Macromedia Inc. Monday announced Macromedia Director MX, a new version of the companys multimedia authoring platform for building interactive content and applications for CDs, DVDs, kiosks and the Web.
Company officials called the Macromedia Director MX a new generation of the Director product, which has been around for 14 years. New features in Director MX include integration with Macromedias Flash MX product line, enhanced workflow support, Mac OS X support, accessibility features and new debugging features.
Speaking about Director MX, Norm Meyrowitz, Macromedias president of products, said: “The integration with Macromedia Flash MX is deeper and more refined than ever before, multi-user and streaming content can be delivered using Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX, and accessibility features ensure people with disabilities can experience some of the best content our multimedia developers create.”
Meyrowitz said that content authors could use Director MX to create content for various media, including the major audio, video, bitmap and vector formats. The product supports QuickTime, RealVideo and AVI [Audio Video Interleave] formats. It also features Lingo, an object-oriented scripting language from Macromedia. New developers could also use Director MXs drag-and-drop features to develop content, said the company.
Nino Del Padre, president of Del Padre Visual Productions Inc., East Longmeadow, Mass., said his company has used Director and other Macromedia products to do work for many organizations including The Lego Group Inc. and NASA.
Del Padre said he used the product “to create high-impact interactive CD-ROMs. For Lego, we use exclusively Director MX with Flash for a diverse range of works.”
Debugging capabilities in Director MX include an Object Inspector feature that cuts back on development time, the company said.
Director MX content is delivered via the Macromedia Shockwave Player. Macromedia officials said more than 335 million Web users have the Shockwave Player installed on their systems.
Macromedia Director MX, due out in December, will sell for $1,199 for new users and $399 for users upgrading from Director versions 8.0 or 8.5. The product runs on Mac OS X, Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Pricing for educational customers is $499.