MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX-USING DIRECTOR MX Use Manual page 30

About channels in the Score
Channels are the rows in the Score that control your media. The Score contains sprite channels
and special effects channels.
Sprite channels are numbered and contain sprites that control all visible media in the movie.
Effects channels at the top of the Score contain behaviors as well as controls for the tempo,
palettes, transitions, and sounds. The Score displays channels in the order shown in the
following figure.
The first channel in the Score contains markers that identify places in the Score, such as the
beginning of a new scene. Markers are useful for making quick jumps to specific locations in a
movie. See "Using markers" on page 42.
Although the Score can include as many as 1000 channels, most movies use as few channels as
possible to improve performance in the authoring environment and during playback. Sprites in
higher channels appear on the Stage in front of sprites in lower channels. Use the Property
inspector's Movie tab to control the number of channels in the Score for the current movie. See
"Setting Stage and movie properties" on page 27.
Turning channels on and off
To hide the contents of any channel on the Stage, or to disable the contents if they are not visible
sprites, you use the button to the left of the channel. When you turn off a special effects channel,
the channel's data has no effect on the movie. You should turn off Score channels when testing
performance or working on complex overlapping animations. Turning off a channel has no effect
on projectors or Shockwave.
30 Chapter 1
Markers channel
Tempo channel
Palette channel
Transition channel
Sound channels
Behavior channel
Sprite channels