# Can someone give me a good explanation of how \_root works with the main timeline

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/can-someone-give-me-a-good-explanation-of-how--root-works-with-the-main-timeline/75445>\
**Category:** flash\
**Created:** [January 8, 2005, 11:16pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/can-someone-give-me-a-good-explanation-of-how--root-works-with-the-main-timeline/75445 "2005-01-08T23:16:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![FlashNewby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5f8ce5/32.png) [@FlashNewby](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/FlashNewby)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 11:16pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/can-someone-give-me-a-good-explanation-of-how--root-works-with-the-main-timeline/75445/1 "2005-01-08T23:16:23Z")

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I’ve been into flash for about a couple of weeks and still don’t know how\*\* \_root\*\* affects things on the main time line. For example if I have animation going on in 3 layers and a fourth layer has strictly action script to control the animation going on in those layers , which layer will the \_root… effect. This may seem confusing to read, but I don’t understand flash well enough to be more succint in my questioning. Does the main timeline encompass all the layers of the flash movie??

THanks