Including Sound in Your Flash MX Animation

• By Phillip Kerman
• Aug 30, 2002
• Sample Chapter is provided courtesy of Sams

This chapter is from the book
Sams Teach Yourself Macromedia Flash MX in 24 Hours

Introduction: The Impact of Sound in Animation

Sound really makes a movie come alive, but the power of audio is subtle. People often won't even notice or remember the sounds you use. But create a movie without sound (or with bad sounds), and the audience will notice right away. The effect of audio is often subconscious, and that's what makes it so powerful.

Regardless of why sound is useful, it's very important to use audio effectively because it's invariably the largest portion of your exported movie's file size. There's no reason to allow the audio to add more size than it has to. Unfortunately, there's no "Make the Audio Come out Good" button. The choice between good audio and a small file size is more of a battle than a balancing act. It's simply a matter of understanding the technology, and that's the goal of this hour.

In this hour you will

• Import and use sounds in keyframes

• Learn audio concepts like sample rate, frequency, and compression

• Apply tricks to minimize sound's impact on file size