HELP!!! Background music not synchronized...

[Jessica]

Hello all! I am having a major problem with the background music in
playing at the same rate each time I play the movie. I may be doing
this the wrong way, but I am really figuring this all out as I go
along, so bare with me... I am using Director MX on a G5 mac. I made
a slide show that has simple transitions from one photo to the next.
It will be showing on a 42" flat screen TV in a sales office
environment from a dvd player. I set my stage size at 1024 x 768.
Not anything too dramatic. I impoted the photos from Photoshop at
150dpi. The files range from 1.2mb to 6mb. There are roughly 40
total. Not much, you would think a program like this could handle it,
right? Well, I have background music that is supposed to play
throughout the show and at specific points I have a voice over
explaining the part you're at (which I haven't had any problems with
the voice). I used Mac's garageband to edit the music slightly. Just
had it full volume in the begining, fade a bit and then fade out at
the end. The problem is that when I play the movie in Director, the
music fades at different points every time I play it. Sometimes it
plays exactly where I want it to, other times it stops 10 seconds
before the movie is over and other times it goes on for an extra few
seconds and is into the begining of the movie again. Ahhhh! I've
read on here about using cue points, but I looked in garageband and it
says nothing about that. I also checked into some lingo but have no
idea what the right one to use is. PLease HELP!!! Any input will be
so greatly appreciated. Any thing you think I may be doing wrong,
please feel free to let me know. I apologize for my novice ignorance
on the subject, just tryin to get the job done... on a deadline...

THANK YOU MUCH!
Jess

[JB]

You didn't give a clue regarding how the director file would get to the
DVD player, it would seem that export to video must be the first step in
that process.


Usually the sync issues come up when your project is tried on other
systems.

The most common approach is to have the animation's natural speed make
it consistantly run a little faster than the music, then add code to
make it 'stall' at static points in the presentation until the matching
point in the audio is reached point in the audio track is reached.

To accouplish the same thing as cue points you can hard code times into
a different score script for each pause point.



-- this one waits on te frame until the sound reaches 35 seconds

on exitFrame
if sound(1).currentTime < 35000 then go to the frame
end