How to Use Preload to Make a Director Movie Play Smoothly

If you're creating a Macromedia Director movie that contains a lot of "heavy" files such as sounds or images, playback may be jerky. This is because Director is adding your sounds and images to RAM as you move from frame to frame. The Preload command will increase playback quality by sending the entire movie to RAM before it begins to play. These instructions apply to Macromedia Director 5.0. Procedures for other versions may vary.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Macromedia Director

1. Open the Script window. Click on the "X" sign to create a global script.

2. Create a movie script. Enter the Lingo code "On StartMovie (hit Enter) preLoad (hit Enter) end."

3. Close the window. Before the movie plays, all Cast Members will be loaded into RAM.

Tips & Warnings

• If your Cast Members are large, it will take a while to load. For best results, include an introductory screen that says something like "Thank you for waiting while the program loads into memory."
• If you want to preload the Cast Members for certain frames only, use the syntax "preLoad to frameNum" or "preLoad from frameNum to frameNum."
• Avoid loading a great many large Cast Members into memory. Remember that the user will need enough memory to be able to handle your movie.