Chapter 31: Working with Flash and Video

Overview

A cross-platform or hybrid CD-ROM is one that can be read by both Macintosh and Windows-based computers. Technically speaking, it contains HFS formatting for the Macintosh information and ISO 9660 for DOS/Windows. Most importantly, the hybrid CD specifies which files are viewable for each platform. The CD will appear on each OS exactly as you specify. Mac users will see only the Macintosh-based files that you want them to see, and Windows users will see only the files readable by their system. By creating a hybrid CD, you can take both flavors of a Flash projector and store them in a medium that delivers your movie to anyone with a Macintosh or Windows system.

This chapter discusses the steps involved in creating a hybrid CD using Roxio Toast 6 Titanium (formerly manufactured by Adaptec, among others). Toast 6 is an excellent application; we selected it for its ease of use and its ability to handle many of the issues surrounding multi-platform CDs. The topics in this chapter are more about cross-platform CD burning in general than an in-depth discussion of the Toast application. So if you have another CD-burning application that you prefer, don't worry. The ideas presented here should translate to your application.

 

Note  

Toast 6 Titanium runs only on Macintosh systems. Windows users can see their cross-platform CD-burning options in the section "Beyond Burning Basics" at the end of this chapter.

You will need two Flash self-contained projector files: one for the Macintosh and one for Windows. If you don't have these files, follow the steps in Chapter 33 for creating Flash projectors. With your completed projector files and a CD-R or CD-RW in place, you're ready to begin.

 

Phase 1: Preparing Your Files

Begin by launching the Toast 6 Titanium application. It's a good idea to put all your Macintosh files in a temporary partition on your computer before burning a CD. This allows the files to be drawn from a clean, unfragmented portion of your hard drive.

To create a temporary partition:

1.     Select Utilities Create Temporary Partition. The Create Temporary Partition dialog box opens.

2.     Give the partition the same name that you want the Macintosh CD to bear. Enter a number in the Size field to set the size of the partition. It should be large enough to hold all the files you wish to burn.

3.     Choose the destination hard disk from the On menu and select Mac OS Standard from the Format menu. This allows the partition to be readable by all Macintosh computers. Click OK when you are finished.

 

Note  

If you are running Toast for the first time, it will ask for an administrator password before it creates the partition. Enter your password and click OK.

4.     The partition is displayed on your desktop as a CD icon bearing the name you assigned in step 2.

5.     With the partition in place, you can put your files in order. Copy the following files onto the new partition:

§                               All Macintosh-specific files, including the Macintosh projector published in Flash.

§                               Files that can be shared between the Macintosh and Windows OS, such as JPG images, Read Me text files, external audio and video files, and so on. You will learn how to share these files in Phase 2.

6.     Open the partition and arrange the files in the configuration that you want them to have on the CD. You can also set the shape, size, and position of the window this way. Any changes you make at this stage will set the appearance of the CD when it is opened from your audience's desktop because Toast uses the position, size, and formatting of the partition to format the CD window.

7.     To prepare the Windows files, create a new folder on your desktop and name it with the title that you want for the Windows version of your CD.

8.     Copy the Windows projector (and any other Windows-specific files you might need) to this location.

You're now ready to organize the disc.

 

Phase 2: Laying Out the Disc

Your files are organized, and you can now set them up in Toast as a hybrid CD.

1.     Click the Data tab. This changes the options in the Disc Settings drawer (see Figure BH.1) located on the left side of the main Toast window.

Figure BH.1: The Disk Settings drawer contains options for creating different kinds of CDs with Toast 6 Titanium.

2.     Select the Advanced tab, then choose the Custom Hybrid option. To display and hide the Disk Settings drawer, click the Hide Disk Options button .

The Custom Hybrid option changes the appearance of the window and shows you two options: one for Macintosh and one for ISO.

To set the Macintosh data:

1.     Click the Select Mac button. The Select Volume dialog box opens (see Figure BH.2). Select the volume that contains your Macintosh files.

Figure BH.2: The Select Volume dialog box allows you to choose the Macintosh partition you wish to burn.

2.     In previous versions of Toast, there was a feature called AutoStart that enabled the projector (or any other file, for that matter) to launch automatically. This functionality is not part of Macintosh OS X. Setting the size and position of the CD's window is all you can do to customize its appearance.

3.     Click OK to finish and return to the main window. You will see the cumulative size of all Macintosh data in the Mac section of the Toast window.

Now, let's move on to the Windows files. To select files for the Windows portion of the CD:

1.     Click the Select ISO button. The ISO 9660 window appears.

2.     Drag the folder containing the Windows files into the main section of the window labeled with the Files tab. A disc icon appears and shows a hierarchical structure of the Windows files (see Figure BH.3). If you need to add additional files, simply click the Add button and browse to the extra files.

Figure BH.3: Windows files added to the hybrid CD. Note that a .DS_Store file has been deleted from the root level but not the folders. These files should also be deleted.

 

Note  

One of the benefits of burning a hybrid CD in this fashion is the ability of the hybrid format to share common files between the Macintosh and ISO portions of the disc. Shared files should be copied to the Macintosh partition while you are preparing the files for your CD (at the outset of the burning process). To share files, simply drag them from the Macintosh partition to the Files tab of the ISO 9660 window. Toast will label the names of these files in blue so that you can see they are shared between the two sections of your CD.

3.     Mac OS X uses .DS_Store files to save information about the appearance of files and folders. These files are useless in a Windows environment and should be deleted. You will find them at the root level of your CD and in every folder or sub-folder. Select each .DS_Store file and click the Remove button.

4.     Click the Settings tab. Choose Joliet (MS-DOS+Windows) from the Naming menu. This option allows you to use long filenames (and names with spaces) on the Windows CD.

5.     (Optional) To make a file on the CD launch automatically in Windows, you have to create a file called autorun.inf . This little file tells the computer to start an application immediately after reading the contents of the CD. You can create the file using BBEdit (Mac), Notepad (Win), or a similar program that's capable of editing pure ASCII. If you create this file on a Macintosh using BBEdit, be sure to click Options in the Save dialog box (see Figure BH.4) and select DOS line breaks. The text for the autorun.inf file is as follows :

Figure BH.4: When creating a Windows autorun.inf file, be sure to use DOS line breaks. BBEdit allows Mac users to do this in the Options section of the Save dialog box.

[autorun]

open=flashProjector.exe

Replace flashProjector.exe with the name of the file that you want to launch. If you would like the CD itself to have a graphic icon, specify the name of the graphic file in the second line. Be sure to include the graphic on the CD. After entering these statements, save the file as autorun.inf and put it with the other Windows files.

6.     If you decided to use an autorun.inf file, there is one more step you should take. Click the Layout tab. Highlight the autorun.inf file, and click Move to Top so that the file is the first one on the list. This makes it easier for the computer to find the file when it first reads the contents of the disc.

7.     Click the Done button to return to Toast's main window. The total file size of the Windows data is now listed in the ISO section.

That's it! Your CD has all its contents, and you should be ready to burn the disc.

 

Phase 3: Burning and Testing the CD-ROM

At this point, all your files have been collected and assembled in Toast. Let the burning begin! To burn your hybrid CD:

1.     Click the red Record button.

2.     The Record dialog box opens. In the Speed menu, select the speed that works best for your burning device. If you would like to do a test burn, you can go to the Advanced tab and select the Simulation Mode check box. Otherwise, click Record, and away it goes.

3.     Toast will ask you to insert a recordable disc. Insert a blank CD (either CD-R or CD-RW) and click Close Tray. After a little prep time, the burning process begins.

4.     When the disc is finished, Toast will ask if you want to verify the disc. This is recommended and takes only a little while. When Toast finishes verifying, it will ask you to eject the disc.

 

Note  

Testing a disc is a crucial part of CD-ROM development. The best way to do this is to run your CD on as many different machines as possible. As you do this, take note of how it performs. Do all the features work? Is there anything that performs sluggishly? Look for recurring problems and troubleshoot accordingly .

 

Beyond Burning Basics

Now you know how to create a hybrid CD-ROM that will enable you to distribute your Flash masterpieces to the far ends of the earth. This chapter outlined the basic concepts, and here are a few additional ideas that can help you get the most out of your CD-ROMs:

§                       Using Windows and can't find a cross-platform CD-burning solution? You need look no farther than Nero by Ahead Software ( www.nero.com ). Nero will run on Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4, 2000, and XP systems. Furthermore, it supports CD-ROM burning in a variety of formats, including ISO/HFS hybrid. To create a hybrid CD with Nero, your PC must be connected to a SCSI hard disk that contains the Macintosh-native, HFS partition that you wish to write to CD. Visit the Nero website for more information about system and hardware requirements and the CD/CD-RW burning devices that are supported.

§                       Multisession CDs can be used to create cross-platform CD-ROMs. Most burning applications such as Toast can burn multisession discs. This means that only a portion of the CD is used, leaving room for more data in the future. You can burn two separate sessions, one for Mac data and one for Windows data. This will achieve similar cross-platform results.

§                       Enhanced CDs are CDs that contain both audio and data. You can create an enhanced CD that is also a hybrid; that's three for the price of one! Burn your audio first as a session rather than as an entire disc. Then burn your hybrid data (Flash projectors, HTML files, and so on) to the same disc. CD audio players cannot detect multiple sessions, so all they see is the first chunk of information on the disc: your music. But when you put the disc in a computer, it will be able to see everything and play your music, animations, and whatever else your audience desires. This technique is especially helpful for musicians , bands, and multimedia artists who need to distribute a diverse body of work in a single, compact format.

§                       In Windows, Autorun is a feature that must be enabled on the host computer for the CD-ROM to launch files automatically. Due to the threat of computer viruses and worms, it's likely that many people have these options turned off on their systems. Because there is no way to get around this, it's a good idea to include some sort of instruction for launching your projector(s) if it isn't handled automatically.