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).

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

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.

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 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();
}
ActionScript 3

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:
<code><pre>
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

Documentation