Pausing a timeline

Question

I want to be able to pause a movies timeline for 3 seconds,
then have it start playing again.
I appreciate any help you could give me.
Thanks

Answer 1

Hi,
Pausing the main timeline
The key to this project is understanding Flash’s wrist
watch. If you have an analog wrist
watch, the minutes are marked around the dial and the second
hand ticks around the dial.
Flash doesn’t have a second hand, it has a millisecond
hand; and the watch face is not
divided into minutes or seconds—there are 1,000 little
division marks.
Instead of a millisecond, think about a mouse click. There
are actually two things involved
in that event. There is the event in which the mouse button
is down and the event in which
the mouse button is up. How fast that happens is dependent on
the amount of time you
use to press and release the button. In Flash, we can capture
that small amount of time and
turn it into an eternity if we so choose. Same thing when you
let go of the button. When it
comes to working with time in Flash, the unit of measure is
the millisecond, and we can
turn a millisecond into an eternity (which, incidentally, is
not a good idea).
In this exercise, you are simply going to tell Flash,
“When you hit this point on the timeline,
hang around for two seconds before moving on to the next
millisecond and doing what
needs to be done.” Here’s how:
1. Open the PauseTimeline.fla file. If you scrub the playhead
across the timeline,
the box, thanks to the tween, gets bigger.
2. Add a keyframe to frame 15 of the scripts layer. Select
the keyframe and open the
Actions panel.
3. Enter the following code into the Script pane:
this.stop();
This is the line that stops the playhead from moving forward,
and it is also the line of code
that can turn a millisecond into an eternity. If you stop the
playhead, have a solid plan in
place to get it back in motion.
4. Press the Enter/Return key, and enter the following code:
var timelinePause:Timer = new Timer(2000, 1);
timelinePause.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER,
timerHandler);
timelinePause.start();
The first line tells Flash to create a Timer object. In
ActionScript, when you use the class
name followed by parentheses, you are creating what is called
a constructor, which is a
fancy term for an instance of a class. The numbers between
the parentheses tell Flash the
duration of the timer (2,000 milliseconds, or 2 seconds) and
how often to wait around for
that 2 seconds. The 1 means “only wait for it
once.”
NOTE: There are two ways to create object instances. If it is
a movieclip, button, or text field,
it can be created on the stage or dragged onto the stage from
the library by hand.
Programmatic instances need to use a constructor.
The next line tells Flash what to do when the two seconds are
up; which is to execute a
function named timerHandler. The final line tells Flash to
reset the timer, and start the
timer if it isn’t already running.
5. Press the Enter/Return key and enter the following code:
function timerHandler(evt:Object):void {
this.play();
As you may have guessed, this is what happens when Flash
waits around for the 2 seconds.
The play() method simply tells the timeline to start playing
again (see Figure 4-21).
6. Save and test the movie. The box will grow, stop growing
for 2 seconds, and then
continue to grow.
this.stop();
var timelinePause: Timer = new Timer(2000, 0);
timelinePause.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER,
timerHandler);
timelinePause.start();
function timerHandler(evt:Object):void{
this.play();
Hope this helps you out ;)
Kind Regards,
Boxing Boom