Adobe Flash Professional CS5 : Creating Frame-by-Frame Animation - Editing Keyframes

Keyframes are editable elements. You can add or remove content from a keyframe, move keyframes around by simply dragging, or copy and paste keyframes in the same Timeline, across scenes and even other Flash documents. Because keyframes are so versatile, you can continue to fine-tune your animations after they are created. When the playhead is placed on a frame, the content of that frame is displayed on your Stage. Selecting the keyframe in the Timeline selects all of the content on that keyframe on the Stage. Likewise, selecting any of your content on the Stage will select its corresponding keyframe. In this way, you can interactively edit the content in a keyframe or the keyframe’s position in the Timeline and know what you are affecting.

Copy and Paste Keyframes

1. Click on the keyframe to select it or click and drag to select a keyframe and a range of frames.

2. Click the Edit menu, point to Timeline, and then click Copy Frames. Timesaver Press Ctrl+Alt+C to copy frames.

3. Click on the frame where you want to paste the frames.

4. Click the Edit menu, point to Timeline, and then click Paste Frames. Timesaver Press  Ctrl+Alt+V to paste frames.

Drag and Drop Keyframes

1. Click on the keyframe to select it or click and drag to select a keyframe and a range of frames.

2. Click again on the selected frame(s), and then drag to a new area of the Timeline. Did You Know? It’s important to understand the difference between the normal copy and Paste commands and the copy frames and Paste Frames commands. When you copy and paste frames you are copying the keyframes and in-between frames and the content contained in them. Pasting them preserves the structure and layout. If you select a keyframe and use the normal copy and paste commands  Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V , you are only copying the content contained in that keyframe. You can use drag and drop to copy frames. Press and hold down the Option (Mac) or Alt (Win) key as you drag frames, Flash copies them to a new location.