1st day newbie Q: editing palettes on the fly

Question

Hi all.
I'm working on a tie dye t-shirt designed project.
Essentially, a user will be presented with a picture of a tie dye
t-shirt, and a palette of available dye colors. The user will then
drag and drop colors onto the t-shirt to customize the design.
In VB (which i am more familiar with, thought far from expert
in), I would acomplish this by pre-processing the t-shirt image so
that it would be an 8 bit indexed bitmap, with each shirt color
region representing one palette entry. When a new color is dropped
on the shirt image, I would then simply change the palette index to
the new color. When the user was finished, the palette would
reflect the users desired design.
I am unsure if this approach will work in Director. Is it
possible to manipulate palettes on the fly? Or am I going to have
to take some more indirect approach?
Thanks for any and all suggestions.

Answer 1

After applying for your first position in a broadcast television or high end post production environment and convincing them of your aptitude to tell a story, understanding of moving image photography and compostition, were you not at least given a fundamental introduction to:
How video works,
Using vectorscopes and waveform monitors to measure video signals,
Using audio metering to measure their signals,
calibrating decks and other playback devices, etc by first spending time in MCR?
You should have.
If not, you will be in for a bumpy ride when it comes to having your end product accepted by a TV station. Some will tolerate light and temporary deviation from specification. Others will reject it outright if it does not conform 100%.
That said, there is a section in the FCP Manual entitled "Measuring and Setting Video Levels" which will help somewhat. Read it. At least twice, then read it again.
As for exactly what you have to deliver, only the broadcasters themselves can tell you that.
http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_scopes.html
http://broadcastengineering.com/webcast/audio-metering/