| Using
the Xtra in Shockwave |
StreamingMediaXtra
can be used in Shockwave: the distribution package provides packaged Xtras
that are downloaded automatically to the user's machine, and installed
on demand. Xtra downloading is only available in Director 7 or later.
Please consult Macromedia's web site for a complete overview of the Xtras
automated download mechanism: it can be found at www.macromedia.com/support/director,
technote ID 13653. The basic steps required to make StreamingMediaXtra
available for download to your viewers are outlined below.
Shockwave-ready
packages containing StreamingMediaXtra for Windows and Macintosh computers
are provided with the StreamingMediaXtra distribution. These files are
named StreamingMediaXtra.ppc and StreamingMediaXtra.w32, and they can
be located inside the shockwave directory with the StreamingMediaXtra
distribution files that were installed to your machine. It is important
to understand that the Xtra does NOT operate on the Macintosh platform:
the .ppc package is only available because Shockwave requires an empty
package while it is verifying the Xtras needed to load a movie. These
files need to be available in a single directory on the web server that
will be used to host the download files.
Example:
http://www.myserver.com/packs/streamingmediaxtra.ppc
http://www.myserver.com/packs/streamingmediaxtra.w32
The files
should be uploaded to the server before you can record automatic download
information to your Shockwave movie. For each different movie/location
you need to modify the xtrainfo.txt file in the Director folder to reference
the location from which the files are expected to be downloaded. For the
example above, add the following line to the xtrainfo.txt file:
[#nameW32:"StreamingMedia.x32",#package:
"http://www.myserver.com/packs/streamingmediaxtra"]
If you
are running Director you should quit the application and reload it so
that the new xtrainfo.txt information is accessible. Now you need to add
a reference to this Xtra package to your Director movie. Open a movie
that uses StreamingMediaXtra. Open the Modify\Movie\Xtras dialog in Director, and
select StreamingMediaXtra in the list of xtras. The "Download if needed" checkbox
should now be enabled. (If it's not enabled, make sure the filename in
xtrainfo.txt matches the actual filename for the xtra.) Click on the checkbox
and Director will load information from the package file for each platform
and add it to the current movie. The machine needs to be connected to
the Internet in order for this process to work. You can now save the movie,
and save as Shockwave to create your .dcr file, which is ready to be uploaded
to the server.
Now you should test
if the package information was recorded properly. Open the Shockwave file
created in a browser. If StreamingMediaXtra is not currently installed in Shockwave,
the xtra package will get downloaded from the location specified and a
"Download Security Dialog" will be presented. Tabuleiro has signed the
Xtra with Verisign, and we guarantee that it is safe to be used in Shockwave.
The downloaded Xtra will be installed in a subfolder of the Shockwave
Xtras folder called "download". The location of the Shockwave Xtras folder
is different depending on the platform, please consult Macromedia's web
site for more information about it. If a given Xtra is already present,
the Xtra package will not be downloaded again.
It is important
to understand that you need to modify the xtrainfo.txt to point to another
location if you are authoring a different movie and require the Xtra to
be downloaded from a different server. We recommend keeping the xtra packages
in the same server that hosts your Shockwave content: this way you can
avoid problems if the server that hosts the packages is offline or not
available when someone wants to see your content.
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