View source for Shockwave (Director)

Shockwave is a platform and format for multimedia applications, video games, etc. It was owned by Macromedia during most of its formative years, and is now owned by Adobe. It has many names, most of which involve permutations of the words "Macromedia", "Adobe", "Shockwave", and "Director". Director is the application usually used to develop it. It is distinct from SWF (Flash).

Director's file format is completely different from SWF and they split into two different file formats named Shockwave Movies (.DCR files) and Director Movies (.DIR).

Director Movies use RIFX Containers, the default multimedia format for Windows 3.1 (though they often break the standard.). They can be either little-endian (if saved on an Intel processor i.e. Windows. Begins with ID RIFX) or big-endian (if saved on a Motorolla processor i.e. Mac. Begins with ID XRIF) However, individual chunks can also be little or big endian opposite the rest of the movie.

Shockwave Movies are DIR files but with everything compressed in some form, with the INT32 chunk lengths becoming Varints and chunks in general being Zlib compressed - not easily modifiable in a hex editor. , begins with ID RIFX). Director is always capable of opening files of either endianness. All Director versions before 11 were not designed for Intel Macs and that’s why they save big-endian files.