Embedding fonts in movies

Before creating text or field cast members, it's good practice to embed the fonts you want to use in the movie. Embedding fonts makes Director store all font information in the movie file so that a font displays properly even if it is not installed in a user's system. Because embedded fonts are available only to the movie, there are no legal obstacles to distributing fonts in Director movies.

Embedded fonts appear in a movie as cast members and work on Windows and Macintosh computers. Director compresses embedded fonts so they usually only add 14 to 25K to a file.

For the best display at smaller sizes, include bitmap versions of a font when you embed a font. For small font sizes, usually from about 7 to 12 points, bitmap fonts often look better than anti-aliased outline fonts (for more information, see About anti-aliased text). Adding a set of bitmap characters does, however, make the font cast member larger. Examine the text display quality of your movie to find out if this option is worthwhile.

To speed up movie downloading, you can keep a file size small by specifying a subset of characters to include. You can also specify which point sizes to include as bitmaps and which characters to include in the font package. If you do not embed fonts in a movie, Director substitutes available system fonts.

If you create embedded fonts by using the original font name followed by an asterisk (*), such as Arial* for the Arial font, Director uses the embedded font for all the text in the movie that uses the original font. This saves you the trouble of manually reapplying the font to all the text in existing movies.

After you embed a font in a movie file, the font appears on all the movie's font menus, and you can use it as you would any other font.

To embed a font in a movie:

  1. Select Insert > Media Element > Font.
  2. From the Original Font pop-up menu, select a font that is currently installed on your system.

    You can't embed a font that is not installed on your system. In other words, only fonts that appear in the Original Font pop-up menu are available to be embedded.

    In the New Font Name text box, the name of the font is followed by an asterisk (*). This name appears on all font menus in Director. In most cases, you should not change the name of a font.

  3. To include bitmap versions of the font in specified sizes, click the Sizes button for Bitmaps, and enter the point sizes you want to include, separated by spaces or commas. For example, you might enter 9, 10, 14.
  4. To include bitmap versions of bold or italic characters with the font, select Bold or Italic.

    This option provides better-looking bold and italic fonts if you are including a bitmap version of the font, but it increases the file size.

  5. To specify the characters that the font includes, select an option for Characters:

    Entire Set includes every character (symbols, punctuation, numbers, and so on) with the font.

    Partial Set lets you select exactly which characters are included. To select a group of characters, select Punctuation, Numbers, Roman Characters, or Other. If you select Other, enter the characters to be included in the text box on the right. In some double-byte languages, other groups of characters might appear.

To embed a font in a movie with Lingo or JavaScript syntax: