Director Help

About organizing movie files

In most cases, you should divide a large production into a series of smaller movies. You can combine as many movies as you want in a projector, but larger files take longer to save and are cumbersome to work with. Also, movies are easier to edit if they are organized in discrete sections.

The best way to organize a large production is to create a small projector file that starts the movie and then branches to Shockwave content or protected content. This saves you the trouble of re-creating the projector every time you change one part of a movie.

A. Folders for linked media B. Projector C. External cast D. Protected movies

A typical file organization for a distributed movie

This approach also makes sense for movies on the Internet, but for different reasons. If the first movie is small, users don’t have to wait as long for something to happen. Branching to a series of smaller movies also enables users to avoid downloading time for parts of the movie they do not use.

The size of your movie may be less of an issue if you use streaming Shockwave content. For more information, see Setting movie playback options.