Webmaster Forum / Flash / General Flash Topics / July 2008

Put all three movie clips into a single mc with a stop action at the end.
Depending on the effect you want, you could either repeat the clips a few times
before the end of the mc timeline and then put in your stop(); and save the
movie clip and use it that way...or you could put each clip in only once, then
use the resulting mc over and over in successive frames on the parent timeline.

Note: if you use this latter method you will have to resave and rename the new
mc in different, successive versions and put in another line of code so the
movie will jump to the next version. For example,

firstClip: //the effects play once
stop();
gotoAndPlay(timeline frame for secondClip);

secondClip: //the effects play again
stop();
gotoAndPlay(timeline frame for thirdClip);

etc. etc.

You could also do it largely in code, but that might be overkill. If you're
working in AS3, it might be fun to test the clips using the AS3 Timer class...
var timer:Timer = new Timer(delay:Number, repeatCount:int);

This would give you a quick way to test out how the effects looked when
repeated various times at different intervals.

For example, if you wanted to try running the clips 3 times with a second
interval, you'd go...

var myTestTimer:Timer = Timer (1000, 3);
myTestTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, onTimer);
myTestTimer:start();

function  onTimer(evt:TimerEvent):void {
[and here you set up and play your movie clip sequence]
}