FLASH: loading movie into movie clip

[Laura Hamilton]

Help!


I am working in Flash 4.


I have a movie clip for the portfolio section of my website named

"mc_slideshow".


Inside this main movie clip I have one movie clip per frame on a

"screenshots" layer, one for each of 35 screenshot images that I will make

available in my slideshow.


I have converted all of these screenshot images into .swfs. Inside each

individual movie clip is a Load Movie command that loads the image .swf for

that frame. My whole purpose in doing this is to stop all those images from

having to load at the beginning of the movie.


So for example, in "mc_slideshow":


Frame 1 contains "mc_01_wwfullpage", and "mc_01_wwfullpage" has one frame

with the following action:

Load Movie ("01_wwfullpage.swf", 01)


OK, so here are my problems.


a) I understand that to load a SWF into a movie clip instance I should use

the Target option and not Level. But I cannot ever view the SWF in my test

movie if I choose Target. The only way to get the SWF to show up is to

choose Level 1 as my option. The code I tried was: Load Movie

("01_wwfullpage.swf", "mc_01_wwfullpage", with no results. The SWF didn't

show up at all in my test movie.

Why doesn't the Target option work in this case?


b) When I choose Level 1 and get the SWF to finally play in my test movie,

it stays up in the upper right corner no matter what. I have tried Set

Property below my Load command to change the X and Y positions. I have tried

it with a target of "mc_01_wwfullpage" (the movie clip that contains the

SWF) and for "01_wwfullpage.swf" (the SWF itself), but nothing will get that

damned swf to change position...it just hangs up there in the upper right

where it does me no good. How can I move my SWF to where I need it to be?


c) Last problem so far...

Most of my SWFs are just bitmap images, screenshots of websites I've

created, ads, whatever. I have some Flash banners though. When I get these

to show up in my test movie using the above tactics, I have the same problem

as I do with the bitmap-based movies, they hang in the upper right no matter

how I try to reset the X and Y using Set Property.

But I have an additional problem with the Flash banners...they are shown in

their entirety, including pieces of the banner that are supposed to be

offscreen in the work area. When I view these SWFs normally, they play

perfectly fine with the Flash Player. But as an SWF loaded into my MC I see

everything in the work area too. How can I stop that from happening? Why

does the loaded SWF show the work area?


If anyone can help me with any of these three problems (probably they are

inter-related somehow), I will be eternally grateful. Of course I could just

go back and put the original images directly into the frames and forget all

this, but I want the images to load on demand and not all at the beginning.

Am I going about this all wrong?


Ugh. Help please!


Laura Hamilton



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