- Introduction: The Impact of Sound in Animation
- Importing Sounds
- Task: Import a Sound
- Using Sounds
- Task: Add Sounds and Sound Effects to an Animation
- Controlling Quality and File Size
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Task: Add Sounds and Sound Effects to an Animation
In this task we add sounds to a sample movie. Follow these steps:
Download the file "keyframing.fla" from my Web site. The address is: http://www.phillipkerman.com/teachyourself/sourcefiles/keyframing.fla. In Flash, open this file and then press Enter to watch the animation. Also, open the Sounds common library from Window, Common Libraries, Sounds.
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Open the Library for Keyframing by selecting Window, Library (or pressing Ctrl+L). Position the two open libraries so they appear side by side or dock them together as in Figure 10.8.
Drag the following sound items from the Sounds library to the Keyframing file's library: Beam Scan, Smack, Visor Hum Loop.
Now these sounds will be available to your file, but we need to put them into keyframes. Let's first make a new layer just for the sounds. Select Insert, Layer (don't worry if it puts the layer under all others—it doesn't really matter where it appears). Name this layer "Background Music".
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Select the first frame of Background Music and look at the Properties panel. From the Sound drop-down list, select Visor Hum Loop. To make it loop continuously, type a bunch of nines (99999999999) into the Loops field. See Figure 10.9.
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Figure 10.8 Position the Sounds common library next to the library for the Keyframing sample file so we can transfer sounds.
Figure 10.9 When you type a high number into the Loops field, the sound will play continuously.
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Select Control, Test Movie. The sound loops nicely, and it adds a bit of drama to our movie. Let's add some incidental sound effects.
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Select Insert, Layer and name the layer "Sound Effects". We're going to insert a sound effect right when the X smacks the M, which happens at about frame 17. In frame 17 of Sound Effects select Insert, Keyframe (or press F6).
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Select the keyframe you just inserted and from the Properties panel select Smack from the Sound drop-down list. Just leave the default settings (Event Sync and 0 Loops) because we don't want this sound to loop.
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Select Control, Test Movie. The Smack effect is good, but the hum keeps humming throughout the whole movie.
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To stop the hum, select frame 29 of the Sound Effects layer and select Insert, Keyframe (or press F6). Make sure you're selecting just this keyframe, and then use the Properties panel to insert the Visor Hum Loop again, but this time select Sync Stop to cause any instances of this sound to stop. (You can Test Movie again to see and hear the results.)
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Finally, let's add a sound effect for when the sparkle animates. At frame 30 of Sound Effects select Insert, Keyframe (or press F6), select just this keyframe, and then insert the Beam Scan sound. Test Movie and it should be measurably better than the silent version. By the way, these sounds only add about 3K to the total file size! One thing you can try is to remove the excess silence at the start of the Beam Scan sound. Just select frame 30 in the Sound Effects layer and press Edit... on the Properties panel. Then you can cut sound off the beginning by dragging the Time In marker in the Edit Envelope dialog box (shown in Figure 10.7 earlier).
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