Re: FLASH: problems looping sound

[Marc Hoffman, Poison Dart Frog Media]

At 09:08 AM 10/08/1999 , you wrote:

>i have made a movie containing some sound clips(loops).

>i want one sound to loop 20 times,and others once or twice while looping 

>the first one.they're all in the same layer.

>it never plays the same way twice,and cuts off before the movie is 

>finished.I put the last keyframe of the movie just where the sound stops 

>looping,but it gets there only once in a while(both in browser and test movie).

>can i do anything about this and is there a limit for number of loops?



There is probably a limit to the number of loops, but not one that you'd 

need to worry about. I often use 999.


To lock the sound to the animation you must set the sound to "stream." Then 

the animation frames will always play with the sound frames, even if Flash 

must drop animation frames to keep up.


I have not found a way to exactly synchronize instances of separate sounds 

in Flash. For example, you'll never get a snare drum loop to synchronize to 

the beat of a cowbell loop. If you need sounds to be tightly synchronized, 

you must mergre them into one sound file using a sound editor. On the other 

hand, you could have a drum track and overlay a legato flute melody (long, 

non-percussive notes) and it could sound fine.


Sometimes (depending on the kind of sound) it works to have two loops of 

the same sound. One loops many times and has no fade. You make this one 

play almost to the end of the movie or scene, and near the end you use a 

Sound Stop action to cut it off. A few frames before that, you start the 

other loop of the same sound, but have it fade in quickly and then fade 

out. This can give the effect of a fade to the first loop, but only if the 

sound is of the sort that can play on top of itself without sounding 

terrible. Ambient sounds suchs as waves or wind would work well like this. 

Drum loops would not.


Hope this helps. Flash is not strong on audio, even with MP3 compression 

there's a lot it cannot do that would be simple in Director or Quicktime or 

other formats.




Marc Hoffman

marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com (mailto:marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com)

.

My Flash Portfolio: <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/sampler>

(featured in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn)



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