MovieClip Resizing Weirdness

Question

I have a movieclip in an external swf, called menubg. In the library properties tab, it reports the size as 1024x768.
I use an embed statement to pull the movieclip from the swf at compile time. It comes in just fine (as a Sprite since that seems to be the only way to instantiate an object from an external swf), you can see it without a hitch, but tracing out the size info does not return the same WxH as the original.
Here's some code, and the trace outs
var mbg:Sprite=new wpa_menuBG;
trace(mbg.width,mbg.height); // 1028.95 777.95 --  that's not right
// the screen container
theScreen=new MovieClip();
theScreen.name="menu";
// add the background
theScreen.addChild(mbg);
trace(theScreen.width,theScreen.height); // 1028.95 777.95 -- at least it's the same size as the sprite above
// hey, let's force it to be the original size!
theScreen.width=1024;
theScreen.height=768;
trace(theScreen.width,theScreen.height); // 1024.05 767.95 -- hmm
Later, I add a second movieclip to theScreen, actionContainer, which is 340x220
// add the action container
actionContainer.x=0;
actionContainer.y=0;
trace(theScreen.width,theScreen.height); // 1024.05 767.95
theScreen.addChild(actionContainer);
trace(actionContainer.x,actionContainer.y,actionContainer.width,actionContainer.height); // 0 0 340 220
trace(theScreen.width,theScreen.height); // 1034 777.8 -- huh?
The only thing I can figure is that the actionContainer has a shape, a roundRect with a border of 20 and a dropshadow filter. BUT the shape is the first object, and the largest object, added to the actionContainer so it should max out the width.
Now if I preset the the x and the y of the actionContainer, I get some pretty different results:
// add the action container
actionContainer.x=50;
actionContainer.y=50;
trace(theScreen.width,theScreen.height); //1024.05 767.95 -- same as last time
theScreen.addChild(actionContainer);
trace(actionContainer.x,actionContainer.y,actionContainer.width,actionContainer.height);// 50 50 340 220 -- okay
trace(theScreen.width,theScreen.height); // 1024.05 767.95 -- really?
I'm not sure what I'm missing here. I just know that it's frustrating.

Answer 1

Ensure that your mbg sprite is located at coords 0,0 for it to return the information that you're expecting. As for the width and height of the mbg being different than expected, you might want to check if there's been any scaling applied to it by tracing out ".scaleX" and ".scaleY"
Normally, when I know something should be a very specific size, and it's not, I'll force .scaleX and .scaleY to a value of 1, which will return them to normal scaling. (Scales are changed when width/height are changed, so checking these values will also check for changes in width and height)
Hope that helps to narrow down the problem.
~Plystire