Reviews: Official Macromedia Director Studio

Fred Bals
Jeffrey A. Hamman

1. Fred Bals

Date:    Tue, 7 Feb 1995 16:05:26 -0500
From:    Fred Bals <FHBals@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: BOOK - Official Macromedia Director Studio

Shawn Fuller writes:

> Please review the book for us when you get it. I think people would
> be expecially interested if it covered lists and parent/child objects in an
> adequate manner.

I'm not the original poster, but I'll try to also post a full review of this book if/when I have the time, but here's some brief impressions:

The book isn't new so much as an update of Bove and Rhodes "Using Macromind Director," originally published in 1990. Like the original, and noted on the back of "The Official Macromedia ..." book, it's targeted to novice/intermediate users. Unfortunately, Lingo scripting is covered in only the most general terms. For example, the subject of lists is given exactly four short paragraphs (Page 365), and is essentially a rehash of the Director documentation. "Lists can serve a variety of purposes. However, we won't explain any of them." (The last sentence is mine, of course. Pax, Tony and Cheryl :-)). I think most people on this list would find the book, ah, "inadequate," for information on advanced or even semi-advanced techniques.

I can't say whether "novice/intermediate" users would find the book useful. I suspect artists/animators who are just getting into Director and who want an alternative to the documentation and who don't want/need more than "Go to" scripts *will* find it useful. Conversely, people whose primary Director focus is using it for interactivity probably won't.

<sigh> A break for a rant. Isn't *anyone* *ever* going to write a book about Director who isn't seemingly targeting an audience who just purchased the disks 5 minutes ago? Isn't *anyone* *ever* going to write a book whose focus is on Lingo rather than on design elements? Terry Schlusser! Panting millions await the MediaBook CD anxiously! The youth of America turn their lonely eyes to San Francisco! No more delays for more upgrades, updates and neat features, Terry! I have this nightmare, Terry, that it's the year 2000 and Director will be at Version 10.0, and that nice voice at gray matter will be telling me yet again that the MediaBook will be out in two more weeks (yet again), just as soon as Joe Sparks finishes the final tweaks on Total Distortion, which you're now including on the CD, absolutely free of charge, and thank you for your patience ... No, no, Terry! I got the bad jones, and I gotta have the MediaBook soon! Pretty please, Terry!

(pant, pant) Sorry. Where was I? Ah, anyway, on the bright side, the Mac/Windows CD that comes with the book is way cool, and imho (does anyone say that anymore, or am I dating myself?) is by itself worth the $40.00 for the package. A brief trip through the CD found a number of intriguing, unprotected movies, such as Marc Canter's "House Jam," some exceptional stuff from Stuart Sharpe, and an extremely weird movie from Bove and Rhodes themselves, which seems to be how to use every cheesy Director tutorial ever issued by Macromedia as found objects to create a mixmaster title. Lots more example movies that I haven't looked at yet. And an "umbrella" interface that seems the poorest movie of the lot. They should have had Canter do it.

Lots more in the CD too, such as the MediaBook demo (Terry! No, no, I won't start again), a full hypertext version of the book itself, "test drive" versions of Director, SoundEdit 16, Premiere, et al; that you can unlock through purchase through an 800# (one assumes that they'll send you the documentation. The mind boggles otherwise), a buncha clip media that looks/sounds like clip media to me (does anyone really use clip media?), and some basic ultilies that you probably already have ...

Still, for the unprotected Director movies alone, worth the price, I think. Ah, I seem to have done a "full review," huh? Sorry for the length. Hope some light came through with the noise.

Fred Bals
FHBALS@AOL.COM

Jeffrey A. Hamman

Date:    Wed, 9 Feb 1994 12:32:20 -0500
From:    "Jeffrey A. Hamman" <hamman@CORL.NBC.UPENN.EDU>
Subject: Re: BOOK - Official Macromedia Director Studio

I just got the book yesterday and browsed through it and the CD-ROM that came with it. I can understandably appreciate the past bad experiences that a lot of you have had with the authors and newsletter, but I am going to limit my comments to the book itself.

It seems (with just an initial observational browse) to be an attempt at creating a more exhaustive and more step-by-step tutorial than what you get with the manuals. The last section, "Tips and Advanced Techniques" offers a little more, and gets into some scripting a little more, may be the most valuable to anyone on Direct-L. As was mentioned, very little was covered on lists, very small section (3/4ths page) on MCI. I found the sections (still talking about this chapter) on font mapping (Mac<->Windows) to be a little more extensive along with very adequate coverage of the FileIO Xobject (perhaps a little more explanation than in the manual). But I don't know if this worth the price of the whole book, if it helps you on some aspect of a project, then maybe it is.

The CD-ROM may be of value to you depending on if you like to sort though code. The clipmedia was not that great in my opinion both in quantity and quality. The tutorial with files included, again, seems quite extensive. The MediaBook CD examples have to be a highlight in my opinion. The "TOOLS" utility allows you to obtain statistics on a movie and may be of benefit to you, but this speaks more for Terry's CD than this particular book/CD combo.

The CD-ROM may be of value to you depending on if you like to sort though code. The clipmedia was not that great in my opinion both in quantity and quality. The MediaBook CD examples have to be a highlight in my opinion. The "TOOLS" utility allows you to obtain statistics on a movie and may be of benefit to you, but this speaks more for Terry's CD than this particular book/CD combo.

You are supposed to get three free trial times of the fully functioning versions of both Director for Mac and Director for Windows. I had an interest in looking at the Windows version and perhaps making a projector (is this legal to do for a product you are distributing?), but for the life of me, I can't figure out how it works. I think you have to call in and they give you a code three times and that's it, I don't know, but I can say this...it is not obvious.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Is the Book/CD-ROM worth it? It depends...

If you are a multimedia consultant/teacher, it may be a good book to have on your shelf to hand to someone just getting started.
If you are a constructing a course for Director, the approach to the tutorial may be interesting as far as conceptual building of topics.
If you are a collector and like to have people in your office look over your shoulder and see a bookshelf of just about every book published on multimedia, this book is slightly blue/green and looks impressive. At least they didn't call it "Multimedia for Dummies" or something.
The CD probably adds the value to the book, if it was just the book, I would probably be strongly opinionated and say save your money, but with the CD-ROM added, I would say it depends on if the examples are worth it to you.
They should have some rating system for these type of books (like they do for games (age 6 thru adult). It doesn't seem right for me to be critical if it didn't target my needs, but may be great for someone that would rather get this book than pay for a beginning class.

PROPOSAL

(and I am not joking here) : Direct-L should solicit more examples from members and publish it's own CD-ROM. Sort of like the INFO-MAC CD of shareware. Perhaps offer this to Macromedia to distribute as unsupported advanced examples or something in its next version. I know it may be off great advertising to some folks that have a business. We need someone to step forth and serve as a project manager.

What say you?