Flash CS3 sound tutorial

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Overview

This is part of Flash CS3 tutorials. Daniel K. Schneider 18:13, 9 September 2007 (MEST). It's not very complete so far ...

Learning goals

Learn how to use sound with Flash 9 (CS3) components

Learn a little bit of Action Script 3

Prerequisites

Flash CS3 desktop tutorial

Flash drawing tutorial

flash layers tutorial

flash button tutorial

Moving on

The Flash article has a list of other tutorials.

Flash Video component tutorial

Quality

This text should technical people get going and may not be good enough for self-learning beginners. It can be used as handout in a "hands-on" class. That is what Daniel K. Schneider made it for...

Level

It aims at beginners. More advanced features and tricks are not explained here.

Learning materials

Grab the various *.fla files from here:

http://tecfa.unige.ch/guides/flash/ex/sound-intro/ (not yet sorry)

Basics

Sound types

Flash can handle several sound formats:

• AAC (Advanced Audio Coding):
• AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) - Mac only ?
• MP3 (Moving Pictures Expert Group Level-Layer-3 Audio)
• AVI (Audio Video Interleave)
• WAV (Waveform Audio Format)
• AU (Sun)

(Some formats may depend on whether QuickTime is installed)

Import sounds into the swf file

Background sounds

To import (small) sound files

• File->Import->Import To library

Attaching sound to a frame

Create a new layer and import sound to a frame

• You can attach sound to any frame via the properties panel
• Select a sound from the sound pull-down menu
• Configure it in the same panel

Configuration of sounds

In the configuration panel you can change certain parameters and also edit a bit.

• Sync: Sound is synchronized with the timeline. You may have to extend sound time line. Hit F5 somewhere.
• Event: Sound plays by itself until its done (independently of the rest)
• Start: Will only play the sound once.
• Stop : Will stop the sound (therefore include it before or after a sound frame.
• Stream: Will try to match the length of sound until the end of the animation.

To use it

As mentioned above, you can add sound to frames. Then jump around in frames (as you would do in slide show)

Editing sounds

Getting the Edit Envelope editor

• Click in the sound layer.
• In the Properties Panel, Click the Edit ... button next to the Effect: field
• This opens the Edit Envelope editor.

Manipulation of the sound envelope

• You can drag left/right Time In and Time Out controls in middle pane
• You can drag down volume controls (black lines on top). Click to insert a new distortion point.

Load and play sounds with ActionScript

ActionScript 2 example

This starts playing sound on load

var mySound:Sound= new Sound();
mySound.loadSound("track.mp3" , true);
mySound.onLoad = function() {
mySound.start();
}

Embedded ActionScript 3

Insert this kind of code with F9 in the same frame where you want to use it with other code.

To load a sound from an external file

var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("track.mp3");
var your_sound:Sound = new Sound();
your_sound.load(request);

To play it:

your_sound.play();

To play 5 loops:

your_sound.play(0,5);

To stop all sounds (this is a static method, just insert the line as is).

SoundMixer.stopAll();

For an example, see Flash drag and drop tutorial, flash-cs3-drag-and-drop-matching-3.*

Links

Sound textures to download

• SimplyTheBest.net - MP3 sounds. This is a nice site. Ads are not annoying.

Documentation

• Working with sound (Adobe), Using sounds, some AS2, no AS3

• Sound (Adobe AS3 reference)

• SoundMixer (Adobe AS3 reference)