The Distribution Folder

Every project has a Distribution folder. (It is created for you automatically when you start a new project.)

The Distribution folder is where you need to put any external files that you want to distribute with your AutoPlay application. It's also where the AutoPlay application and any internal files will be built to at build time.

In other words, it's the place for all of the files that you will be distributing.

When you want to add an external file to your project—a large video, say, or a Flash file—you must move or copy it into your Distribution folder first. (To help prevent you from forgetting to distribute any project files, AutoPlay Media Studio will only let you browse for external files within the Distribution folder.)

(example)

The important things to remember about the distribution folder are:

• Every project has a Distribution folder.

• It's created for you automatically whenever you start a new project.

• It's where you need to put files that you want to reference externally.

• It's where everything gets built to when you build your project.

• Its contents are what you burn to the CD when you're done (or what you package up into an installer with a tool like Setup Factory to get it onto the user's system).

You could say that the Distribution folder is the end of the AutoPlay assembly line. It's where everything that you want to send to the user should be when it comes time to actually "build it and burn it."

The Distribution Folder Bar

The Distribution folder is represented inside the AutoPlay Media Studio design environment by the Distribution Folder Bar. You can toggle the Distribution Folder Bar on or off by selecting the Distribution Folder Bar item in the View menu.

The Distribution Folder Bar

You can drag and drop files to and from the Distribution Folder Bar, just like you would move or copy files in Windows.

A Little Bit of %SrcDir% Magic

When you add an external reference to a file in the Distribution folder, AutoPlay automatically inserts the built-in variable %SrcDir% into the path, replacing the part of the path that leads up to the Distribution folder.

For example, if you made an external reference to this file:

C:\My Documents\AutoPlay Media Studio 4.0 Projects\My Project\Distribution\Music\Zippy.mp3

...and the path to your Distribution folder was:

C:\My Documents\AutoPlay Media Studio 4.0 Projects\My Project\Distribution

...the reference would show up in AutoPlay as:

%SrcDir%\Music\Zippy.mp3

Since %SrcDir% gets replaced with the path to the AutoPlay application at run time, this makes it so the external file will always be referenced relative to the location of your AutoPlay application. For instance, if the user ran the AutoPlay application from the root of a CD, that external reference would end up looking something like this:

D:\Music\Zippy.mp3

If you provided an installer for your AutoPlay application that installed everything to C:\Program Files\Hella Cool Proggie instead, the external reference would become:

C:\Program Files\Hella Cool Proggie\Music\Zippy.mp3

Next: Projects