2 3FLASH CURRICULUM

LESSON 4: SOUND

OBJECTIVES

In this lesson, you’ll learn to:

• add a background sound to your Flash movie• add sounds that will play when buttons are clicked

CONTEXT

Sounds can be used for different purposes: to create ambience or mood (music is especially useful), to

add realism (realistic sound might include specific effects, such as a door closing, as well as background

sounds, such as the murmer of a crowd), to communicate meaning (dialog and voice-over), and to

improve the interactivity of multimedia (buttons which make a clicking sound when pressed are one

example). In this lesson, we’ll use sound for ambience and for interactivity.

You can add sound to your Flash movie in a number of different ways. Sound can play in a loop along

with the animation, or it can be synchronized to specific frames of the movie. You can also attach

sounds to a particular button, so that the sound clip plays when the button is clicked.

When exporting a Flash movie with sound, it’s important to control the quality and compression of the

sound. Sound files can take up a good deal of file space and thus slow downloading time for your

Flash movies.

While Flash provides some simple sound editing controls, if you want to perform complex editing you’ll

need dedicated software such as Sound Edit 16.

EXERCISES

ADDING SOUNDS TO THE TIMELINE

Add a Sound from the Library

In the first exercise, you’ll create a sound that will play along with the Timeline of the movie. If yourant.fla file is not already open, open it now. Select the Animation scene for this lesson.

1 . Choose Libraries > Sounds to open aselection of sound clips. This libraryshould be in your Macromedia Flashapplication folder.

2 . Create a new layer on the Timeline, andlabel it “Background Sound.”

3 . In the Sound Library, locate the soundcalled “Beam Scan.” Select it in thelower pane of the Library window. Awaveform image of the sound shouldappear in the top pane (Figure 4-1).

4 . To preview the sound, click the Playbutton, which is the the rightward arrowat the top of the Sounds Libraryw i n d o w .

Figure 4-1The Sounds Library, and a new Timeline

layer with the Beam Scan sound.

FLASH CURRICULUM2 4

5 . Drag the waveform image from the Library onto the Stage. Notice that Flash places the waveforminto the Background Sound layer, because that is the current layer. Sounds must start onkeyframes, so if you wish to add another sound you’ll need to add a keyframe to the timeline first.

6 . Using the Controller, play your animation to hear the added sound.

ADDING SOUND TO BUTTON

Adding sound when a button is clicked is often a good way to improve the responsiveness of your Web page.

Add Sounds to the STOP and START Buttons

To add sound to a button, you must edit the button symbol from your movie Library. You’ll add a soundto the START and STOP buttons; the sound will play when the button is clicked.

1 . Choose Window > Library to open the library attached to your ant.fla file.2 . Locate the STOP button and double-click it to launch the Symbol Properties dialog.3 . Click the E d i t button at the bottom of the dialog box to enter Symbol Editing mode.4 . In the Timeline, add a new layer, and call it “Sounds.”5 . Since you want the sound to play only when the button is clicked, you should attach the sound to

the Down frame. Click on this frame, and choose Insert > Keyframe. Remember that sounds muststart on keyframes.

6 . In the Sounds Library, locate a sound which you’d like to add to the button. This example uses thesound called “Smack,” but feel free to preview a number of sounds and select one you like.

7 . Drag the waveform image of the sound you’vechosen onto the Stage. The waveform willappear in the Timeline (Figure 4-2).

8 . Double-click on the waveform in the Downframe. This brings up the Frame Propertiesdialog. Click on the S o u n d tab. Here you canedit the sound, and control its looping andeffects. Click cancel to exit.

9 . Next, you should add sound to the STARTbutton. Select it from the Library, and gothrough the same process as you did for theSTOP button. You can use the same sound orchoose a different one.

1 0 . Choose Edit > Edit Movie to return to your animation. Check the Control menu to make sure EnableButtons is on. Then, use the Controller to play your movie and test the button sounds you’ve added.

1 1 . Save your work.

MORE EXERCISES TO SHARPEN YOUR SKILLS

• Using the Sound tab in the Frame Properties dialog, try different ways of editing your sounds.See the Flash Help Topics for more information about cropping, fading, panning, looping, andvarious sync options.

• Try extending the sound timeline and adding several different sounds one after the other. Note how the placement of keyframes affects where sounds begin and end.

• Experiment with mixing several layers of sound. Try some quick-and-dirty mixing techniquesusing the controls in the Frame Properties Sound tab.

Figure 4-2 The sound waveform is displayed in the

Down frame of the Sounds layer.