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Subject: Re: FLASH: CD Rom production - Director is so bogus --how do youdefine the end of this thread?
From: Laura Mollett
Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 05:33:23 +0100


> Bottom line is choose your weapon and choose it based on what will work best
> for your project.

I'm still not making myself clear... hey it's sunday night, my mind doesn't
work :) Lemme try again...

The question is one of economics, yes? Director costs $1,000 (approx) on one
platform and something less than double that for both. Flash is around $300.
Since we're talking about return on investment, we're assuming the
company/person in question doesn't already own the programs. Soooo... it
doesn't take me very many projects to be able to justify the cost of Flash -
it's inexpensive (from a middle-class american standpoint). I could afford
it just for fun or spend that much on a christmas present for one of my kids
or something (heck, they own nintendo's and segas and I own tvs and video
players etc.) I might recommend it to someone with a serious animation
interest, even if they don't expect to make money off of it.

There are what I'd call small projects (that seem smaller than 400 frame
pans and what I call really large numbers of bitmaps) where I wouldn't be
able to justify $1,000 (most powerpoint presentations). For those I'd be
inclined to bring the project scope down to something Flash could handle. If
the company/individual already owns director, they might do many of these
projects in director anyway, because they could do more and it's easier...
but they already have (somewhere along the line) justified the program. But
if they have a lot of projects, that they'd make money on, that are better
done in director, it wouldn't be that hard to justify the cost. Director is
a business program, imo. I wouldn't recommend it to someone just for fun,
usually. It takes a higher ROI to make the program reasonable. But it
doesn't seem that out-of-line to me, if you have a lot of projects of that
nature. If I was MM, I wouldn't be inclined to bring the cost of the program
down as the times when I've seen it used (the stock art CDs are a good
example), I can't imagine charging those people less and still making a
reasonable profit (royalty-free artwork must be a very profitable business).

Lots of people seem to think it shouldn't cost double to produce cds for
both platforms... so I'm seeing that as "I can justify spending $1,000 for
the return I'm getting, but not $2,000. But I need this to work on both
platforms." So what I'm asking is, where's that line... where the ROI for
$1,000 isn't difficult, but $2,000 is too much? Again, if I was MM, while I
might bundle both programs together and offer it for $2,000, I wouldn't be
inclined to bring the price down because it should be easy for the stock art
companies to justify that amount. If the price comes down for one group, it
comes down for both. But maybe there's a need for an inbetween program -
something that does a little more than Flash, but a little less than
director, and MM could produce something like that? They could create a
program that deals better with smaller numbers of bitmaps, deals with video,
can deal with a 400 frame pan, can create output that works on both
platforms but is limited enough in scope that it wouldn't cut into director
profits - maybe? I'm not sure that's possible... because I'm having trouble
understanding the scope of the projects that fall into that line.

That make more sense?
Laura

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