Creating Relative Pathnames in Mpeg Advance Xtra

Mpeg Advance Xtra will automatically create and maintain relative pathnames for your imported MPEG files if they are located in a subdirectory of the original movie location. In order to enable this feature it is necessary to save and re-open the Director movie at least once before you import your MPEG files. Let's see how this work: suppose you have a movie called MYMOVIE.DIR, and you want to store video files in a directory called VIDEOS:

1) Create a directory to hold your Director movie (for example C:\your documents\project)
2) Create the videos directory in C:\your documents\project\videos
3) Copy the MPEG files to the videos subdirectory
4) Open Director, and create a new Director movie. Save it as C:\your documents\project\mymovie.dir
5) Close the Director movie and reopen it. You have to do this only for Director movies that have been just created, skip this step if you are opening an existing .dir file.
6) Use the IMPORT menu in Director to import your MPEG files.
7) Double click one MPEG file and check its filename. It will show as @\videos\filename.mpg, preserving the relative path.
8) You can now move your project directory to another machine or location, and the Xtra will keep track of the relative filename.

It is important to remember that the Xtra also stores the name of your MPEG file (filename.mpg in our example), so you can continue to use and set "the searchpaths" if you want to resolve linked filenames at runtime. Technote 14070 at www.macromedia.com explains how to take advantage of Director's built-in filename resolution. This mechanism is supported by Mpeg Advance Xtra.