Using Sprite tracks

A Sprite track contains image objects (referred to as sprites), to which you can apply actions and set individual mouse states (main, over, click inside, and click outside). Sprites are great for giving your visitors an interactive experience through objects that effect a behavior, such as jumping to a different Web page.

Like a Video track, a Sprite track consists of a sequence of frames that play back at a certain frame rate. Unlike a Video track, which is a continuous stream of pixel images, a Sprite track relies on a pool of images that are stored with its first keyframe. The advantage is that subsequent frames need not contain the pixel image itself, but simply a reference to an item in the image pool. This type of movie is then much smaller in file size than pixel-based video, thus making your animations load faster.

The following sections provide step-by-step instructions for working with sprites. The following is the overall process for creating a sprite:

1 Add the Sprite track

2 Set the properties

3 Import the images (which creates the sprites)

4 Set basic behaviors and actions on the sprites

Editing QuickTime Movies > Using Sprite tracks

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