ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition

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Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

Movie Clips

Every Flash document contains a Stage—on which we place shapes, text, and other

visual elements—and a main timeline, through which we define changes to the

Stage’s contents over time. The Stage (i.e., the main movie) can contain independent

submovies, called movie clips (or clips for short). Each movie clip has its own inde-

pendent timeline and canvas (the Stage is the canvas of the main movie) and can

even contain other movie clips. A clip contained within another clip is called a nested

clip. A clip that contains another clip is referred to as the nested clip’s host clip or

parent clip.

A single Flash document can contain a hierarchy of interrelated movie clips. For

example, the main movie may contain a mountainous landscape. A separate movie

clip containing an animated character can be moved across the landscape to give the

illusion that the character is walking. Another movie clip inside the character clip can

be used to animate the character’s blinking eyes independently. When the indepen-

dent elements in the cartoon character are played back together, they appear as a sin-

gle piece of content. Furthermore, each component can react intelligently to the

others; we can tell the eyes to blink when the character stops moving or tell the legs

to walk ...