Loading music separately

[Rancor]

I currently have a music file that is being imported from an external SWF file. The problem is, the music takes forever to load (it's about 3 megabytes) and I don't want the users to have to wait for it to load before they can view the content of the scene.

How can I load the scene minus the music first, and then load the music second?

[hp3]

this all depends upon how you have your movie set up.

assuming you want to load all frames in scene 1 before loading a sound, one approach would be to set up an ifFrameLoaded() timeline loop before scene 1 contents. Once flash loads all frames in the scene then load the sound as an external SWF in another level.

// frame 1
ifFrameLoaded(last frame  number of scene){ // scene loaded
   loadMovieNum("urlto.swf",1); // start loading sound
   gotoAndPlay(3); // jump out of loop
}

// frame 2
gotoAndPlay(1); // loop back until scene loaded

frame 3 is actual start of scene 1.

You may also be able to use a label as the condition for ifFrameLoaded() which would be more flexible than a frame number incase you add more frames to the scene later. You might also put the ifFrameLoaded loop as the first scene in your timeline as a "preloaded" scene, just to be consistent with your movie strcture.

[Rancor]

Thanks, I think I understand most of that; I'll jot it down for next time.

I did some more hunting around and I found this excellent tutorial, which helped me do everything I wanted to do and more.