Flash 101 - Part 6: The Final Countdown

Sound Bites

In case the pre-defined Flash sound effects aren't quite enough, you can also use Flash's built-in editing controls to further customize the sound clip. These editing controls are available via the Edit command in the Sound panel.

This looks complex, but it's actually far simpler than it looks. For example, to change the points at which the sound clip starts and stops playing, you simply need to drag the Time In and Time Out controls (the vertical gray bars between the left and right channel waveforms) to the appropriate points. This comes in particularly handy if you have a long sound clip, and only need to use a specific portion of it in your animation clip.

You can also change the volume levels for each channel by dragging the "envelope handles" - the hollow boxes you see in each channel - up or down. The greater the height between the two boxes, the higher the volume level, and vice-versa. Flash allows you to create up to eight different pairs of envelope handles for each sound clip.

Boom!

In addition to playing back sound files as the movie runs, Flash also allows you to play sounds in response to user action. The most common example of this is attaching sound files to Flash buttons, so that a different sound plays depending on button state. Take a look at this example, which demonstrates how you can play a different clip for "hover" and "click" events.

How did I do this? Not too hard, actually - create a Flash button, and add a new layer to the Timeline while in symbol-editing mode. Then simply insert keyframes corresponding to the Up, Over and Down states on this new layer, and drag different sound files from the Library for each state.

For example, if you'd like a specific sound to play when the mouse pointer moves over the button, you could insert a new keyframe for the Over state, and drag a sound file on to the Stage for that keyframe.

Make sure that you have Event selected for the Sync option on the Sound panel, and try it out.

You can add sound effects, and manipulate the sound clip with the editing control, here too.

Squeezing It All In

Flash typically exports all the sounds in a movie clip when you publish the movie. As the author of the movie, you have a fair amount of control over the export process, including the ability to set various compression options like sampling rate and quality.

All these options are available to you in the Sound Properties dialog box, which you can get to from the Properties shortcut menu that appears when you right-click the sound file in the Library. There are four compression options available: default (default settings), ADPCM, MP3 and raw (no compression). A test button allows you to preview the sound clip with your selected compression settings.

Some of the compression options allow you to specify bit rates and quality - remember that higher compression equals smaller files equals lower quality when experimenting with these settings.

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