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From: Bubonis on 8 Apr 2008 14:48
While going through some old files, an artist friend of mine found an
application that he created in Director some 13-14 years ago (version
4.something). This application contains a slide show of images that he created.
Until he found this application he thought these images were gone forever so
this discovery was a pleasant surprise.

Is there any way to extract the images from this Director app? He has both
Macintosh and Windows versions of the application. If push came to shove he
could simply run the app and take screen shots of each image and then crop and
resave in Photoshop, but as there are a couple hundred images in the slide show
this is definitely a last resort. I downloaded the Director 11 trial but it
won't open the application file. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

From: mikromidas on 9 Apr 2008 03:38
I have a program / utility called DirOpener which I found as a free download
"somewhere on the net". Sorry I can't help you with the URL, since it it quite
a long time ago. This will extract media content from .dir-files and also the
protected variety; .dxr-files. However no Lingo. It will rebuild a new
..dir-file with only the media content, and from there you can pick out the
pieces in it's native form. Exactly what you're after I guess. You do need the
..dir or .dxr-files for the project; it will not work on content baked into an
..exe-file.
This little utility can be used to infringe copyrights, but to actually do so
is still up to the user, so please don't do it. I have used it to extract
pictures for reuse from old CD-ROMs where my customer owmed the content anyway,
and the origianal developer was no longer around. I thought that was OK.

From: Dave C on 9 Apr 2008 04:03
I seem to recall that you could use Swifty Zena Pro
(http://www.buraks.com/swifty/) to extract DIR/DXR, CST/CXT files from
Director projectors. Not 100% sure that it will work on version 4
projectors, but you can easily try it (no cost). Best to try it in a
copy of the projector, just in case.

If the files are protected (DXR or CXT) you can use dirOpener
(http://www.j-roen.net/diropener/) to retrieve the media works up to
version 7 I believe). You will then have either an uprotected DIR or CST
source file, but without any scripts. The images should all be there intact.

Now you have version 4 source files that you can open with Director
4,5,6 or 6.5 (I think versions 7 or later won't open a version 4file).
This will be a problem because these are old versions of Director. You
may find someone with these old version willing to help you (for free or
perhaps for a small fee). At this point the images could be manually
saved to external bitmap files, or the process could be automated with a
script.

So is this easier than using something like Snagit to just capture the
image from the screen? That's your call I suppose. Of course this
assumes that the images are not partially covered by higher layer
objects on the stage. If that is the case then you don't have the option
of capturing the image and are stuck with the procedure I have outlined.

Good luck...
From: Dean Utian on 9 Apr 2008 04:20
Hi,

I've helped a few people update D4 file to D10. So, if you need help on that front,
let me know.

First, would be helpful if you have the DIR files. If you don't, DaveC has given
you a link to convert DXRs or DCRs to DIRs. But, it may be tricky. Once you have a
DIR, if it's a D4 one, you may be able to import it into D10 and tehreby import all
the content (cast members) as well . Once you ahve a working DIR with teh content,
simply select all the images in the cast, send them to a frame range (Modify > Cast
to Time), then Export the frame range as a BMP/PCT sequence.

I'm happy to help. I even have old versions of Director Trials if required.

regards
Dean

Director Lecturer / Consultant / Director Enthusiast
http://www.deansdirectortutorials.com/
http://www.multimediacreative.com.au
email: d.utian(a)unsw.edu.au

From: Dave C on 9 Apr 2008 05:01
Dean, those old trial versions can be like gold when you need them!

OT: What has happened to Updatestage.com? Have they finished with Director?
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