Constantly redrawing a bitmap & blurring it?

Question

Hi,
I have a movie clip with motion in it. I'd like to duplicate this image, blur it, and mask it. I think I can do all of that, but I don't know how to update the blur so it will blur the moving elements in my movie clip.
Can anyone explain how to constantly take a snapshot of a movieclip and blur it (while disposing of old snapshots)?
Thank you!

Answer 1

first draw is a very slow method in comparrison to copyPixels.  this should always be the preferred choice when dealing with bitmaps if at all possible.  since you are duplicating an image this will work in your favor.
2nd.  blurring is a very processor intensive behavior, and third full screen is even more crucial.
Parallaxing / blurring/ full screen = nightmare.
but there is hope
the best thing you could do is copy your full screen save that as an original bitmap
then have a second bitmap to copyPixels from the original bitmap after applying a blur filter and then turn the blur filter =null
then reapply the stage with your image.  the best you can do in your case would be pretty advanced but the ideal scenario would be to bitmap and blit your whole stage.
like pacman the game.  believe it or not there was not 1 moving part to that game it was all a bitmap.  The motion algorithems were done pre render and then the pacman , ghosts and food were then placed accordingly.
this is what you should do as well.  the less there is to draw and redraw is the main way to improve performance.  unfortunately having blur and transparencies add to the redraws especially with moves, but if you merged the background and foreground and the blurs into 1 bitmap, you can sucessfully redraw the stage 1 time without nested renders.