Using Director > Sprites > Positioning sprites > Changing the duration of a sprite on the Stage

 

Changing the duration of a sprite on the Stage

By default, Director assigns each new sprite a duration of 28 frames. You can change the duration of a sprite—that is, the amount of time the sprite appears in a movie—by adjusting its length, changing the number of frames in which it appears, or using the Extend command.

Director maintains the spacing proportions of keyframes when a sprite is lengthened. For a description of keyframes, see Animation overview.

To extend or shorten a sprite:

1

Choose Window > Score to display the Score.

2

Do one of the following:

Drag the start or end frames. To extend a one-frame sprite, Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Macintosh).

To extend a sprite and leave the last keyframe in place, Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Macintosh) a keyframe at the end of the sprite.

To extend a sprite and leave all keyframes in place, Control-drag (Windows) or Command-drag (Macintosh) the end frame.

Enter new values in the Start and End fields of the Sprite tab of the Property Inspector to change the start and end frames.

To extend a sprite to the current location of the playback head:

1

Select the sprite or sprites to extend.

2

Click the frame channel to move the playback head:

To extend the sprite, move the playback head past the right edge of the sprite.

To shorten the sprite, move the playback head to the left of the sprite's right edge, inside the sprite.

To move the sprite's start frame, place the playback head to the left of the sprite.

3

Choose Modify > Extend Sprite.