Adding Sounds

The art of combining sounds applies very much to Flash. A poorly mixed movie instantly lowers the quality of the movie the same way Billy Crystal would if he was placed in the lead role of the next Terminator movie.

There are two types of sounds in Flash, stream sounds and event sounds. Streaming sounds synchronise to the timeline and start playing when enough data has been downloaded. This make it ideal for playing on a website. An event sound is different insofar as it must completely download before it starts playing. The sound must also be actively stopped.

Modifying Sound Properties
Sound, like, images has degrees of compression and also a sampling rate. Both of these affect the size and quality of the sound in your final movie. You can control these sound variables by using the Sound properties dialog box (Select your sound from your library then Choose Option> Properties from the options menu in the Library Title Bar, alternatively you can double click on the relevant sound in the library). If you want to affect all sounds, go to the Publish Settings dialog box (Choose File> Publish Settings and Select Flash tab).

Importing Sounds
This involves creating a layer for the sound, assigning the sound, and setting options in the Sound panel of the Frame Properties dialog box.

Firstly choose File> Import. You will see that you can import either AIFF or WAV sounds into Flash. After importing the sounds press Ctrl-L to bring up your Library and you will see your sounds there, notice how the icon is different to other symbols like bitmaps, button and movie clips.

Sounds are like symbols, one copy can be reused over and over again.

Advanced: You will find when you experiment with sounds that they use lot of disk space and RAM. As a rule use 22kHz 16-bit mono. However, you can import 8 or 16-bit using 11, 22, or 44kHx sample rates. You can convert to lower rates on export but you can't go up. (like jpeg compression)

Note: Sounds recorded not in multiples of 11 kHz (such as 8, 48, or 96 kHz)are resampled when imported into Flash causing the sound to play lower or higher than originally recorded.

Adding Sound to your Movie
Now that you've imported your sound you can now add it to your movie. Think of a layer as a sound channel. You can have a many as you want and they'll combine when you play the movie. Choose Insert> Layer to create a layer for your sound. Click on the frame you want the sound to start and insert a keyframe. Choose Modify> Frame and select the sound tab in the Frame Properties dialog box. Now choose the sound from the drop-down box.

Advanced: Many designers choose to place their background loops/sounds on a separate .swf file which is then loaded into their main timeline when it starts up. This allow them to stop and start music at will. Short sound fx however are best left in your main movie for ease of control.

Synchronising Your Sound
Next you have to select what kind of synchronisation you want. Event syncs the sound to, you guessed it, an event. It will play from it's starting keyframe to the end, totally independent of the timeline even if the movie stops.

Start is similar however if a sound is playing and a new instance of that sound is started the old one will stop. The Stop option will stop a sound.

Stream will sync the sound to the animation. Ideal for websites. If Flash fails to draw a frame in time it will skip that frame in order to keep up with the sound. Stream sounds will stop when the movie stops and can not play longer that the frames it has been placed in.

Advanced: To stop all the sounds from playing use the action Stop All Sounds.

Next you need to enter a Loop value to specify how many times to want the sound to loop. For continuous play enter a very high number. I tend to use 999.

Have a play with the Sound Options. They are pretty self explanatory.

Quick Reference : Adding Sound

To Import a Sound

1. Choose File> Import
2. Select File
3. Click OK

To Add a Sound to a Movie

1. Choose Insert> Layer
2. Choose Insert> Keyframe
3. Choose Modify> Frame
4. Select Sound Tab
5. Select Sound from Drop-down box

Access Sound Properties Dialog Box

1. Choose Option> Properties from the options menu in the Library Title Bar

Access Publish Setting Dialog Box

1. Choose File> Publish Settings and Select Flash tab

Modify the Sound Attributes in Frame Properties

1. Choose Modify> Frame and Select Sound Tab.
2. Event plays sound independent to timeline.
3. Start will stop old instance of sound when this new instance plays.
4. Stream will sync animation to sound, good for websites.
5. Loop will determine how many times sound will loop. Note: Place high value for continuous play.
6. Indicate Sound Options (optional)

sir butangan bah ug sounds ang among project sa midterm?f butangan, magdubbing bah?....

Sir, unsaon man pagputol and sound? unsaon nimu pagedit and sound imo icut ang sound..?

hahay.......