Hover caption help

i went through the tutorial (was successful) and some forums, but couldn’t find what i needed.
i have a somewhat messy .fla file as it is. but i wanted to add hover captions to four buttons. these four buttons are inside a movie clip in scene 1. i’ve tried several ways of adding the action for hover captions, but can’t get it to work.
do i need to have all the buttons on one layer? or…do they need to be put in scene 1 instead of inside the movie clip?
if anyone could help i would REALLLLLY appreciate it!!!
thanks!