Pulling in Those Graphics

 

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I have been working on a very large project that gets updated rather regularly. Because of that we have been using linked graphics, so we can quickly update without having to swap out cast members. Now that we are done I face the task of importing all 3000+ graphics into internal graphics so the screens won't be accessible. Is there a better way I can do this?

First of all, DON'T DO THIS BY HAND!  Sorry to "yell" but you can cost yourself hours of time, possible mistakes, and a lot of headaches doing this.   A lot of developers use lingo to write fancy code for the end user, but then overlook its possibilities to speed up their own projects.  Without ever starting the playback head, you can do some great things with some very simple scripts.  Lets look at what you want to do... First we examine the problem. You have images that Director needs and is currently using, but you want to remove the bitmap data from outside the projector and bring it in.  Once a project is opened Director reads all of this data and behaves almost exactly the same whether the graphics are linked or are part of the cast itself.   One of the overlooked properties of each cast member is the "media" property.  Think of this as a video tape.  The tape itself tells us what type of video you are using, the name is the sticker on the front.  You can test the height, width, color, etc., but everything in that box is part of the media.  Now all we need to do is step through all of our casts and get each bitmap members name and media, then replace the existing member with the new one.  The beauty of the score is that it only holds a reference to a cast member, so we can swap these without the fear of loosing a link to a cast member.  Here is the basic code... on importLinkedBitmaps   set castNumbers = the number of castlibs   repeat with y = 1 to the number of castlibs     set howMany = the number of members of castlib y     repeat with x = 1 to howMany       set theMember = member x of castlib y       if the type of theMember = #bitmap then         if the fileName of theMember <> "" then           set theMedia = the media of theMember           set theName = the name of theMember           erase member theMember           set theMember = new(#bitmap, member x of castlib y)           set the media of theMember = theMedia           set the name of theMember = theName         end if       end if     end repeat   end repeat end First we start a repeat loop that goes through each cast library.   From there we go through each cast member and check it to see if it is a bitmap member.  If so we check to see if it is linked by looking to see if it has a "filename".  If so we copy the member's location in the cast (theMember variable), the member's name and the member's media.  Then we delete the original using the "erase member" command and create a new one in the same location, then drop all the info back in.  Running this script one time will pull all of those graphics in for you and save a lot of time.  Just run the command, go get a cup of coffee, and by the time you return, they will all be done.  (Then surf the net for a while or play some games at shockwave.com.  After all, your boss thinks this is going to take hours, right?)   If you want to make the code a little fancier, you can allow for other cast member types (audio, etc.), restrict it to certain casts, or whatever ideas your imagination can dream up.  Happy coding!

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