Help with Animated .gif

[LadyKeys]

Hello
Made a very basic animated gif in ImageReady. Red arrow, moving back and
forth (approximately 8 frames), imported into Director 8.5.1 and works
perfectly while testing the movie. When I "Preview in Browser" I get the
following error message: "This application requires an Xtra (Animated GIF...)
that either does not exist or failed to initialize properly. Please make sure
the appropriate Xtras are in the Xtras folder(s).

I am very new to Director and have no idea where else to put this little .gif
file to stop getting this error message. When I Preview in Browser the movie
works great but when it gets to the point where the .gif appears there is a red
"X"

I don't know if it's something that needs to be loaded in the application
(uninstall and reinstall Director) or if something has to be done from within
the movie itself. The only Xtras folder I find is in the app and I put the
..gif in there (of course it's not working).

Very simple - need a red arrow to loop indefinately (using Markers to jump off
this scene) but I cannot get rid of this error message

Thanks in advance for your help

[JB]

The missing xtra is part of the browser shockwave extension
installation, maybe reinstalling shockwave ins in order, I would think
animated gif would be oart of core installation.

An aside, you can make 'shockwave safe' xtras automatically download to
end user's system. To make this hapen, go to modify/movie/xtras menu,
add anmated GIF and check the download as needed checkbox.

You might have better anmation control if you imported your sequence as
a series of descrete images and making a film loop aniation.

[LadyKeys]

Hi

Thanks for the response - will try an uninstall-reinstall of Director. I
thought that maybe I might have missed something with my last install and it
could be that

I also read (in one of the 3 books I looked through late last night) that
Director doesn't support Background Transparancy. When I made this animated
..gif in ImageReady CS I made the background transparent. Also, when I imported
it into the movie I used Background Transparent ink. I did read where I could
import a single frame of the arrow and use it with a loop (have no idea how to
do that though). Also read that if I keep the red arrow in a rectangle and use
Matte instead of Background Transparency that this should work

Checked around this forum and saw where someone imported the animated .gif
into Flash, saved it as a .swf, exported it and imported it into Director.
Tried that but wound up with the white background behind the red arrow (same as
when I used Copy on that sprite). That's what made me use the Background
Transparancy which I just found out is not supported

If you can be a little more specific about how to make a film loop animation
I'd really appreciate that. I am going to need something like that further
down the movie and that would be a big help

Thanks again and I'll check back

[JB]

Again it's the web browser shockwave installation that is giving you
'test in browser' the problem, not the director installation.

The basic way one can create a director film loop is to.

1. create a score animation, in your case a few frames with the arrow
animation sequence.

2 hilite and copy the score cells to clipboard.

3. paste into the cast, creting a film loop member.

4 drag the film loop member to the score, more often this would be used
to reduce a multi channel animation to just one. Examine thge film loop
member property options.



the step 1 temporary score animation is no longer neededand may be
removed, once loop has tested OK.

[LadyKeys]

Hi JB

I have to say I've been looking at the "forest" - couldn't see the trees
already! I tried a bunch of things tonight, even tried to redo the arrow in
ImageReady with the blue background and that didn't work. Tried using Flash -
import and export - didn't work. I had read about the Matte ink - changed the
Copy to Matte and that didn't work.

Came here and found your response and honestly couldn't understand what you
meant by the shockwave installation.....I thought that was installed with
Director. I did some searching on the MM site in the shockwave area, THOUGHT I
downloaded it a couple of times but it seemed to download too fast (even tho I
have cable) so I kept looking around for a clean download of the player. Found
where I could download the uninstaller but didn't use that - did find the
direct link to download the shockwave player for 8.5.1. I had forgotten to
mention here that I am on an XP machine (my other 2 have W2K) and read where XP
messes up the shockwave install. I downloaded from another part of the MM site
and that was about 4 megs - I saw that download and it was longer than the 2
seconds from before! I guess nothing was happening on the first d/l tries

Went back to the movie and tested it - worked PERFECTLY! I changed the Matte
ink back to Copy and even that worked!

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate all your help - been fighting with
this for days now and I just wasn't getting your comments on the shockwave
player........thought it was there with the install and didn't know that XP
could be causing the problem.

It's very late here now but first thing tomorrow I will fix the end of this
Intro and move on with the rest of the movie. Thank you so much again for your
great help and next time I'll pay more attention to what I'm reading when I get
wonderful responses from here

Have a great week