Chapter 14 Sound

Sound  Sound can be used for narration, background soundtracks, rollover noises, and for sound effects to complement animations.  Flash has the ability to work with a variety of sound formats including.wav files,.aiff files, and.mp3 files.

Importing Sounds 1. File > Import > Import to Library 2. Click on the sound to import The sound files will be imported to the Library where you can play each file. Note: Sounds imported to the Stage also go into the Library and are not visible on the Stage.

Sound File Types WAVYes Yes- QuickTime 4 AIIF Yes MP3YesYes Sound Designer II No Yes- QuickTime 4 Sound Only QT Movies Yes- QuickTime4 Sun AU Yes-QuickTime4 Yes- QuickTime4 System 7 Sounds No Yes- QuickTime4 Sound File FormatWindowsMac

Compressing Sound  Compressing sound clips is very important in keeping your file size down. 1. Select a sound in the Library 2. Click Properties (or double-click the sound) 3. Click the Compression Drop-down menu. The five settings are default, ADPCM, MP3, Raw, and Speech. 4. Choose the Bit Rate (the lower the bit rate, the lower the sound quality and file size)and click Test 5. Test various bit rates settings to determine which one offers the lowest file size without sacrificing sound quality.

Sound Compression Types  Default – uses the global compressing settings in the Publish Settings dialog box  ADPCM – old method of compression from Flash 3. Sets compression for 8 and 16 bit sound data  MP3 – can be heard by users with Flash 4 and later Players. Offers the best compression rates and sound fidelity.  Raw – resamples the file at the specified rate, but will not perform compression.  Speech – uses a compression method designed for speech sound files.

Creating Background Sound with Sound Effects 1. Insert a layer for the sound effects. 2. Import the sound effect to the Library File>Import>Import to Library 3. Click in the first frame of the sound layer and drag the sound from the Library to the Stage. You won’t see the sound, but you can see it’s icon in the timeline. Each sound file must be tied to a keyframe. Make sure that you have a keyframe at the point where you want your sound to begin.

To set the behavior of a sound: 1. Select the frame with the sound 2. In Properties Inspector, set Sync to Event – sound will start playing when playhead hits the frame and continue until done independently of the Main Timeline. If a different instance of the same sound is started, the sounds will overlap. Start – causes the sound to begin playing as soon as the keyframe is reached, independently of the Main Timeline. If a Start sound is playing, no new instance of the sound can be played. Stream – forces the movie to keep pace with the sound. Stops the sound when the movie stops. Play only within the frames they occupy. Begin to play before the entire sound file is downloaded. Stop – stops the indicated sound.

Effects Fade in – Sound will start out soft and gradually become louder Fade out – Sound gradually becomes softer at the end Left/Right Channel – plays only the left or right channel Fade Left(Right) to Right(Left) – creates a panning effect Custom – allows you to create your own effects

Custom Sound Effects The Edit button in Properties Inspector allows you to create custom sound effects. Edit – This opens the Edit Envelope dialog box which allows you to edit the sound. You can move the left (top) and right (bottom) envelope handles to change the way the sound fades into the right and left speakers. You can also change the start point of the sound by dragging the Time In control to a desired location.

The Repeat/Loop Option  The Repeat option sets the number of times that the sound will repeat. The Loop option sets the sound to play continuously.  Be careful when you have Sync: Stream and Loop selected. Looping a Stream sound will cause Flash to add frames for each loop, increasing the file size significantly.

Controlling Sound with On/Off Buttons It is wise to add sound control by giving the user the option of stopping or playing your sound. 1. Insert a new layer, named buttons 2. Create a Play and Mute button and drag to the Stage. 3. Select the Mute button, 4. Open the Behaviors Panel, Windows > Behaviors 5. Add (+) Sound > Stop All Sounds

Controlling Sound with a Play Button 1. Insert a new layer named actions 2. In the Timeline, click and drag down on the Frame one past the end of the movie to select it on all layers at once. Press F5 to add a frame to each layer. 3. In the Timeline, select the last frame of the actions layer and press F7 to add a blank keyframe. Add the stop(); action 4. Select the Play button. 5. Add the action on(release){play;}

Controlling Sound cont. When the movie begins, the sound starts playing on Frame 1. When the playhead moves to the last frame, the playhead stops (because of the stop();), but the sound will continue to play because of the Sync Start. When you click Mute, the sound will stop playing (stop all sounds action) and the playhead will continue to stay at the last frame until you click the Play button. This is why you needed to add frames. When you click the Play button, the ActionScript instructs the playhead to play. Since its current position is in the stop at the last frame, it will loop back to frame 1 where the sound begins again.

Compression Settings for Narration Sound in Flash can be synchronized with animation such as narration or a sound effect that is synchronized with a character’s movement. (Play soundSync_Final.fla)

Compressing Speech After importing the sound into the Library, 1. Double-click on the sound to open the Sound Properties dialog box. 2. Change the Compression type to Speech. 3. Note the file size and Sample Rate and use the Test button to find an acceptable Sample Rate and file size.

Synchronizing Sound to Narration Cues After compressing each sound that you will add to your movie,  Select the Sounds layer and drag a sound clip to the Stage. You will see the waveform of the clip in the Timeline.  Double-click the layer icon of the Sounds layer and change the height to 200% so that you can see the waveform better.  Click in Frame 1 of the sounds layer. In Properties Inspector, select Sync: Stream and Repeat: 0. The Stream setting forces the movie to keep pace with the sound. If the movie can’t download its frames fast enough to keep pace, Flash forces it to skip frames.

Tip: Streaming & Looping  Be careful about setting your sound’s Sync to Stream and adding loops. Stream causes the file size to increase for each loop you specify. If you can avoid it, try not to loop sounds that are set to the Stream setting.

Adding Multiple Sounds  When adding multiple synchronized sound clips to the Sound layer, make sure that you add a blank keyframe (F7) between each new sound.  Make sure that the number of frames in the animation and the number of frames in the sound clip are the same. You may need to add frames to the animation if the sound clip is longer.

Synchronizing Sound and Animation  In the Sound layer, click in the first frame of the overlapping sound and drag to the right so that the entire sound clip can be heard.  Click and drag the last keyframe in the animation layer to coincide with the end of the Sound clip. This makes the animation the same length as the sound clip.  Now, to move the next layer over, click on the layer to select and drag to the right.  Continue until no overlapping occurs.

Note I found it MUCH easier and faster to simply fix the overlap problem as I added the sound. As I added each sound clip, if the number of frames was longer than that of the animation for that layer, I clicked on the last keyframe of the animation and dragged it to coincide with the last keyframe of the sound. Since the animation was already created, I also had to select the entire next layer and drag it to the right, one past the last keyframe of the layer that I was working on.

Using PreMade Buttons  Flash has a library of pre-made buttons that you can use for quick animations.  To access these buttons, Window> Other Panels> Common Libraries > Buttons. This opens the Common Library.  To add a button to your current Library, simply double-click on it.

Controlling Animation & Sound with Stop & Play Buttons 1. Add a Button layer to your animation. 2. Click in frame 1 on the Button layer and drag a Stop and a Play button from the Library to the Stage. 3. Select the Stop button and add the action, on(release) { stop();} 4. Select the Play button and add the action, on(release) {play();} If Sync is set to stream, the sounds will stop when the playhead stops.

Adding Volume Control  In this exercise, you will learn how to add a volume control so that the user can adjust the volume of the sound.  Be sure to view the volumeCntrl.mov