looping animation @ end of an intro

[chadmw7]

I'm working on a flash intro now that I've almost finished and I'm trying to get past one thing... At the end of the intro, the button comes up that gives you the option to watch it again. When that happens, I would like to have an animation on the end that repeats until you select something. So far I've put the animation into a MC and then put that on the timeline at the end. It plays it but it repeats back to the beginning of the intro instead of repeating to the beginning of the last mc. I was thinking that movie clips repeat themselves if you don't tell them not to. Is there some code I have to put in to tell it to repeat? That may not be enough information so far but can anyone offer any suggestions?

[Ovaire d'Oz]

Place a keyframe to the very end of your end animation in which you can add:
gotoAndPlay(x);
Then replace the 'x' by the number of the frame where the end animation is starting.

[chadmw7]

I tried a few things after posting this last night and after digging and reading a little more. What I did get to work is basically what you said - I put a gotoAndPlay(578); at the end. Of course, you can tell that I put it in the main scene instead of the MC. The first thing I tried was putting a gotoAndPlay(1); in the MC which seemed like the cleanest way to do it but I couldn't get it to work that way. Whenever I previewed it that way, it looped back to the beginning of the whole intro even though I put the code in the MC. Can you think of any reason that it would do that?

Also, even though I got it to loop the other way, it still needs a little help. It looks okay but when it loops, there's a skip or a pause or something. You can definitely tell the point at which it loops. It almost looks like there's a single solid black frame or something. When I shuttle through the timeline, there's nothing like that in the main Scene or the MC. I really need the loop to be smooth. Any thoughts there?

[Ovaire d'Oz]

if you put a gotoAndPay(1) in the MC, then put a stop(); in the main timeline, this way, it will stop reading the main timeline, but loop the MovieClip.
I don't see why you get a pause, unless the swf needs too much power to loop.

[chadmw7]

ok, that makes sense. I guess I should put the stop on the same frame that the MC starts (different layer, same frame) Is that right?

[Ovaire d'Oz]

I guess yeah. How did it turn out?

[chadmw7]

Perfect! That really helps a lot understanding the stop reading the main timeline, but loop the MovieClip" concept.

Thanks so much!

[chadmw7]

Ok, now that the looping is settled, is there any practical way to make the looping mc fade out when I move the mouse away? Right now it starts on mouseover and stops cold when I move somewhere else. I've looked around and so far all I've seen are ways to use code to get it done. I'm not that familiar with ActionScript yet and nothing I've seen so far makes sense as it applies to what I'm doing.

It just seems like there would be a way to get this done in the timeline.