Can I do this? Am I approaching it the right way? [conceptual...er...help]

[Jeff]

Okay, I have to create an awards presentation. It's a fairly straightforward
presentation that will consist of the following "elements".

Opening
- Category 1 (self running)
- Category 2 (self running)
- Category 3 (self running)
- Category 4 (self running)
- Live Awards (pausing the action to let a emcee present a more "important"
award of the evening)
Closing

Now, here's how they want to run it, from an end user standpoint. They want
the categories to be mixed, so that the order might be like this:

Opening
Cat 1 award, Cat 1 award, Cat 1 award, Cat 2 award, Cat 1 award, Cat 1
award, Cat 3 award, Live Awards, Cat 1 award, Cat 1 award, Cat 3 award, Cat
1 award, Cat 4 award, Cat 1 award...
etc...

Now, here's the hard part. The awards won't be known or handed off until
very shortly (think days) before the presentation, but there is a long
development time preceeding the event, so the idea is to build a skeleton,
and "dynamically" drop in the elements once the winners are judged. I will
have some awards dealing with video, some awards dealing with audio only
content, etc. And someone else will be in charge of developing all the media
elements to basically "hand off" to me prior to the show, and then there
will be a small window of time to debug and verify that all is working
(again, think days).

So here's what I've got:

I'd like to build a "module" for each category (miaw, generic object,
something along those lines) that will sort of be tasked with pulling its
content from a file of some kind (text, spreadsheet, database, xml...I'm not
picky) and a master control "object" that will pull the overall "scheduling"
of which "object" to call (Cat1, Cat2, Cat1, Cat1, Cat1, Live, etc).

Am I heading in the right direction? I kinda need to have the overall
concept of how it can be built out before anyone proceeds with any work, so
I wanted to run this by the group and see if there were any advice, caveats,
warnings that someone could provide, or some guidance on maybe a better way
to proceed if this is not going to work.

Does this all make sense? I can explain any questions anyone may have if I
didn't get it exactly worded right, or any of it is confusing.

Thanks in advacnce and looking forward to any help.

[Jeff]

Okay, I have to create an awards presentation. It's a fairly straightforward
presentation that will consist of the following "elements".

Opening
- Category 1 (self running)
- Category 2 (self running)
- Category 3 (self running)
- Category 4 (self running)
- Live Awards (pausing the action to let a emcee present a more "important"
award of the evening)
Closing

Now, here's how they want to run it, from an end user standpoint. They want
the categories to be mixed, so that the order might be like this:

Opening
Cat 1 award, Cat 1 award, Cat 1 award, Cat 2 award, Cat 1 award, Cat 1
award, Cat 3 award, Live Awards, Cat 1 award, Cat 1 award, Cat 3 award, Cat
1 award, Cat 4 award, Cat 1 award...
etc...

Now, here's the hard part. The awards won't be known or handed off until
very shortly (think days) before the presentation, but there is a long
development time preceeding the event, so the idea is to build a skeleton,
and "dynamically" drop in the elements once the winners are judged. I will
have some awards dealing with video, some awards dealing with audio only
content, etc. And someone else will be in charge of developing all the media
elements to basically "hand off" to me prior to the show, and then there
will be a small window of time to debug and verify that all is working
(again, think days).

So here's what I've got:

I'd like to build a "module" for each category (miaw, generic object,
something along those lines) that will sort of be tasked with pulling its
content from a file of some kind (text, spreadsheet, database, xml...I'm not
picky) and a master control "object" that will pull the overall "scheduling"
of which "object" to call (Cat1, Cat2, Cat1, Cat1, Cat1, Live, etc).

Am I heading in the right direction? I kinda need to have the overall
concept of how it can be built out before anyone proceeds with any work, so
I wanted to run this by the group and see if there were any advice, caveats,
warnings that someone could provide, or some guidance on maybe a better way
to proceed if this is not going to work.

Does this all make sense? I can explain any questions anyone may have if I
didn't get it exactly worded right, or any of it is confusing.

Thanks in advacnce and looking forward to any help.

[Sid]

"Jeff" <jsmall@lhwh.com> wrote:
[...]

> I'd like to build a "module" for each category (miaw, generic object,
> something along those lines) that will sort of be tasked with pulling its
> content from a file of some kind (text, spreadsheet, database, xml...I'm

not

> picky) and a master control "object" that will pull the overall

"scheduling"

> of which "object" to call (Cat1, Cat2, Cat1, Cat1, Cat1, Live, etc).
>
> Am I heading in the right direction? I kinda need to have the overall
> concept of how it can be built out before anyone proceeds with any work,

so

> I wanted to run this by the group and see if there were any advice,

caveats,

> warnings that someone could provide, or some guidance on maybe a better

way

> to proceed if this is not going to work.
>
> Does this all make sense? I can explain any questions anyone may have if I
> didn't get it exactly worded right, or any of it is confusing.

So each Catogory will play one of either a video or sound file? Could you
have, for example, a bunch of buttons down one side that play a video / or
soundfile on the other side of the screen.

Sid

[Sid]

"Jeff" <jsmall@lhwh.com> wrote:
[...]

> I'd like to build a "module" for each category (miaw, generic object,
> something along those lines) that will sort of be tasked with pulling its
> content from a file of some kind (text, spreadsheet, database, xml...I'm

not

> picky) and a master control "object" that will pull the overall

"scheduling"

> of which "object" to call (Cat1, Cat2, Cat1, Cat1, Cat1, Live, etc).
>
> Am I heading in the right direction? I kinda need to have the overall
> concept of how it can be built out before anyone proceeds with any work,

so

> I wanted to run this by the group and see if there were any advice,

caveats,

> warnings that someone could provide, or some guidance on maybe a better

way

> to proceed if this is not going to work.
>
> Does this all make sense? I can explain any questions anyone may have if I
> didn't get it exactly worded right, or any of it is confusing.

So each Catogory will play one of either a video or sound file? Could you
have, for example, a bunch of buttons down one side that play a video / or
soundfile on the other side of the screen.

Sid

[jon.laurie webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

I've produced an awful lot of these.
By far the easiest solution is to create a movie that spreads across two dektops - one is your projected screen, the other is your control screen with navigation buttons.
You need to keep as flexible as possoble with the full knowledge that the show caller will call the awards in the wrong order or you will have to go back an award, or some one drops dead before walking on to collect their award.
MIAW's are the way to go, so long as you don't want audio running through the open and close functions, as Director can't handle that.