Re: [Swftools-common] adding sound with Flash > 6

[Pablo Rodríguez]

Chris Pugh wrote:
> Pablo,
>
> You're not kidding!!    Not only is your script huge, but the
> resulting SWF is to boot!

Thanks for your reply and sorry for the delayed answer.

The presentation is big, since is a real presentation, but it was my 
fault to show this SWF and script, since the issue is much simpler.

> Are you really sure that,
>
>  -  using all those 'times[xx]=yyyyy' statements is the right way to go?

I think that is the best way I have to advance slides at a certain 
miliseconds. Actually I don't know a better way to do it (I'm afraid I'm 
not a programmer). If you had a better way to do it, I would be pleased 
if you can share it with me.

> -  embedding such a massive .wav file is sensible?

I embedded the wav file instead of the mp3 file, because swfc compresses 
wav audio with a better compression rate and a smaller output. Otherwise 
I couldn't upload the SWF outputs to my website, since my hosting 
provider only allows files >8000KB and the files with the mp3 embedded 
were 8.5MB in size.

> -  Why not convert to an MP3, then
>    loadSound that in instead?  This seems to work in all versions of
> the player that I've
>    tried thus far, and the added benefit for you, is that folks won't
> be in the land of nod
>   before your slide presentation even starts!  ;o)

This doesn't work for me. Using

        .sound audio file.mp3
        .action:
                snd = new Sound();
                snd.loadSound("audio",true);
        .end

doesn't find any audio to play. I wonder whether Sound.loadSound might 
work with audio files embedded in the SWF file itself.

But I'd appreciate the proper method for doing it if this works.

> Using '.stop' on it's own kills everything, stone dead.   '.stop
> audio' simply stops that
> particular sound object. ( check the Flash ActonScript Dictionary or
> similar refs ).

I didn't know that the .stop tag (and similar) were referenced in 
ActionScript guides.

> I'm not quite sure what you mean by loop .. that the sound repeats
> itself before the
> previous one is finished, maybe?

The loop is what happens using "version=7" and ".sound audio "sound.mp3" 
.stop audio". What happens it that the first half second is played and 
stopped again and again (I thought this was a loop).

> Why not separate out the sound play/stop sections
> from the rest to check your coding one more time?   I haven't even
> attempted to try your
> script ( for obvious reasons ), but the standard start/stop commands
> seem to work aok for me,
> when both attaching, and loading sounds.   Tested them quite
> thoroughly when writing a mini-audio
> player script.

The issue is not the ActionScript (or not the slide advancer), but how 
audio is embedded in versions above 6.

Here is a small script that shows the issue.

.flash bbox=800x600 filename="audio-embed.swf" version=7 fps=1

.sound audio "my_life_changed.mp3"
.stop audio

.action:
    snd = new Sound();
    snd.attachSound("audio");
.end

.frame 1
    .action:
        snd.start(snd.position/1000.0,0);
    .end

.frame 2

.end

And the bug seems to be that when Flash version is above 6 and sound is 
embedded and stopped as above, when SWF reaches frame 2, it restarts the 
sound or the presentation itself. This happens if a frame is defined 
after Sound.start, no matter whether it has contents or not. I happens 
with both Flash 7 and 10 for Linux, and a file that shows this can be 
found at http://ousia.justfree.com/audio-embed.swf (2.5MB).

> HTH a little.

Many thanks for your help,

Regards,


Pablo