Unit 11.  Movie Clips (II)

Creating a new Clip

As we've commented, we'll usually use Clips to make animations. What we haven’t said yet is that a Flash symbol can be created from nothing, saved in the library and publish when we want.

It could be interesting in the clips, in distinction to graphics, because its purpose usually is the movement and the complicated animations, sometimes special actions have been assigned to them in which, either it’s not necessary its immediate creation or it's convenient to leave the clip empty.

That’s why, it's interesting to learn how to create a symbol, in this case a MovieClip, of nothing to modify it later. 

To insert an empty clip click on Insert → New Symbol and the Create a new Symbol dialog will open.

Then you will have to name it, to identify it later in the Library, and select the Movie Clip option in the Type list.

From now you will find the empty clip in the Library (menu Window → Library). If you right click on it and select Edit you will be able to modify it and work on it.

Look how to do it

When we see the animations we'll make examples of them and we will see the real potential of this type of symbols.

Import and Export Movie Clips from Library

As for all the Clip symbols are stored in the document library when they are created. It’s very important because clips are usually very reusable. In order to import movies clips first we must open the library where it is.

     We've seen in the Symbols unit, two types of libraries: those that are associated with documents or other movies; and the ones that have Flash 8. So, we can't only use symbols from the same document but also Import them from other documents from our hard disc, in the end it results to be very usefull. It’s obvious that the exporting to the library is automatic, because Flash leaves created objects in the library in order to reuse them.

     To import a Clip from a file on the hard disk we must go to the menu File → Import → Open External Library, select Flash File (.fla) from which we want to import its library symbols and press Open.

The Library will appear with its corresponding list of graphics, buttons and clips from the selected document.

It's important to emphasize that when we insert a Clip from a library, all the symbols that it contains, including clips, will be imported as well.

Now we'll show an example in which we will see how to import clips in this way, apart from verifying the clips properties and its independent timelines by the simultaneous reproduction of two movies and creating a quite showy effect by using “apparently” only one frame. 

See an animated example:

And the result of the previous process is the following:

In order to see how to export and to import a complete movie like one unique clip, and use this for the development in programs like Swish, review our advanced theme: Other uses of the Movie Clips

  Exercises from Unit 11

  Unit 11 Test.