Re: FLASH: don't understand use of movies and parked frames

[Marc Hoffman]

At 12:22 PM 1/19/99 -0600, you wrote:

>Can someone explain to me, or point me to a resource explaining, the use of

>Movie clips and "parked frames"..? I've heard a lot about using Movie clips

>instead of Scenes with a 'parked' frame in between loading clips... but

>don't understand.

>


A movie clip is a type of symbol.  Its features include that it has its own

timeline, with as many layers as you like, it can hold actions, it can hold

nested movie clips, it can hold buttons.  Normally when it is placed on the

stage it will play in loop mode. If it's in a layer that encounters a

keyframe, and the movie clip is no longer present after that time, the clip

will disappear from the movie.  If it is recalled, or the main timeline

returns to a frame where the movie clip exists, the movie clip will start

playing again from its first frame.  


Movie clips can be told what to do by frame actions or button actions in

the main timeline, other movie clips, or other movies that are active

simultaneously.  This is done using TellTarget commands. The TellTarget

needs a name that refers to the movie clip.  This is not the name of the

movie clip symbol in the library.  Rather, it is an instance name for the

particular instance of the movie clip where it has been placed on the

stage.  You assign the instance name by double-clicking the movie clip on

the stage, and under "definition" you give it a name in the "instance" box.


Because the movie clip must be present in the timeline in order to be

targeted, you often need a way to make it invisible without removing it

altogether.  The convention is to create a frame (usually the first frame

of the movie clip) that has no graphics and has a frame action "stop."

This is often called a Park or Parked frame. It's good to give it a frame

label so you can tell the movie clip to go to that label ("park itself")

when you want it to be invisible.


To learn more about targeting movie clips, see p. 127 of the manual. When

targeting movies that have been loaded on other levels (a whole other

chapter in this story!), the movie is referred to as" _levelN" (no quotes),

where "N" is the level on which the movie was loaded.


Note that the main movie establishes the frame rate (fps) for all movie

clips and all movies loaded on other levels.



Marc Hoffman

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