Yes Yes Yes, I know there are LOTs of posts about this issue.

Yet despite all of the posts and reading I have done, on this and every other swish board I can find, I am still at a loss.

Here's my senario: (file link below)
Movie with several scenes with navigation in each scene to go to the next scene. One of the scenes has 3 short musical clips (less than 10 seconds each) But each clip has an animation that I would like to have as tightly synced as possible. (yes I know that flash is not "ideal" to do this - hence the words "as possible").

I have compressed this file in every way possible, from the images to the scripts, trying to make it as efficent as possible for slower machines.


This is what I *think* I know:

By adding a silent audio swf via the loadmovienum command to the start of a scene (not level 0) I will "force the player to sync to the frame rate in that swf file.

What I have done:

I have used one of the "blankstream" files from swish-tutorials,
loaded it to my webserver, and used a loadmovienum command to load the file at the onload of the critical scene. (but I don't know to know that it actually works....)

The music clips are triggered as an event sound in a sprite.
The volume for the sprite is then controllable via a volume slider.

The blankstream file is a 20fps and my movie is also set at 20fps.
This file was built using swishmax, and set to constant 20 fps rate.
(not sure if I am supposed to do that with max, most of the tutorials and forum posts are pre-max).

What I am seeing:

even on very fast computer - 2.8 ghz P4 with 2 gig mem -
the animations play at a differnt speed each time they are played.
(the user can run a music clip over and over)

What I don't know:

Is the blank sound solution applicable to SWISHmax? or does the constant frame rate negate the need for that?

does loading an swf automatically start it playing?
(so this begs the question with the files from s-t, do they automatically start?)

Should my music clips be made into independant swf files?
and then loaded and played with load movie?
(I don't know to to trigger the start of a sound in a loaded swf)

I have uploaded all of my current working files here:
http://www.eclecticprecision.com/flashtest/

Just look for the HIGHEST number in the directory listing.
(currently it is demo76-20fps)
If you want to skip ahead, there are "invisible" skip buttons on the left side - mouse over and you can see them.
to skip to the music section use ms_skip.

(a possible conclusion? is that maybe the animations are too complex? but based on what I have seen, I can't beleive it.)

I really hope that someone has it in their heart to help me out here!
or maybe point me to a "current" tutorial. The one that everyone points to here is so old that the file links don't work anymore....

Thanks soooooooo much
SEPP!