AS3: Embedding Sounds in FlashDevelop

Embedding Sounds in FlashDevelop


Embedding sounds in an AS3 movie will give fast access with no preloading. As an alternative, the same sounds can be used in multiple movies. In order to update sounds without rebuilding your project, or to save space by using the same images in multiple movies, you may want to also check out a tutorial on how to load sounds from an external source here.

The Set Up:

• Get yourself a soundclip. Flash supports many types of embedded sound including:


• AAC, AIFF, MP3, AVI, WAV, AU


• Create a new AS3 project space in FlashDevelop.


• Right click on your "src" folder, in the dropdown menu click "add >> new folder"


• Change the name of your New Folder to snd.


• Now add your soundclip to the project in one of two ways:


• A) Find your soundclip in the windows filesystem and drag it directly into your project and drop it on your "snd" folder.


• B) Right click the "snd" folder, click "add >> existing item", select the soundclip you want to add.

Note: Creating the "snd" folder is not necessary, it is just good to get in the habit of organizing your projects. Alternately you could just store everything directly in the "src" folder.

Getting your image in the movie:

1. Add the Embed tag:
   You need to create an embed tag in order to make your soundclip accessible to the movie:

   [Embed(source='snd/sound.mp3')]

   "snd" corresponds to the folder the clip is stored in, and "sound.mp3" should be replaced with the name of your file.



2. Create a class for the Embed tag:
   In order to use the embed tag, a class variable must be defined directly below it. This class variable is instantiated to create the embedded sound. The signature of a variable used for embedding can vary, the example below is a class variable and should be added after the opening brackets of your class, before any function definitions:

   [[Embed(source='snd/sound.mp3')]
   
   private const embeddedSound:Class;



3. Create an instance an embedded sound:
   In order to create a useable object from a soundclip class, you simply create a new instance if the soundclip's class, and cast it to an instance of Sound. This code should go after the //entry point comment in your AS3 project.

   var soundClip:Sound = new embeddedSound(); // Create an instance of the embedded sound



4. Play the sound:
   All that is left is to play the sound. This code can be inserted directly below the code from step 3:

   soundClip.play(); // Play the sound

.zip source for this project can be found here