Recipe 17.7. Changing the In and Out Points of a Sound

Problem

You want to change the points within a sound at which it begins and ends playing.

Solution

Open the Edit Envelope dialog box for the sound, and adjust the Time In and Time Out controls.

Discussion

Flash allows you to modify the in and out points for a sound by adjusting the Time In and Time Out controls within the Edit Envelope dialog box. Use the mouse to drag them to the points at which you wish the sound to start and end. When Flash plays the sound, it begins to play it immediately at the in point, and it stops it immediately at the out point. The SWF's file size is affected by the in and out points as well. Flash only exports the sound that is actually used in the movie, so if you adjust the in and out points to play less of the sound, the resulting SWF has a smaller file size.

If you find it convenient, you can import a single sound file into your Flash movie, and use the in-and-out point settings to create multiple sound instances within the movieeach containing different parts of the total sound. For example, you might happen to have a single MP3 file containing a voice-over that you have recorded. However, in your Flash movie you want to apply different parts of the voice-over to different sections, and you don't have a third-party editor that allows you to break the sound into multiple MP3 files before importing to Flash. In such a scenario, you could use the in and out points of the envelope settings to create multiple instances of the sound, but with each playing only a particular part.

See Also

Recipe 17.6