Director 11.5 issue

[abcjason]

Downloaded the trial version of director 11.5, but am unable to select the
checkboxes to create either MAC or Windows projecters.
The people at Adobe assured be that the trial version was fully functional.
ANy ideas why I can't create projectors?

Thanks

[wesleycorgi2]

I think they are being slightly misleading. After using the trial for a few
days, I just purchased the 11.5 upgrade and I can now create all the projector
types. However, I believe I was able to do everything else, but only able to
publish shockwave.

[wesleycorgi2]

[Sean Wilson]

> Downloaded the trial version of director 11.5

> ANy ideas why I can't create projectors?

You haven't been able to create projectors from trials for a few
versions now. That hasn't changed with 11.5

[RickCurran]

I think this is pretty lame not allowing publishing of projectors. It would be
very easy to limit this by watermarking everything that's published.

Without being able to create projectors I just can't be sure that it's worth
upgrading to 11.5, I need to test that the Xtras I want to use are going to
function correctly.

Given Director's lack of popularity I think there is a real imperative to
offer a decent trial for those like myself coming back to see what it's like.

I've got one or two applications I would consider updating but without being
able to publish a projector I'm left with taking a $300 gamble. I don't think
I'm willing to do so at this point in time.

[Sean Wilson]

> I think this is pretty lame not allowing publishing of projectors. It would be
> very easy to limit this by watermarking everything that's published.

This is the way it used to work, at least with D7

> Without being able to create projectors I just can't be sure that it's worth
> upgrading to 11.5, I need to test that the Xtras I want to use are going to
> function correctly.

You can probably grab the Projec32.skl file, place it where you want
your projector, rename it to {projectorname}.exe and add an ini file
with the section:
[movies]
Movie01=the_name_of_your_director_movie

and test that - with an external xtras folder (with libraries) in place
also.

[Dean Utian]

Hi,

Sean has given a good answer already. I'll just add a little more.

Director 10 (MX 2004) did allow trial versions to create a projector. Before the
projector would start, you'd get a splash screen saying 'Not for commercial use'
or something along those lines. In DCRs, you'd get a watermark 'Director Trial'
over the bottom left corner of the stage.

Director 11 disabled the functionality of projector creation through the trial
version. You have the watermark for DCRs as before.

D11.5 is the same as D11.

I don't think it is smart to disable projector creation and have communicated
this to Adobe. However, as Sean mentioned, you could create or download, a stub
projector that will allow you to test the projector with your D11.5 files.

regards
Dean

Director Lecturer / Consultant / Director Enthusiast
http://www.deansdirectortutorials.com/
http://www.multimediacreative.com.au
email: d.u...@unsw.edu.au

[RickCurran]

Thanks Sean / Dean,
Yep, I'd thought that previously demo projectors could be published with the
trial versions. It would be really good for Adobe to make it a fully
functioning trial version, it's a backwards step not to allow this. Especially
as all it takes is to find a stub projector to make the files work anyway, the
restriction isn't really working if it's aimed to prevent unlicensed use.

It's frustrating as I really need to see if performance with my projects is
good enough on Leopard and Vista systems to see whether it's worth upgrading to
11.5, the trial projector would at least allow me to do that.

Cheers,

Rick

[tbodine05]

Hi all.

Can D11.5 projectors be codesigned without the projector crashing as in MX2004?

Running in trial mode, so I can't test this myself.

Thanks,
Lingo Larry

P.S. Congrats to Director dev team on the 11.5 release.

[tbodine05]

Thanks to Sean for the build-your-own D11.5 stub technique above. I used that,
then code signed the projector, and tested it on Vista and XP. The answer to
my question is, yes, it appears the crashes of MX2004 projectors after code
signing has been fixed. Looks very likely now I'll do the upgrade.

Thx
Lingo Larry

[Chunick]

The code signing issues have not been fixed. How do I know this? Because I
developed the Resource and Icon Editor utility for Director:
http://collab.directorforum.com/Resource_and_Icon_Editor

I had a few hurdles to overcome, one of them being the ability to add a custom
Vista icon (properly PNG compressed for the 256x256 icon size)... what does
this mean? In figuring out a solution I realized two things:
1) When you publish your project code is compiled and the media assets
compressed and all that information is appended to the end of the projec32.skl
file.
2) The projec32.skl file is mainly just a resource file, but it also contains
a reference or offset value that is written to the resources and used when the
compiled projector is run to jump somewhere in the beginning of the appended
data (all of this is proprietary so this is my best guess based off my
observations).

This method that's been used with Director is not typical and signing software
either makes changes to the resource, thus messing up this 'offset value' or,
like resource editors, it rips off the data at the end of the resource and
discards it as part of it's writing process to the registry. That's why
everyone sees that error message.

[tbodine05]

Thanks for the correction. My test projector was a minimal movie with no custom
icons or secondary movies. The projector was not created within Director 11.5's
publish routine, so if I follow what you are saying, what I code signed was an
incomplete projector. It was able to load repeatedly on a Vista Home PC
without any crashes. (So maybe I left out the bugs. Wish I could do that more
often.)

Is there any solution in sight for those of us who would like to code sign our
work?

Thanks,
LL