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Since you brought up Director I have to ask - have you used one of the PDF Xtras for director? I'm weighing my options on this. I'm producing a CD presentation that will present a number of different file formats (video, ppt, audio, flash, PDF, etc...). I know director handles most of these formats well - but I don't know how well it handles PDFs. Do you have any experience with displaying PDFs in a director frame/skin as opposed to having Director launch acrobat reader for pdf display? Thanks, Doug On 6/20/03 1:31 PM, "C. Scott Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > PDF-Basics is a service provided by PDFzone.com | http://www.pdfzone.com/ > __________________________________________________________________ > > on 6/20/03 8:55 AM, SDA at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> Thanks for the response. I was thinking more of a cd presentation, with >> autorun (which I know can be accomplished easily enough), however, I'm >> more interested in how the presentation works in that environment when >> compared to the likes of Director. The reason being is that I would like >> to see a working example (not on cd of course), to see how it flows etc, >> with appropriate controls (sans the acrobat toolbar). I need to convince >> a client that it can be done, as they don't wish to go the expensive >> Director authoring route as before. > > As someone who has created cross-platform autorun CDs using both Acrobat and > Director (see http://www.performancegraphics.com/Pages/cdrom.html) I can > assure you that there are definite performance differences between PDF pages > and Director frames. PDF pages being vector-based and full-resolution, > regenerate S-L-O-W-L-Y (and vector-dense pages regenerate in layers). By > contrast Director pages can rip through quickly at frames per second because > they are flat and at screen resolution. Transitions are much easier to > control in Director. > > Typically I create CDs using Director for part and Acrobat for part. The > Director element is usually a short autorun multimedia intro (comprised of > sound, animation, and, perhaps, quicktime movies). It usually has a table of > contents that includes a launch button to an Acrobat PDF menu page to access > other PDFs. This section usually contains supporting documents that can be > read online, printed, zoomed into, searched, and (with indexing) > cross-document searched - capabilities lacking in Director files. > > I, too, have created an interactive portfolio CD-ROM with PDFs that span > about a decade (and also include some Director projectors launched from the > PDF home page). It is very easy to update with new projects and customize > depending on who I am sending it to. > > As far as a comparison of PowerPoint and Acrobat for on-screen > presentations, I consider PDFs to be an essential backup for any > presentation you would ever make. The advantages of PDFs: 1) the format is > more standardized than PowerPoint over time - hence better for distribution > and archiving, 2) the format is cross-platform compatible, 3) the format can > be distributed via web more consistently than PowerPoint files, 3) you can > build in more interactivity into a PDF than PowerPoint including program > launches, bookmarks, hyperlinks, forms, hidden fields, and javascripts. The > strengths of PowerPiont over Acrobat: 1) it is an authoring program, 2) ease > of creating handouts, and 3) motion transitions. For the record, I might use > PowerPoint to author part of a presentation but I don't use PowerPoint to > present presentations - I use Acrobat. But then again most of my > presentations are about the wonders of Acrobat. -- Doug Reynolds Senior Producer PJA Advertising and Marketing Cambridge & San Francisco [EMAIL PROTECTED] (617) 234-7363 http://www.agencypja.com To change your subscription: http://www.pdfzone.com/discussions/lists-pdfbasics.html
