There are two different kinds of effects that come with SWfx. The green highlighted ones are the Flash 4 effects and they take advantage of some of the more advanced capabilities that came with Flash 4. These need to be used with the load movie command and can be loaded into a level, an empty movie clip, or a Smart Clip.

The non-highlighted ones are the Flash 3 effects and can be imported directly into the Flash authoring environment. I like to import them into their own movie clip for maximum flexibility and control rather than importing them into the main timeline or a level. The following technique can be used with either the Flash 3 or the Flash 4 effects generated by SWfx to load a movie into an empty movie clip.

Loading a Flash 3 or 4 Effect Into an Empty Movie Clip

From your main movie, create a new symbol and don't put anything in it. Go back to the main timeline and drag an instance of the empty movie clip onto the stage. Name this instance in the Instance Docker Panel (empty1, or whatever). Use either an object or frame action to loadMovie and use the name of the .swf file as the url. Below that, where it says "level" and has a default zero next to it, pull down the menu and choose "target". In the box where the zero was type "_root.empty1" or use the target editor to choose the intended movie clip. Remember that only movie clips that have instance names will show up in the target editor. The code in the script window would look something like:


on (release) {
loadMovie ("movietobeloaded1.swf", "_root.empty clip 1");
}


The movie can be unloaded in the same fashion. Some points of interest........when you employ this method, the upper left-hand corner of the movie that is being loaded will line up with the center of wherever you placed the instance of the empty movie clip (the cross hairs). This method is argueably preferable to using levels due to having much greater control over the loaded movie. As a movie clip, it can be scaled, tweened.....anything you can do to any other symbol. It can also be put on it's own layer and moved wherever you want within your main movie. For example....behind an interface screen.

One way to preload these movies is to place all of the content of the loaded movies on the second frame and place a stop action in the first frame. This will keep the movie loaded, but invisible until you put an action that targets the second frame of the movie clip and tells it to play. You can also load them with the visibility property set to false, them target the clip and set the property to true when you want the movie to be visible, though this works best with a static symbol or a non-animated movie clip.