# Silly question
**URL:** https://forum.kirupa.com/t/silly-question/60639
**Category:** Uncategorized
**Created:** [August 11, 2004, 8:57am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/silly-question/60639 "2004-08-11T08:57:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@morse](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/morse)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2004, 8:57am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/silly-question/60639/1 "2004-08-11T08:57:10Z")
I just got MX2004, and perhaps something has changed…
I have a movie clip with animation inside, named lets say spike. The first frame of this movie clip contains stop(). On the main stage, the movie clip fades in, and then I want it to play. In my old MX, this was simple; on the main timeline I would put spike.play() in a frame corresponding to when I wanted the movie clip to play. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case with MX2004. I know I am overlooking some goofy detail, so could someone please point it out?
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2004, 9:11am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/silly-question/60639/2 "2004-08-11T09:11:07Z")
It should be exactly the same… you must’ve forgotten something like the instance name or something
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2004, 2:43pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/silly-question/60639/3 "2004-08-11T14:43:43Z")
But i haven’t :sigh:
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2004, 3:51pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/silly-question/60639/4 "2004-08-11T15:51:40Z")
First, make EXTRA sure you’ve got an instance name (“spike”), then:
```auto
spike.gotoAndPlay(2);
```
Place that where ever you want it to start playing. Assuming of course that the stop() is on frame 1 inside the spike MC, and that you want it to start playing after that (frame 2).
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2004, 4:14pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/silly-question/60639/5 "2004-08-11T16:14:52Z")
Yea, I tried that too, nothing. I must be doing something really obvious, wrong. Oh well, I’ll just make my life difficult and do it all by frames ☹
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2004, 5:30pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/silly-question/60639/6 "2004-08-11T17:30:40Z")
are you using a screens/slides type of document? If so make sure that you arent using \_root. references.