Adding Audio Using Flash

Visit our Royalty Free Music library for Flash Music Loops

How To Add Royalty Free Music and Loops To A Flash Movie

Flash is widely used on the internet to show movies or play audio. The Flash format is very versatile and is also compatable with nearly all web browsers. Royalty free music is perfect to use as music to add to your flash movie, here's how to do it.

Firstly you will need to open Flash to import an audio file into your Flash project . The instructions here assume you are using Flash 8, but other versions are quite similar. Flash will recognise .aif .wav and .mp3 music file formats. For seamless audio loops it's important to import a file that has already been prepared to loop seamlessly, such as the .wav files we supply on www.royalty-free.tv. Don't try to use an mp3 file to loop seamlessly, this doesn't work since mp3 files will not loop without an audible 'click' at the end/start looping point - very annoying!

Importing An Audio File

To import your chosen sound file, from the main menu choose file>import>import to library. In the dialogue box that appears, choose the file you want to import and click it. If you're on a Mac choose Import, on Windows choose Open. This will import your chosen audio music file into the Library of your project. The next step is to add this audio to the timeline of your movie. First, you need to create a new layer in the timeline, click the Insert New Layer icon to do this. It's a good idea to name this new layer "sound" by double-clicking the layer name and typing in the new name. Then click on your chosen sound file in the Library and drag/drop it onto your new 'sound' layer, and you'll see it appear in the first frame. You can preview your movie by selecting Control>Test Movie.

Looping A Royalty Free Music File

If your imported sound file is designed to loop seamlessly to create a continuous soundtrack, you will need to enable this option. Click on the sound file or royalty free music file you want to loop, then look at the Properties Inspector. You'll see a menu option "sync", to the right you can set the loop options to "loop". Some people are confused about exactly what a 'loop' is - it's simply an audio file that's usually only a few seconds long, that when it plays to the end it can instantly restart from the beginning again, without you being able to hear the join. In this way you can have a continuous music background, while using only a small music file.

Choosing Audio Quality For Your Movie

To improve the loading speed of your movie, you will probably want to compress the sound file to reduce the file size, and you can do this within Flash by clicking on the Sound icon in the library. On the pop-up menu that appears select Properties, which will open the Sound Properties dialogue box. It's worth experimenting with different settings, but as a rough guide MP3 is a good option to use - the lower the number you select for bit rate the smaller the file, but the poorer the sound quality will be. If you want your music to sound good, try selecting 128 bit. This will give reasonable quality stereo sound, almost CD quality. 128-bit is the level we use on this site for our audio previews when you click the play buttons for our royalty free music previews, so this may be a good starting point.

Royalty Free Music Loops for Flash

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