot larger but it all depends on how much content you cram into the .swf or .drc file.

If you want to do vector based web stuff then I strongly recommend you get flash. The vector tools in Director suck big time and because macromedia want to make as much money as possible they'll keep director and flash as seperate as possible in terms of how you develope for each medium. Want flash content? You'll need to buy flash...