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FLASH Sounds

© Umais Ahmad

Sounds have a very pleasant effect on human mind. A movie without sounds looks very dull no matter how excellent animation it has. One thing should be kept in mind while applying sounds that sound and animation should go side-by-side. I have seen some flash movies where it seems that sound and animation are playing separately. There seems no concurrency between sound and animation. For example it is preferable to use fast music behind war games. On the other hand fast music behind games like Alladin has a very ugly effect. What is the difference between Sound and Music? Music is a melody or tune that has a very pleasant effect on human mind while sound may be a noise, echo or hum. In this article, we shall learn two types of sounds used in flash, i.e. Streaming and Event.

Streaming Sounds

Streaming sounds play continuously as long as the Playhead remains on the portion of the layer containing sound. As soon as the Playhead crosses the layer portion containing sound, sound stops playing. Where we use streaming sounds? You might have visit flash sites where first loading scene appears in which movie downloads from the source. This is the right place for streaming sounds. The streaming sound continues to play as long as the loading scene doesn't end. Actually we use streaming sounds when we associate certain music to a movie clip. Using streaming sounds ensures that sound will stop playing on completion of scene. In using streaming sounds, flash forces the animation to keep pace with streaming sound. If flash fails to display animation quickly enough then it skips certain frames to avoid disturbance in sound. Above is a movie we are going to create so follow steps one by one.

STEP 1:

Add two layers and name them 'Animation' and 'Sound' respectively. In the first 20 frames of Animation layer, create any animation.

STEP 2:

Import certain sound file saved on your hard disk by choosing File > Import. Where this file will go? Recall that sound is a symbol and symbols go into the library.

STEP 3:

Click frame number 10 of Sound layer and choose Insert > Frame. Click frame number 1 and choose Window > Panels > Sound. Choose imported sound from sound pull-down menu. Choose Stream from Synchronization. Now the timeline should look like as shown. Click frame number 1 and press ENTER to play the movie.

Button States

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