Re: FLASH: playing two movies in series

[Marc Hoffman, Poison Dart Frog Media]

At 08:36 AM 1/12/00 , you wrote:


>Here's the situation:

>

>1. Flash movie "ocil1" contains an intro image of a spinning menu system.

>2. Flash movie "ocil2" contains the menu system in it's finished form

>complete with mouseovers, calls to seperate movie clips etc.

>

>The goal:

>

>- Have ocil1 transition smoothly into ocil2  (ocil2 is 200k, ocil1 is only

>40k)

>- ocil2 will end up being called as a seperate menu page so people don't

>have to suffer through the intro movie every time they go to the "home"

>page.


You can do this last thing using If Frame Is Loaded. Combine both movies 

into one. Put the If Frame Is Loaded action a couple of frames into the 

timeline and check to see if the last frame is loaded (label the last frame 

"last"). If so, you can assume the viewer has been there before because the 

whole movie is in cache. Label the start of what was ocil2 "main." Here's 

the syntax:


If Frame Is Loaded (frame label: "last")

         Go to and Play (frame label: "main")

End If




>Problem:

>- I can't figure out how to set this up.  I could add the elements of ocil2

>at the end of ocil1 but this means a lot more editing for future revisions.

>- I tried to "Load movie" ocil2 while ocil1 was playing but that resulted in

>overlapping images.



You've already gotten a reply for stopping and starting a loaded movie. But 

there's no reason in this case to use two movies, and using one movie will 

smooth the loading process.


>- then I tried making the first frame of ocil2 to be a "stop" action (to

>prevent the image overlap until I was ready) but couldn't figure out how to

>make it start playing.



TellTarget (target: _level1)

         Play

End TellTarget



>Ideas:

>- is it possible to tell target the loaded ocil2 movie within ocil1?



Yes, but only after the targeted frame (in the target movie) has loaded. So 

to keep it simple, just use one movie.


Use LoadMovie when there are large chunks of content that the user can 

request in unpredictable order. Use one movie when playback is always 

linear, or when the user options are not large in terms of filesize.

Marc Hoffman


Poison Dart Frog Media: Specializing in Flash Animation and Digital Audio 

Production

Our latest Flash job is on display at <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/rickfrnd>

See our Flash portfolio at <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/sampler>

(featured in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn)




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