# Preloading external movies question - the preloader bar
**URL:** https://forum.kirupa.com/t/preloading-external-movies-question-the-preloader-bar/7828
**Category:** Uncategorized
**Created:** [November 8, 2002, 3:22pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/preloading-external-movies-question-the-preloader-bar/7828 "2002-11-08T15:22:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@j0se](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/j0se)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2002, 3:22pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/preloading-external-movies-question-the-preloader-bar/7828/1 "2002-11-08T15:22:56Z")
hello peeps
🙂
i’ll soon have a base movie with some external swf’s that it will load using loadMovie
scenario:
i want a simple preloader to show whilst each external movie is loading (i’m using the loader component, so it’s just a bar and some text)
what i want to know is:
do i have to insert a preloader into each separate swf, or could i just add some code to the buttons in the base movie to show the preloader?
i’m guessing the first point is the only way to do it because i can’t see how the base movie would ‘know’ the size of the external movie?
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2002, 4:02pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/preloading-external-movies-question-the-preloader-bar/7828/2 "2002-11-08T16:02:32Z")
Hi (aupa),
Of course the base movie can know the size of the external movie!
Where do u load the external movies, level or MC?
once u use the loadMovie command u can check the bytesLoaded
of the container(level or MC). (Although is recomendable to give Flash a bit of time in between loadMovie and bytesLoaded check)
Cheers
SHO
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2002, 5:07pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/preloading-external-movies-question-the-preloader-bar/7828/3 "2002-11-08T17:07:28Z")
cool: i didn’t know!
i’m loading into level