You can do minimal sound editing in Flash once you upload a MP3, WAV, or AIFF file, but if you’re truncating the clip, the file size of the original file will be reflected when you publish the movie. It’s best to have the audio edited to as close as you’re going to use it before you import sound into Flash. Audacity is a free software that allows you to minimally edit sound, but for Mac users, we already have iMovie at our disposal to cut sound clips to be used in Flash.
If iMovie is not in your dock, you can find it in your Applications folder.
Create a new project.
Import a song or some sounds that you wish. You can overlap up to 3 channels, but most likely, you’ll only use one. If you click on the audio icon, it will bring up your iTunes files by default. Here you can preview songs, then drag one to a blank channel below. Or use Shift – Control – i to import a sound. You can also drag and drop a sound file from your desktop. You can also record sound to this space if you have a microphone that connects you your computer. Now you have the sound file ready to be edited.
Editing Sound Levels
Go to View > Show Audio Clip Volume Levels (Shift – Control – L) and View > Show Audio Waveforms (Shift – Control – L). With the volume levels visible, you see a strait line across the channel in the timeline. You can click anywhere on that and drag it up (louder) or down (softer) to change the sound levels. If you make a mistake, choose the point so that it’s yellow and go to Edit > Clear.
Cutting Music Clips
The playhead is the down-pointing arrow that shows you the point in time within the sound file. Place this where you want the file cut and go to Edit > Split Selected Audio Clip At Playhead (Control – T). Then you can select and delete the excess bits. Make sure your sound clip starts at 0:00:00, or there will be some silence added to the beginning of the clip when you save it.
Saving An iMovie file As a Sound File
When you are ready to save, go to File > Share (Shift – Control – E). Choose the Quicktime Icon at the top of the drop down menu. Then, from the drop down, choose “Expert Settings.” Click Share. A new window pops up, but before you save, choose “Sound to AIFF” or “Sound to WAV,” from the Export drop down menu.
You are done. Now you can import the sound file to your Flash library. Please check back for posts on handling sound with ActionScript. Ciao for now!
