Movie Clips - getting them to work

[HoDaddy]

Hi there,
I've been working with Flash for a couple of months now and one thing is hard for me to understand. The use of movie clips. I understand in principal that animation you would normally use in the main timeline can be copied and pasted into a movie clip and made to run when called. I tried this and it didn't work (wouldn't run). Perhaps it's that I didn't put the correct thing in the main timeline to kick it off (?). Do I just put the clip on the main timeline and it should run when its encountered as the movie progresses? I want to use Flash smartly and to it's full potential, but I just can't get the concept as shown in the Flash Bible and in tutorials. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike

[dalma]

It just depends on where you're coming from. If, say, you have a 10 frame animation which should be followed by a moieclip, place a go to action in its last frame sending it to the frame where you placed the mc. In the movie clip's last frame you place a go to, or whatever, action. Or else I don't know what your doubt is...

[HoDaddy]

Thanks dalma - I'll give it a try.
Mike

[miserychick]

I don't know if this is where you got stuck, but this might help. If you put the movie clip symbol at the end of the main movie, you will need to allocate enough frames for the mc symbol to play although the mc only takes up one frame in the main movie. For example, if your mc is 10 frames long and it is on the very last frame of your main movie, then you have to extend the main movie out to 10 more frames... it seemed to work for me. for a while i was having a lot problem getting the movie clip to play. oh, also mc will only play when you publish or publish preview. hope this helps.

[dalma]

If you have an animation which you want to turn into a movie clip (with its own timeline), select all frames of that animation (even if they encompass multiple layers), and from the edit menu, choose copy frames. From the insert menu, choose new symbol. Choose Movie Clip as behavior and name it. Click okay and Flash will take you to symbol-edit mode. Select frame 1 on the new timeline and from edit menu choose paste frames. The new movieclip is now in your library.

[HoDaddy]

Thanks Dalma,
I understand how to make the movie clip - my problem is that I don't know how to kick off the movie clip to get it to do it's animation.
Thanks,
Mike