Determining the instance at a particular depth

To determine the instance at particular depth, use MovieClip.getInstanceAtDepth(). This method returns a reference to the instance at the specified depth.

The following code combines getNextHighestDepth() and getInstanceAtDepth() to determine the movie clip at the (current) highest occupied depth on the root Timeline.

var highestOccupiedDepth = _root.getNextHighestDepth() - 1;
var instanceAtHighestDepth = _root.getInstanceAtDepth(highestOccupiedDepth);

For more information, see MovieClip.getInstanceAtDepth().