How do I Allow User to Create Media Cast Members

[kx10 webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

Hi,

I am new to the forum, my name is Kieron from Stafford, England. I am a full time Interactive Multimedia Communication degree student.

Lingo is not my strongest subject, but I have three Director projects to complete over Christmas! A prototype for a game I have designed, an album with video clips, pics etc, and a team project of a training utility for deaf children. Not to mention a few web sites thrown in for good measure! Happy Christmas to me hey?

As I occasionaly would like to see my wife and child, I am hoping to get some help off you kind people if you are not too busy enjoying yourselves throughout the festive season. Please feel free to throw any humour or Christmas cheer my way as I could do with some light hearted relief along the way.

My first of probably many queries is this;

In my album / diary how do I get a user to define a cast member?

All my diary data is stored in lists and I know how to allow the user to add text entries, but I have yet to understand how to let them add media.

My preset list entries have media (images and AVI files) which are linked to a sub folder "Media" in my directory and stored as cast members.

On an add user movie clip / image option I am presuming I can;

--open a dialog box using the FileIO or MUI Xtra and then
--allow only specified file types
--count the number of existing cast members
--import the selected media as a cast member? OR link somehow
--Am I on the right track?

It's all volatile
I dream of my user data being none volatile, as all of my applications so far are totaly useless! But to be honest it's not expected of me yet as we just haven't even touched on permanent databases yet. Unless there is a really easy way to export list and global data in Director 8.5 (that's what we're using) then as much as I would like to shine in my year - I just haven't got the time to go there or the money for Xtras.

Thank you so kindly for taking the time to think about not helping me!

Kieron

[J O R I S webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

Welcome to the forum.


What you can do instead of importing is to create a new member of the appropriate type using
the new command:
new(type, member whichCastMember of castLib whichCast)
Don't forget to remember the number or id of this new member, because you need it along the way.
(see director help for info on the types.)
Then you do the dialog with fileio or filextra.
You get the filename.
Now you can set the filename of the member to the filename retreived from the dialog
(member([x]).filename = [path]

goodluck