Animating movie clips and movie clip groups

Movie clips are animated by making an object a movie clip or movie clip group, opening the movie clip or movie clip group's timeline, and then animating properties within the object's timeline. The following rules apply:

• Object Attribute and Layer properties are contained within an object's timeline; Transformation properties are not. This means that position, rotation, scale, and other transformation properties cannot be animated for the movie clip whose timeline you have open.
• You can animate the movie clip's transformation properties from the timeline of the animation that contains the movie clip. For example, you could create a set of movie clip buttons, and have the buttons fly into place as part of the composition animation.
• You can animate any properties (including transformations) of objects contained within the movie clip group. For example, if you have several text objects (letters) grouped together to form a title, and if you make the letters a movie clip group, you can animate the position of the movie clip group as part of the containing animation (usually the composition). Thus, the title could slowly move up the screen (as part of the composition animation), while the letters scramble themselves and reform into the title over and over (as a looping movie clip group).

Movie clip in the composition's timeline, and in its own timeline

To animate a movie clip or movie clip group:

1. Open the timeline of the movie clip or movie clip group.
2. Expand the Object Attributes or Layers properties for the movie clip or group, and animate as desired.
3. If you are working on a movie clip group, double-click the movie clip group's name to enter its timeline. Then expand any objects in the group to access and animate their Transformation, Object Attribute, or Layer properties.