SOUND: Importing Sound Clips

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PUTTING SOUND INTO FLASH MOVIES

Flash has great support for audio but no internal way to record or create sounds. It just means you'll have to provide the sound clips, but Flash can optimize them for the Web quite nicely.

There are two steps to include sound in your Flash documents, first, you need to import the sound to your library. Second, you need to decide where and how to use it. Flash can import digital audio in the following file formats. MP3, WAV, AIF, and AU.

MP3 files are not the best to start with since they are most likely compressed already, and that could result in poor sound quality. However, you will be exporting most likely, in the MP3 format. Music you own on CD can be recorded in WAV format for Flash, be aware, you may have to contend with copyright infringements. Click the Icon below to view a Sound Imported to the Timeline.

TASK:IMPORT A SOUND

1. In a new file, select File > Import... and then select an audio file to import.
2. After selecting an audio file and clicking OK in the Import dialog box, your sound file has been imported and now resides in the Library. Just open the Library window (Ctrl+L) to see it. It is now available for any of your movies.



3. Your sound should be put into a separate layer of your timeline; you can drag it from the Library window. Test the movie and you should hear the sound.

You can drag a sound directly from another Flash movie's Library that you own. So, that makes life a whole lot easier; mixing and matching Library items in your movies!

Flash ships with an assortment of Sound Files that you can use in your movies. Find these files in the Common Libraries > Sounds. If you open both Library windows, you can drag items from the Common Library and put them into your Current Library.

There's really only one place you can use sound in Flash, and that's in keyframes, we can cover adding Sounds to Buttons in another chapter.

The Properties panel is the best way to see which sounds have been added to which keyframe. The watch out here is that Timelines can be confusing for some people, just take your time and inspect the keyframes closely, and you'll see where the sounds start and finish.

Here are some terms to get to know:

Sync Settings

Event is the default setting and, generally, the best performance choice. When Event is chosen, sounds will start to play when the keyframe is reached and keep playing until they're done.
When to use? Event should be used for any short incidental sounds--such as rollover sounds. Also, for all sounds that don't require critical synchronization, such as, background music.

Start is almost the same as Event, except that multiple instances of the same sound are prevented. With Event, a sound can be layered on top of itself. (Kind of a stereo effect.)
When to use? If you only need one sound that would play at a time, however, in most cases, Event is still a better choice.

Stop is the same as saying, "Stop this sound if it's playing."
When to use? This setting is very powerful. It gives you a way to stop specific sounds. If you are layering sounds, this is a good way to stop certain sounds when they reach the end of their keyframe.

Stream causes the sound to remain perfectly synchronized with the Timeline. The only thing to remember, is that you will have to have enough frames in the Timeline to accommodate the length of the sound. Importantly, Steam sounds are previewed as you "scrub," making the process of synchronizing audio to images possible.
When to use? This is best left to synchronizing graphics with sound, perhaps character animation when you wish to have the lips look like they are speaking the recorded words. This might be just a bit on the difficult side for beginners with Flash, but you'll get there!

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