Converting Older Movies to MX Format

Director MX can open movie files created in Director 7 or later. If you wish to update a batch of such files without opening and saving them individually, Director provides an automated method for doing so.

To update an individual movie from a previous version of Director:

1. Open the movie in Director MX.

2. Choose File > Save As.

   The ordinary Save option will not be available.

3. (optional) Enter a new file name (to avoid overwriting the original file).

4. Click Save.

To update multiple movies:

1. Choose Xtras> Update Movies to display the Update Movies dialog box.

2. Choose the Update option ( Figure 1.7 ).

   Figure 1.7. The Update Movies dialog box. Besides updating movies from older versions of Director, you can use this dialog box to protect movies from editing or to convert them to Shockwave format. (These topics will be covered in chapters 15 and 16.)

   

3. Choose the Back Up into Folder option.

4. Click Browse to select a storage folder for the original files.

5. Click Open.

6. Click OK.

   The Choose Files to Update dialog box opens.

7. Select a movie file that you want to update ( Figure 1.8 ).

   Figure 1.8. In the Choose Files to Update dialog box, you can select one or more older Director movies (version 7 or later) to convert to Director MX format.

   

8. Click Add.

9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 to add all the files to update to the list at the bottom of the dialog box, or click Add All to add all the files in the current folder.

10. Click Update.

    An alert box confirms that the selected files will be updated.

11. Click Continue.

    A progress bar shows you the file names as they are updated.

Tip

• If you're sure that you no longer need the original outdated Director files, or if you have secure backups on another disk, you can choose Delete in step 3. You can't undo and recover the deleted originals , though, so make sure that you don't need the files before you click OK.