The Timeline | Certified Macromedia Flash MX Designer Study Guide

As mentioned earlier, the Timeline is made up of two major components : frames (at the right side of the panel) and layers (the left side of the panel.) These two key attributes of the Timeline let you organize and view the construction of a Flash movie. The numbers above the Timeline in multiples of five indicate framesone of the major building blocks of a Flash movie.

Frames

A frame in Flash is the equivalent to a cell in film. Frames are what give a Flash movie its duration. The more frames you add, the longer your Flash movie will be. You can add, delete, move, cut, copy, clear, and/or paste frames anytime .

There are several ways to insert a frame within the Timeline. To insert a new frame, first select within the Timeline where you would like to place the new frame. Then select Insert, Frame from the top menu bar. You can also right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) to display the pop-up menu and toggle down to choose the Insert Frame option.

NOTE

Notice that within the drop-down menus from the top menu bar, keyboard shortcuts are displayed just to the right of several menu options. To insert a frame, you can also press the F5 key on your keyboard.

Performing other functions to a frame is done in a similar way. To delete a frame, select Insert, Remove Frames from the top menu bar, or choose the Remove Frames option from the pop-up menu. To cut, copy, clear, and/or paste a frame, select the appropriate option from Edit in the top menu bar or select the appropriate option from the pop-up menu.

You can also move a frame to a new location within the Timeline by using the mouse to select and drag a frame to a new location. There are two types of frames: regular frames and keyframes.

Keyframes

Keyframes are used whenever there is a point of change in a Flash movie. Keyframes are usually used within frame-by-frame, motion-tween, and shape-tween animation. To create a keyframe, select the frame where you wish to insert. Then, either select Insert, Keyframe or right-click (Windows)/Control-click (Macintosh) and toggle down to Insert Keyframe in the pop-up menu. Whenever you do this, the contents from the previous keyframe are automatically brought over into this new keyframe. Choose Blank Keyframe if you simply want to insert an empty keyframe.

Frame Labels

Labels become useful to identify particular frames, including keyframes, in a Flash document. They give you an alternative to scenes and frame numbers to talk to your Flash document through ActionScript. To add a label to a frame, select the frame, then select the text box under Frame within the Properties Inspector, and type in the label name of your choice.

Try to avoid long frame names because frame labels are exported with your movie. If you need to provide a good bit of information for a particular frame, use a comment, since it will not be exported with the movie data. To create a comment, precede the text with two forward slashes (//).

Frame Rates

Frame rates, the current frame number, and elapsed time are displayed at the bottom of the Timeline. You can set the frame rate of a Flash document anywhere from 0.01 to 120 frames per second (fps). By default, Flash sets a frame rate of 12 fps. If you want to increase or decrease the frame rate of a particular section, it's best to add or delete frames in between the keyframes of the animation. To increase or decrease the frame rate of an entire document, select Modify, Document from the top menu bar and type in the new frame rate.

Multiple Timelines

By default, a single timeline is attached to your Flash document. Using movie clips, you can now have multiple timelines, nesting them within other movie timelines. This is possible because each movie has its own timeline. Whenever you have a timeline that involves other movie clips, those timelines are invoked by the master Timeline, and the multiple timelines communicate and interact with one another.

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