Flash CS3 Documentation

Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Adobe Flash > Working with Movie Clips

Working with Movie Clips

Movie clips are like self-contained SWF files that run independently of each other and the timeline that contains them. For example, if the main timeline has only one frame and a movie clip in that frame has ten frames, each frame in the movie clip plays when you play the main SWF file. A movie clip can, in turn, contain other movie clips, or nested clips. Movie clips nested in this way have a hierarchical relationship, where the parent clip contains one or more child clips.

You can name movie clip instances to uniquely identify them as objects that can be controlled with ActionScript. When you give a movie clip instance an instance name, the instance name identifies it as an object of the MovieClip class type. You use the properties and methods of the MovieClip class to control the appearance and behavior of movie clips at runtime.

You can think of movie clips as autonomous objects that can respond to events, send messages to other movie clip objects, maintain their state, and manage their child clips. In this way, movie clips provide the foundation of component-based architecture in Flash CS3 Professional. In fact, the components available in the Components panel (Window > Components) are sophisticated movie clips that are designed and programmed to look and behave in certain ways.

For information on using the Drawing API (drawing methods of the MovieClip class), filters, blends, scripted animation and more, see Animation, Filters, and Drawings.

For more information on movie clips, see the following topics:

Flash CS3