by
David Nagel
Executive
Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com
As you probably
well know, it's virtually impossible to synch audio in a Flash
file that's distributed on the Web. Even if you can get it to
synch up in your own browser consistently, chances are very few
people in your audience can. This is one of the reasons so many
Flash designers resort to audio loops as accompaniment to their
presentations. I don't like loops.
The problem
is especially severe for users of Adobe LiveMotion, which doesn't
have anywhere near the scriptability of Flash for taking care
of problems like this. So here's a quick and dirty trick for getting
the job done.
First of all,
this is not going to fix any problems with lip synch This is a
fix for simply ending the presentation's visual and aural components
together. In the first case, we have the problem of audio tracks
outlasting the animation. In the second and more common case,
the audio ends well before the graphics. There's no particularly
pretty solution to this problem. You either cut off the end of
your audio, or you cut off the end of your animation. But even
these rather ugly options can be a little bit tricky.
We'll take
the problem of the audio ending prior to the animation. As you
know, you can't attach behaviors to audio files in LiveMotion.
So you have to do it in a roundabout way. Note: As always with
LiveMotion, you should be working from scratch. Too many changes
to an existing file can corrupt it permanently.
1. Place your
audio file. (For this example, mine is called "Crambone,"
which I will use for future reference.)
2. Create
a small object, and call it "Trigger." Change Trigger's
opacity to zero in the Opacity palette.
3. In your
timeline, select both Trigger and Crambone, and group them together
using the Object > Group (Command-G) command. For purposes
of this example, we'll rename the group "Audio Group"
to avoid confusion.
4. Expand
Audio Group and select Trigger. Drag its timeline in point all
the way to the end so that it uses only a single frame in the
animation, which should be the frame corresponding with the last
frame of Crambone (as in the picture below).
5. Still with
Trigger selected, go to your Rollover palette. Create a new custom
state called "Bye."
