How to Pause a Director Movie and Wait for User Input

Without adding special commands to stop or pause, a Macromedia Director movie will play all frames consecutively and will loop back to the first frame when it reaches the end. This is useful in some cases, like if you're using animations or if you want a movie to cycle continuously. If you want the movie to stop or pause for user input, you'll need to add special scripting commands. 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 Score from the Window menu.

2. Locate the frame where you want the movie to pause. Click in the Script Channel cell of that frame to select it.

3. Locate a relatively large blank box that's situated very close to the top of the Score and directly to the right of the word "Script."

4. Click in the blank box. A script window appears. The script window contains the words "On exitFrame ... end."

5. Locate the blank line that occurs between "On exitFrame" and "end."

6. Type the words "go the frame" in that blank line. Click on the small "X" to close the script window.

7. Open the Control Panel from the Window menu and play your movie. When the playback head reaches the frame where you've added the script, the movie will pause. You can now add a button or some other control that will allow user input.

Tips & Warnings

• The Script Channel is the channel that's represented by a small icon resembling text or script. The icon is located in the far left side of the Score window.
• Adding a "go the frame" script causes the movie to loop continuously on that frame. The looping happens faster than the eye can see, so it creates the illusion that the movie has stopped.