Import

In “Flash CS4”, we have the possibility of importing and editing audio files like “MP3”, “AIFF”, “WAV”.

Just click the “File” in the menu bar, choose “Import” from the drop-down menu and click “Import to Library” or “Import to Stage.” What you choose does not matter, ‘Flash” will always enter the sound file in the “Library”.

Navigate to the file you want to import and click “Open”.

This places the file in the “Library”.

To add the file in your “Flash” movie, drag it from the “Library” on the “Stage” (1)

It may be sensible to place the “Sound” file in its own layer so that everything stays organized.
If the timeline has only 1 frame, it is difficult to see that something is on it but, when you add a number of frames, it is clear that there is a sound file in there (2).

 

 

Compress

Once you’ve imported a “Sound” file into “Flash”, you have the ability to compress it.

Double-click the icon for the “Sound” file in the “Library”.
This opens the “Sound Properties” dialog.

In the “Sound Properties” dialog box, we have some options to compress the sound.
Just click the downward pointing arrow next to the box “Compression”.

This opens a drop-down menu with five options.
The first is “Default”. ” Flash” will always uses this option when there is no setting for this “Sound” file.

The second option “ADPCM” and the fourth “Raw” are almost the same. They make little or no “Compression” on the “Sound”. So use these settings only for small noises.

The fifth option “Speech” will give the best results when the file contains “Speech”.

Third option “MP3” is the most common option. When you choose this option, first choose your options in the “Preprocessing” section for setting “Bitrate” and “Quality”.

Depending on the chosen “Bitrate”, “Flash” tells you how big your file may be after “Compression” and what percentage of the original this may be.
The higher the “Bitrate”, the better the sound, but the larger the file.
Then we find the “Quality” feature. This has to do with the quality of the “Ccompression”.
Click the “Test” button to hear how it will sound after “Compression”.
The implemented “Compression” will not affect the original because the file is only imported into “Flash”.

 

Synchronization and Effects

When the frame in which the “Sound” is located is selected, we open the “Properties Window” where we have several options.

The first option which I want to talk about is the Synchronization (“Sync”)(1).

Here we have four possibilities:

The first, “Event”, synchronizes “Sound” with an “Event”.

Eg: clicking a button or when the play button reaches the main frame containing the “Sound” file.

The file will be entirely independent of the “Timeline” play. This means that when the music is not over yet, and there is, for example a button pressed again, the music will be played a second time

The second is “Start”, which is the same as “Event”, except that when the “Sound” is already playing, no new instance of the “Sound” is played.

The third “Stop” stops the “Sound”.

And the fourth “Stream”, synchronizes the “Sound” for playback on a website.

“Flash” will force the animation to keep pace with the “Sound”. If the “Flash” movie is not fast enough, frames are skipped.

Streaming audio playback can never be longer than the length of the frames that it occupies.

Under the “Sync” we have a second option (2) which has two possibilities, “Repeat” or “Loop”. The first option allows the possibility of repeating the “Sound” for as many times you can set in the space provided (3). The second possibility is playing the sound in a loop, in other words, once the “Sound” ends, it starts again, and again, and again.

The last option we have is the “Effect” (4).

Clicking on the downward pointing arrow next to “Effect” gives us some options, that seem clear to me.

If you choose the “Custom” option, it will open the “Edit Envelope” dialog where you can set the volume for each channel.
The same dialog box opens when you click on the pencil icon next to the box “Effect”.

 

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