Working with Sound
Importing sounds should be done by File > Import > Import to Library since this is where they will be called from.
This will open a dialog box for you to import any form of multimedia. There are two nice things about this dialog box:
- You can import multiple sounds, or other types of files, at a single time if you want.
- You can choose “All sound types”. This will find all of the different types of audio files in the current folder. So you are not limited to just MP3, or just WAV, etc.
You can drag a sound to a layer on the time line. This will have the sound play when the playback head reaches that place on the timeline. (Note: I could not drag like the book says on Windows. I had to go to the property panel and select the sound for the frame.)
Sound in the Property Panel
Sound has several properties that can be adjusted when they are in a time line. For example:
- Fade sound (left to right, in, out, etc) – note: this only works well if you are sure they user is going to have a stereo system. Most of the time we use mono sound so the files are not too big.
- How to play sound (stream, event, etc)
- How long to play the sound (loop, once, repeat “x” times)
You can edit the effect to clip the end of the sound if need be.
Adding Sound to Buttons
You can apply sounds to the button time line to have audio play when the user rolls over, or clicks a button.
In most cases button sounds should be short.
Start and Event as the Sound Sync options are similar. Event will allow the stream to play if it is already playing. Start will only play if the audio is not already playing. Stream allows you to synchronize the playback with the time line.
Flash Video
Flash is still the most common method for delivering video over the web. Even in cases where HTML5 is being used, Flash is often used as a backup method for older, and/or incompatible browsers.
You can either embed a Flash Video file, or keep it separate, and load it at run time. Usually people load the file at run time so that the initial Flash download isn’t too large.
Adobe Media Encoder will encode many video formats so they can play in the Flash player. From here you can load your video format, and export it using a setting that is appropriate for your end user, changing quality, size, etc.
To import video select File > Import > Import Video — this will bring up a special window which will allow you to change the imported settings.
Working with Sound & Audio in Flash was originally found on Access 2 Learn
