Setting and animating sound properties

Once you've attached a sound file to the timeline or a rollover, you can set its properties and animate it.

To set sound properties:

1. In the Timeline window, select the sound you want to work with.
2. In the Properties palette, change the Pan and Volume settings.
• Pan shifts the audio signal between the left and right channels.
• Volume controls how loudly or softly the sound plays. Higher values result in louder sound.
3. In the Properties palette, select the type of sound you want:
• Event Sound downloads the sound completely before playing it, but stores the sound in memory so that it can be reused.
• Solo Event Sound sets the sound as an event sound, but sets a flag to stop playing all other instances of this sound (not other sounds) when the sound is played. This prevents a chorus of beeps, for example, if a button is clicked several times in a row.
• Streaming Sound downloads and plays the sound as it occurs in the animation, rather than waiting for the entire sound to download before it begins playing. This option is useful if you have large sound files that you don't want users to wait for before playing. Streaming sound also forces the Flash player to drop animation frames in order to try to keep pace with the audio data.

To animate sound properties:

1. In the Timeline window, expand the sound you want to animate.
2. Expand the Object Attributes heading.
3. Move the current-time marker where you want the sound property (pan or volume) to begin.
4. Click the Pan or Volume stopwatch to activate that sound property.
5. In the Properties palette, specify the Pan or Volume (whichever property you are animating) settings for the sound.
6. Move the current-time marker to another point in time.
7. In the Properties palette, change the Pan or Volume settings for the sound.