Interactive CD-Rom creation

[audiyoda]

Don't know if this is the right place to post this or not, so admin, you can move as needed.

As many of you know, I am a audio/video professional. Am forte is audio but my bread and butter is video. I've done many formats and am framiliar with many editing packages. I've just been hired by a local real estate agent who wants me to showcase his homes on CD-Rom. He'd also like a 'home of the week' on hiis web site. No problem I say. I've done many CD-Roms as well as streaming video. Then he shows me a video he got at a national show (where he got this whole idea). The CD-Rom is interactive and allows users to select individual rooms, floors, outdoors or the entire tour. I've never done an 'interactive' CD-Rom before. I've been toying around with the Macromedia Director 8 trial, and I'm sure it can get the job done since it was originally designed for CD-Rom delivery. But it's so vast, I really don't want to put the money into this package if I don't have to. And Flash isn't really capable of CD-Rom delivery.

Does anyone know if a program that will allow me to do as stated above? I'm thinking PowerPoint will work, but I don't think PowerPoint will export to an executable and I don't want to assume all the users of these CD-Rom's will have PowerPoint. So basically I want a program that will create a program (.exe) that will interact with users allowing then to do as I've shown above.

-Craig

[DrZaius]

Hi audiyoda,

Actually, I have seen many Flash interactive presentations put into exe form for CD-Rom distribution. It seemed to work well. Any reason you don't think Flash is good for this project?

[audiyoda]

For one, I need this 'program', for lack of a better term, to initiate the playing of a movie (like an .avi or .mpg). Rather than be the movie like a flash executable is. To any extent, as much as I don't want to learn Director, at least it's straight forward, Flash is just crazy. I've had Flash 5 for a month or so (figured I use it) and the heck if I can figure it out -- and I've been through the tutorial multiple times. Here's waht I'm looking for:

A window of predetermined size with a series of buttons. The buttons would activate movie scenes, give a bio of the agent, show contact info, give specific info about the house and so on. To one side of these buttons would be a viewing window where the various actions of the buttons would be shown. From my search today, I think I'm stuck with Director 8 or PowerPoint and Director 8 is certainly more flexable.

-Craig