play movieclip on main timeline - simple question!!

The answer is simple, you can't.

You embedded a movieclip with an animation into your main timeline, you will only see the first frame of that movieclip, in order to test it properly you need to test the swf, then you will see all the animations running. That's the way it works..

What you probably want to do is recreate the animation on the main timeline using frames 1 thru 30.  Just copy the frames in the movieclip into the main timeline.  Then you will have the anomation running on the main timeline and be able to synchronize other layers of content with it.

If you aren't going to control the animation with code (which you need a movieclip to do) then what you want to do is convert the movieclip to a graphic symbol. You can just do that with the properties panel — where you can easily turn it back to a movieclip so no harm no foul.

Once it is a graphic symbol on the timeline it will be tied to the timeline and it will advance frame for frame with the timeline it is on. If you want you can also use the properties panel to say if the graphic should play once, loop, or just show one frame.

Since a movieclip has its own timeline, and that timeline could be jumping around wtih code, or the main timeline could be stopped, but the movieclip on it would be playing. So that is why you can't see what is going on with nested movieclips.

Kudos to you, sir! I've been looking for a work around for this for months. Thank you!!!