Macromedia - Director 8.5 Tutorial : Controlling playback of RealMedia streams in Director

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Controlling playback of RealMedia streams in Director

You can control playback of RealMedia streams in Director using the RealMedia state property and simulated cue points. Using the Real Media state property to initialize playback of RealMedia streams, you can display an introductory scene for the user while the RealMedia stream loads in the background. Simulated cue points let you mark points in a RealMedia stream that can be used with buttons to let users jump to a specific point in the stream, or to cue text, sound, or animations with specific points in the stream. Because RealMedia files don't inherently have cue points, it is necessary to create simulated cue points using Score markers and Lingo.

The MerryGoRound movie supplied with this article serves two purposes: it is an example movie that you can analyze in Director to see how the RealMedia state property and simulated cue points are used to control playback of RealMedia cast members, and it is a source of behavior scripts that you can modify and use with RealMedia streams in your own Director projects. The code in these behavior scripts is heavily commented and should provide insight for intermediate Director users and Lingo programmers who want to write their own custom behavior scripts.

Download the Windows source file merry_go_round.zip (77KB)
Download the Macintosh source file merry_go_round.sea.hqx (63KB)

This article assumes that the user has a basic understanding of Lingo and understands the concepts outlined in Using RealMedia content in Director

If you only want to learn about using the state property, skip the sections on using cue points; if you only want to learn about using cue points, skip the sections on using the state property.

This article covers the following topics:

Using the state property to determine playback

Using simulated cue points with control buttons

Using simulated cue points to synchronize text with the RealMedia stream

	Marcelle Taylor Marcelle Taylor is a Senior Technical Writer for Macromedia. She writes user and reference documentation for Director and Flash. Jenny Suter Jenny Suter is a QA Engineer for Director. Video cast - Macromedia employees Video music - Pronto by the SurfMaggots

	15 June 2001

	RealMedia, streaming media, cue points, Lingo

	9800

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