I am planning a flash project which contains two main animations which are mostly identical in all but color and a small, internal visual component. The two main animations should appear to be in sync, but they ought to intrinsically be “just because they’re really the same file.” I won’t lose sleep over it if it gets out of sync after a few minutes.
Is there a way to “place” fla/swf’s in the same way that in Photoshop you can place another psd or ai such that updates to the file get reflected in the containing document? Import seems to make a static copy, and what’s more, it seems to import all the library items individually rather than “the movie file.” I would like to avoid dynamically loading those as external swfs for a couple reasons (obvious synchronization issues over the web and the added difficulty in seeing the end product while in development).
Hmmm, thats quite a confusing question bc. I’m not entirely sure what your trying to ask there.
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You CAN see the finished product while in development…both in Flash and a browser. Basically all you need to ensure is that the separate SWF’s are in the same folder as your main interface and it works fine. I’m working on a site now that uses external SWF’s and no problems there at all.
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Updates for External SWF’s happen immediately after each time the Movie is tested. The SWF updates, and in turn updates in the main interface.
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If you need to play up 2 synchronized animations loaded from 2 external SWF’s, you will need to set up 2 separate “container” MC’s in the main interface to play both at once. They should theoretically play at exactly the same speed if they have the same amount of data. If one has more data than the the other, then the preloader might take a bit longer, then hence they’ll end up out of sync.
You might want to check out this tutorial if you haven’t already: Transitions Between External SWFs
Let me know how you go. 
Thanks for your speedy replies!
mattrock- are you suggesting that because the fla I’m “placing” is a multi-layered timeline that it’s not playing the way I would hope, and that if I were to simply pull all timelines into a single new symbol, save as external Fla and pull it in that way, that I should be good to go?
DC- Ok, this sounds promising… But how do you recommend pulling in/placing those compiled swf’s? It sounds like you’re suggesting dynamic loading by .as, in which case I’ve never seen a “live preview” on the stage…?
I also looked into Insert>>New Symbol>>Browse for fla, but that seems to only pull in one symbol from that movie. (unless this is what mattrock is referring to wherein a single mc could solve my woes)
The queston leaves me completely mystified too…why would you want to complicate things by importing and then re-exporting them?
If you simply want to take the contents of another FLA, just copy the entire content from the old timeline and place it all into a movieclip in the new FLA. Yes, individual library items will be imported into your new library but that’s only to be expected…if you load a document in Photoshop you expect the layers that make up that document to be imported as well, don’t you?
If you’re talking about synchronising across different FLA’s/AS files, then you should be looking at using Flash Project
Ok thanks again folks. Flash Project looks like a great way to share library resources, but the issue of how to create and use my existing fla/swf’s as these resources still eludes me. What I wish to avoid is building my composite flash animation using [what I’m going to call components, not to be confused with Flash Components] then deciding that those other elements need to change and having to go and redo everything.
mattrock23, glosrfc- I see what you’re saying, and I think that is the way to do it: Copy/paste the existing .fla contents as new mc’s in the composite drawing and never touch the “source” fla’s again-- all changes will be in the composite animation here on out. The single drawback is that in animating the composite drawing, I’ll not be able to see frame-by-frame the element mc’s. If I rebuild those ani’s on shared symbols/libraries, then I could easily make some basic changes that affect both animations. I have common symbol names in both… I wonder if this will happen automatically or if Flash will bark at me or rename the symbols to dot2, case2… etc
Let me try to clear up my specific scenario a bit-- perhaps I’ve overcomplicated: I am building an engine animation with three moving parts: a compressor on the left, an expander on the right, and a diagram of pipes showing heat/pressure flows between and across the previous two elements. I have already built both exp and comp ani’s independently and wanted to reuse those movies in this composite engine.
