Flash Player stops animating when out of viewport

Question

I have several flash movies on a site. They all loop through an animation which lasts for approximately 15 seconds (but this is not set in stone). They all begin to play at the

Answer 1

If it is very important that each SWF progresses simultaneously, I would control it by JavaScript.

Assuming each SWF file is a simple MovieClip, something like this is how I would go about it:

Set the Document Class of each FLA file to this:

package {
    import flash.display.MovieClip;
    import flash.external.ExternalInterface;

    public class ExternalInterfaceControlledMC extends MovieClip {

        public function ExternalInterfaceControlledMC() {
            this.stop();
            if (ExternalInterface.available) {
                try {
                    ExternalInterface.addCallback("setFrame", jsSetFrame);
                } catch (error:Error) {
                    trace("An Error occurred:", error.message);
                }
            } else {
                trace("ExternalInterface is not available");
            }
        }

        private function jsSetFrame(value:String):void {
            var frameNumber = int(value) % this.totalFrames;
            this.gotoAndStop(frameNumber);
        }
    }
}

In the JavaScript, you would add a reference of each instance of the SWFs into an array, then use a timer to tell each SWF to progress to a frame number.

var swfElements; //Array
var currFrame = 1;

function onPageLoad() {
    //Init timer
    setInterval("progressFrame", 1000 / 30); //30 fps
}

function progressFrame() {
    for (var i = 0; i < swfElements.length; i++) {
        swfElements[i].setFrame(currFrame);
    }
    currFrame++;
}

Please beware that nothing about this code is tested and is only meant to be used to illustrate my train of thought.