load movie over a background image

**Shmeed4020** · 08-12-2002, 10:53 AM

Hello all:

I am a little confused as I have seen this done before. I am trying to load different pics (as external swfs)over a background that exists in another loaded movie.

I have a main movie which loads 2 movies (one on the right side and one on the left). The right side displays various pictures depending on what the user clicks on the left. BUT, the file sizes are huge and I wanted to load each picture seperately over the movie loaded in the left.

I hope this doesn't sound confusing! I am basically trying to load each picture as a different swf over a background that exists in another movie.

PLEASE HELP as I KNOW IT CAN BE DONE!

Cheers in advance,
Jag

**Antibody** · 08-12-2002, 11:40 AM

Put the bg movieclip on a lower layer of the timeline than the image movieclip. Or if those "holder" clips are generated dynamically, put a higher depth value on the image "holder".

Good Luck!

**Shmeed4020** · 08-12-2002, 12:14 PM

Hi Antibody:

Thanks for the swift reply but I tried that already! It doesn't seem to work. I have the bg movieclip on the lowest layer and I have the holder clip at the top, BUT, the pic loads but the movie flashes, I lose my bg image and then the pic loads).

I don't want the movie to flash, I want to see the loader bar over the top of my image.

It shouldn't be so hard :-(

**oldnewbie** · 08-12-2002, 01:56 PM

You'll get nowhere further on this without posting some code and/or your .fla.
Seems to be at least a stop action missing, or you're loading your movie on _level0, or...

**Antibody** · 08-12-2002, 02:01 PM

What he ^^^^ said..

**Shmeed4020** · 08-12-2002, 02:05 PM

Cheers oldnewbie but I didn't think it was worth putting up as its ever so basic. Here is a working demo:

http://www.definedprint.com/flash/dp.html

If you click on the button "pics" a movie loads in the left and the right, the button takes you to the frame "pics" and there is a frame action:

loadMovie("pics-left.swf", _root.dropleft);
loadMovie("pics-right.swf", _root.dropright);
stop();

But if you click on a picture, you can see that the movie on the right goes to black and then the you can see the pic. I need the pic to load on top of the original background image.

Does this help? I appreciate any help on this. Not sure if I am even using the best method. I need to load the movie in an absolute location, as you can see.

Cheerss in advance.
Jag

**oldnewbie** · 08-12-2002, 04:20 PM

See what you're saying... But would have to see the actual code.
Can you post a link to your .fla?

Have to go out, won't be able to look into this until later tonight, but somebody else may!

**pkghost** · 08-12-2002, 05:00 PM

I'll take a look at it Shmeed. I've got a couple hours before my soccer clinic and I'm not busy until then so I'd be happy to help you out. Btw that site looks very professional =P

**Shmeed4020** · 08-13-2002, 09:15 AM

Why thanks pkghost! I appreciate your comments and you taking a look at it. Would you like me to post my flas? I mean the files are quite big.

Let me know,
Thanks again!!!

**Antibody** · 08-13-2002, 11:56 AM

Posting the .fla would be a good idea. There are several reasons that I can think of off the top of my head but it would be easier for me to just check them out as opposed to writing them down as I don't actually know how that clip is structured.

For instance, does the preloader movieClip have a black background? I mean a graphic of some sort, not the stage Background color. If so remove it, although your preloader bar will just float over the bg image, if that's alright.

Let *us* know.

And BTW I liked your site as well. Very nice so far.

**Shmeed4020** · 08-13-2002, 01:46 PM

cheers Antibody! You made me smile!

Nope, the MC doesn't have a background image, that's why I am sort of confused.

I want the pic to load in that square area (with the close button) so I created a another MC, that size and I created another swf that I would load into that mc, but the whole thing goes to black and I lose everything apart from the new movie.

My flas are posted:

http://www.insomniacdesign.com/fla/fla.zip

Explanation of files:

DP-Main: The main interface where the left and right bits are loaded

Pics-left: the left movie (loaded into dp-main, with the navigation)
Pics-right-load: the right move (loaded into dp-main, it is the bg image basically)
flyer01-crop: the single pic I want to load into the space in pics right over the bg image

The swfs are also included so you can see functionality of what isn't working but how the movies relate (not exactly what it is on-line as I changed stuff), you need to click on dp.swf to launch.

Hope this makes sense!

Thanks for all your help!
Jag

**pkghost** · 08-13-2002, 03:09 PM

Hm... I tried to download it but after its complete I get the not a valid archive error. Also, i think i saw that it is 16.6mb and for some reason i finished downloading it in 6 seconds (Im on 56k here...). Maybe Antibody had better luck? We'll see.

**Shmeed4020** · 08-13-2002, 03:49 PM

That is interesting pkghost.

I re-uploaded the file again, have another go.

I just downloaded it fine. Try going to:

http://www.insomniacdesign.com/fla

Then click on the fla.zip...maybe that will make a difference?

Cheers for giving it a go.

**pkghost** · 08-13-2002, 04:32 PM

Yeah it works now, but I don't want to waste 2 and a half hours downloading it here. I'm going to head over to my mom's house later today and download it there (cable... mmm). I'll get back to you when i have a look at it.

**Antibody** · 08-13-2002, 04:37 PM

I was able to dload it without issue.

Well, my friend, how does your preloader initiate? Is it included in the image .swf? (which I don't have) or is it somewhere else? I think somehow you are possibly hitting your "load" Scene in the "pics-right-load" movie. If that is the case, your BG image does not exist in that scene. So a quick fix would be to place the image in there. This is a rough guess and some other things would have to be done so that the bg image doesn't "fadein" each time you load a new pic, but firsts things first eh?

I'll have more time to look at it when I get home tonight. I would like to see the clip that gets loaded too, from the inside that is.

Ye've got yuirself a wee beastie when it come to making changes with this site lad.

I'm sure you've found that if you want to make a change it ends up being a pain in the a$$ as to how much work "that little change" entails eh? At this stage in the game though, I doubt it would be prudent to make drastic changes, but as you continue to use Flash and look at other peoples work, you will eventually find ways to make your projects easier to manage and edit without having it be a huge deal. That just comes with experience.

It's looking real good though mang.

Keep on, keepin' on bro. We'll figure this out.

**Shmeed4020** · 08-13-2002, 05:03 PM

Cheers for the feedback mate!

First things first, me a girl! me a lass! me a woman! Well, glad I got that out of the way....

I have a pre-loader in front of all my movies. It is the first scene in each of the flas.

If you got my swfs, do the following so you can see what's going wrong:

1) Launch dp.swf
2) Open Menu and click on pics
3) Click on the flyers link (on the left side)
4) Click on the first thumb (that's the link I was testing the bugger theory on)

Now, here is my structure:

The pics-right-load.fla is where the bg image is plus the box and close button, etc. And on top of bg image in another layer is an MC, whose instance is called droppic.

What happens is, when you click on the pic thumb (as described above in pics-left.fla,) it calls the frame 'pic-f-01' in pics-right-load and in that frame it is supposed to load the single pic (the fla is flyer01-crop.fla aka pic-f-01.swf) into the MC droppic (with the bg image still in the back in a bottom layer with all the other stuff). But as you can see when you look at my swfs, it is loading it all wrong.

I don't care about making the changes, I just need to understand and then I am half way there, you know what I mean?

I absolutely appreciate all of your help/comments on this and if I could buy you a beer, I would :-)

Hope this isn't confusing.
Jag

**pkghost** · 08-13-2002, 05:17 PM

Ha wish you'd buy *me* a beer =P (im 15...). I'm at my mom's - downloaded your file - going to take a look at it with antibody's feeback in mind.

**oldnewbie** · 08-13-2002, 05:44 PM

Why isn't this happening if you don't hit that first left flyer, and hit any one of the 3 to the right of this left one?
Is it just because you're only presently trying to preload that first flyer? I'm on cable so they load pretty fast and I didn't see any preloader on those right ones!

**Antibody** · 08-13-2002, 05:49 PM

oops, sorry 'bout that lass. So hard to tell online.

Anyway, I got something sorted.

Okay, here's one thing I found.. it looks like the code on frame "fpic1" says to load "pic-f-01.swf" into "_root.droppic" but that is not the correct path.. In your authoring environment droppic *is* on the _root, so no issue. However, when you load this .swf into a movieclip, the path to droppic becomes "_root.dropright.droppic". The way that it is currently setup, just loading it into "droppic" would be acceptable, so the code would read:

loadMovie("pic-f-01.swf", droppic);

*note: I removed the "GET", it is unecessary, unless of course you are using the "GET" for a specific purpose, which isn't readily apparent to me.

The other thing is that "droppic" has its _alpha set to 0, so anything you load into will be at _alpha 0. So if frame one reads

loadMovie("pic-f-01.swf", droppic);
droppic._alpha=100;

TaDa!! Or at least I got it to work that way.

When placing clips to use as targets for loadMovie, there really is no need to have any content in them whatsoever. You could simply remove that white square and leave it as is.. then there would be no need for the alpha line. Just remember to make the alpha of that empty clip 100 in the properties window.

Let me know if this solution worked out.

I'll take a pint any day lady.

if this helped you out that is

**Shmeed4020** · 08-13-2002, 05:49 PM

ha ha!

It would have to be a non-alcoholic beer for you pkghost!

Also, OldNewbie, you guessed right, I am only testing it on the first flyer, the other links work fine because the other pics are contained in 1 movie but the file size is too huge (and I still have to add 20 more pics) so I wanted to use another solution of loading each pic seperately over the bg image, so it looks smooth and doesn't go to black each time.

Make sense?

And Antibody, absolutely understand about the whole lad thing, I was having a larf, it is hard to tell on-line. Thanks for all the info, I am gonna work on it and I will let you know how I do!

Thanks mate!
Jag

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