Note, the enhancements described below apply to Action! v1.0.4. This CD-ROM contains a "Save-disabled" version of Action! v1.0 for you to try. It does not include the enhancement described in the "What's New" section below.
The CD-ROM, does however include the latest version (v1.0.4) of the Action! player.
Thank you for your interest in Action! from Macromedia. This document includes the following topics:
- What's New in Action! 1.0.4
- Tips for Using Action!
- Other Information
What's New in Action! 1.0.4
Ñ Improved presentation animation
Action! 1.0.4 features smoother animation In some situations the user may notice and improvement of up to 100% in comparison with versions 1.0. and 1.0.1. However, there are some issues to be aware of when running a presentation. Background tasks are now suspended while a presentation is playing. In most cases this will not present a problem the background task willtemporarily stop, and pick up right where it left off when the presentation stops playing. Nonetheless, time-sensitive background tasks such as modem operations or background printing, may experience a device timeout if running in the background. If this occurs, modem connections will generally be interrupted, and printing will need to be restarted.
Ñ Action! Player
Action! Player is a separate application that can play ╤ but not create or edit ╤ Action! presentations. You can distribute it freely so that others can play the presentations you create. Distributing copies of Action! itself is a violation of your license agreement.
See the ReadMe file accompanying the Action! Player application for more information.
Ñ Smaller presentation files
Files created in Action! 1.0.4 are smaller than those created in previous versions. To take advantage of this new feature, open your files created in previous versions of Action! and save them under a new name using the Save As command in the File menu. In many cases, this will significantly reduce the size of your Action! presentations.
Ñ Improved external file searching
Action! will now let you search for externally referenced files (PICS, AIFF, or QuickTime¬) that have been moved from their original location. Action! first looks for the file in the folder that contains the presentation file, if the file isn't there, Action! will ask you to find the externally referenced file. To insure uninterrupted loading, leave these files in their original locations or move them to the folder in which the Action! presentation is located.
Ñ Cancellation of lengthy operations
Action! now allows you to cancel the opening of a document or the creation of a gradient background.
Tips for using Action!
Ñ Action! is shipped with its preferred RAM memory requirement set to 2850K. An application partition of this size is usually adequate for creating and playing presentations with several scenes when your main monitor is set to 256 colors. If you want to play larger presentations (especially ones with many PICTs, sounds, or movies) or if you have set the Monitor control panel so that your main monitor has thousands or millions of colors, you will need to increase the amount of RAM dedicated to Action! in order to avoid getting out-of-memory errors.
You can tell the Finder to give more memory to Action! by clicking to highlight the Action! icon, choosing Get Info from the File menu in the Finder, and increasing the number in the box labeled ╥Preferred size╙ in the Memory Requirements part of the Action! Info dialog.
Ñ When your presentation is complete, Choose Save As rather than Save to compact Action! documents into the smallest possible space.
Ñ Press either the Escape (ESC) key or Command-period to stop a presentation at any time.
Ñ Press the Space bar to pause a presentation at any time; press the Space bar again to resume playing.
Ñ Action! takes advantage of ╥G-World╙ RAM that may exist on some video display cards. Using a video display card with this type of RAM significantly improves the smoothness of presentations being displayed. Note: this is only the case when the main monitor is being driven by the video board with the G-World RAM.
Ñ If you press the Option key when dragging a loop icon in the Timeline, the entire loop will move in time.
Ñ You can create many interesting transition effects by combining available transitions. Set a transition on one object, copy and deselect it, then paste (the new object will be identical to the original). Then apply a different transition to the second object. The two effects will combine.
Ñ When exporting, remember that the Macintosh has a 16MB limit on files that contain resources. If you have a very large scene to export, create a folder and save a series of PICT files instead of a single SCRAP or PICS file.
Ñ Only certain kinds of PICT files can be successfully ╥exploded╙ using the Explode PICT command in Action! Supported files are called ╥draw PICTs╙. Excel, Persuasion, and PowerPoint create draw PICTs. PhotoShop PICTs cannot be exploded by Action!
Ñ When using Adobe Type Manager, increasing the Font Cache allows PostScript fonts to animate faster in Action!
Other information
Ñ Clear Special command
Contrary to pages 127 and 128 of the manual, the Clear Special command does not affect an object╒s link or sound attributes.
Clear Special Now to End is not possible after Clear Special Beginning to Now, and Clear Special Beginning to Now may not be selected immediately after Clear Special Now to End. You must first change the current time or make another selection to use Clear Special again.
Ñ Control Panel
After you click the minutes, seconds, or tenths in the time display in the Control Panel, the arrow controls will increment or decrement where you clicked. Although it is possible to highlight these fields by dragging across them, they are not editable from the keyboard.
Ñ Compressed View
Selecting a tool while in Compressed View automatically turns Compressed View off so that object will be created at a specific entrance time.
Ñ Copy, Paste, and Duplicate commands
Scenes may only be pasted into the Scene Sorter or Content List. Pasting a scene into the Presentation window will paste a PICT image of the scene, not the scene itself.
Pasting QuickTime movies from other applications will paste a PICT of the movie. Use the Import command to include QuickTime movies in your presentation.
When you paste a simple object like a rectangle from Action! to the Scrapbook, both the Action! object with all its attributes (type 'OakT'), and a picture of it (type 'PICT'), are placed in the Scrapbook. If the object has a SoundEdit sound attached, however, the 'snd' data does not appear.
In addition:
- for a single text item you will also get 'TEXT' and 'styl' data;
- for a single QuickTime movie you will also get 'moov' data;
- for a single SoundEdit sound you will also get 'snd ' data (the 'PICT' will be blank).
PICS movies and AIFF sounds never appear in the Scrapbook.
Ñ Displays (24-bit and other)
Gradient backgrounds do not work correctly in 24-bit mode using SuperMac's PDQ. Also, optimal performance with the PDQ is obtained in 8-bit mode.
There are display inconsistencies in some parts of Action! (particularly the Content List and PICS files) with several display cards set to 24-bit color. These include the SuperMac PDQ, Thunder board, Apple 8Ñ24GC (acceleration on), Radius Direct Color GX and Precision Color 24.
The palette colors are not correct on the Radius Color Pivot in 4-bit color. Colors are displayed correctly in 8-bit or 24-bit modes.
If you are using multiple monitors, be sure to set the startup monitor with the desired color depth.
Stage sizes larger than a single monitor will yield incorrect entry and exit actions. Use a single monitor stage size for correct motions.
The Radius PowerView display system for the PowerBook has a feature called presentation mode in the PowerView control panel that moves the display of the contents of the main monitor onto a ╥presentation╙ monitor (you have two menu bars). To work properly with Action!, set the presentation monitor (not the local LCD monitor) as the main monitor and restart.
Objects created from constrained, perfect squares or circles will appear distorted on an Apple 12" monitor. This is because the pixels are not the same size in both horizontal and vertical directions. If the same object is shown on a monitor with the same aspect ratio, the object is displayed correctly.
Ñ Explode PICT command
Exploding PICTs that have bezier curve objects in them will generate a large number of objects (one object for each pixel). Try to avoid exploding these objects.
Exploded PICTs are always centered on the stage.
Ñ Export command
The Export command generates images for the current scene only.
Ñ Groups
If you extend a group╒s hold time in the Timeline, it may display incorrectly in the Timeline. Reset the exit time to zero to correct the problem.
Ñ Interactivity
IN transitions for a scene only occur if the scene is played from the beginning. For example, if you use a linked object to jump to the middle of a scene that contains an IN transition, the transition will not be shown.
If you use a linked object to jump to the middle of a scene that contains pauses before the arrival time, those pauses are obeyed by Action! in an on/off fashion: that is, each successive pause will pause or un-pause the playback. As a result, an odd number of pauses will stay paused, and an even number will cancel themselves.
Linking is disabled when playing a scene in template view because there is no scene time or other scene to jump to.
Pictures are mapped to the system palette when imported into Action! in 8-bit (256-color) mode.
Ñ Paths
The smoothness choices on the Path menu affect non-path-motion objects. The smoothness choices control the amount of acceleration and deceleration of moving objects. Straight means no acceleration/deceleration and Smoothest means the most acceleration/deceleration.
Ñ Printing
The default number of scenes in the Scene Sorter is 4. If you print this window, the fourth scene icon will be partially clipped. You can avoid this by resizing the window to 3 across, or setting the reduce/enlarge in Print Setup to 96%.
If you are low on memory, do not use the "print presentation at preview time" option in the print dialog.
When printing in black-and-white mode, white objects appear black so you can see them. This interferes with black text on top of an object. Be sure to check your layout if the printout doesn't match the screen display.
On HP printers, it's common for the percentage complete to exceed 100% in the status dialog (127% complete, for example).
Ñ QuickTime
Creating QuickTime previews is not possible in Action!, although ones already created can be seen in the Import dialog.
Only dissolve transitions can be applied to QuickTime movies. To obtain the same effect using other transitions, create a rectangle on top of the QuickTime movie and apply a transition to the rectangle. Transitions can be used on PICS files.
Multiple QuickTime or PICS movies set to Play Movie Only play sequentially starting with the frontmost movie rather than simultaneously.
If you set a motion for a QuickTime movie and set it to Play Movie Only, the movie will not appear from off screen, since it is playing rather than moving. Other motions will not play, and scene endings will not occur.
Play Movie Only should not be used in conjunction with Leave Last Frame. If both options are checked, the final frame of the movie will display beyond the duration of the object.
Playing multiple QuickTime movies simultaneously may not give pleasing results.
Ñ Sound
Playback of 16-bit sound files requires Macintosh SoundManager 3.0
Stereo SoundEdit files are not supported, Action! will play the two tracks in sequence (i.e. left track followed by the right track). Files saved from SoundEdit in compressed form will not play or preview correctly in Action!
Looped sounds set to play into the next scene will play only one loop in the next scene, not the total number of loops set in the duration box.
Objects will not display during playback if grouped with a sound object that is above them in the Timeline window. Make sure that sounds are the lowest objects in the Timeline window.
Ñ Templates
The table on page 84 of the manual describes the attributes of template objects that are editable in Scene View. The following notes modify that table:
- For drawn objects, imported graphics, and movies, the sound attributes are not editable in Scene View.
- For text objects, only the text content is editable in Scene View; the text attributes (font, size, style, and alignment) are not.
- For button objects, only the Show Name functionality in the Content portion of the Edit Object dialog is available.
You do need to be in Template View to edit a template, contrary to page 218 of the manual.
Templates must be opened with Load Template in the File menu. Double-clicking a template file to launch Action! will result in an error message.
Template text objects set the limit on the amount of text that will fit within the object in Scene View. Make sure to make your text fields in templates large enough to accommodate your intended usage.
Ñ Text
Action! text is limited to a maximum size of 256 points.
In System 6, if you choose a font size that is not installed, text wrapping will not work properly. Be sure to install the font size you intend to use.
Ñ Miscellaneous
If you try to Save As into the same folder as the current document, you will get the error message ╥Could not save as <filename> because the file is already in use or was left open.╙ For this reason you need to Save As to another location or another name, then replace the current document with the new one.
Objects whose durations extend beyond the scene duration will not display changes made to the object that occur beyond the scene duration. Make sure the portion of the object you wish to see is within the time boundaries of the scene.
Note that your document size and window size may be different. You can resize the Presentation window and not affect your actual document size. Your document size can be changed for new documents in the Preferences dialog.
Please be sure to select the arrow tool before playing back your presentations, as other tools may display erratic behavior when you click on presentation objects.
Aliases are not currently supported for referenced files, but will be in future versions of the application.
If a gradient creation is canceled, the created portion may appear in the Presentation window. In this case, merely choose Set Background again and set the background to None or another choice.
Two IN Scene transitions, Cover Up Right and Cover Down Left, are switched in the Edit Scene and Edit Template dialogs. They function correctly, but are mis-labeled.
Selecting an item from the Apple menu while Suitcase 2.1 is running (no files need to be opened using Suitcase) yields an error ╥Could not open menu selection because the required resources were not found.╙ This is caused by an incompatibility between MacApp-based applications and Suitcase 2.1. Fifth Generation Systems will have an update available soon ╤ it╒s in beta now.
Action! is not compatible with the DialogKeys portion of QuickKeys due to a QuickKeys conflict with MacApp-based applications.
Rotated text from Excel-created PICT images may appear incorrectly when the PICT is exploded in Action!
