Sound in the Properties Inspector

After you have dropped the sound on the stage and can see it in the timeline, you can access its properties by selecting the frame, opening the Properties Inspector, and choosing Window, Properties. The Properties Inspector will look similar to Figure 6.4.

Figure 6.4. The Sound section of the Properties Inspector.

The first thing you will notice is the Sound drop-down list. This list contains every available sound file in the library, making it easy to switch to another sound or to remove the sound completely by choosing None.

Sound Effects

The next available option in the Sound section of the Properties Inspector is the Effect list. This allows you to apply different premade effects to your sound. Following are the available options in the list:

• None Resets the sound effect for the selected sound to Normal.

• Left Channel Plays the sound only in the left speaker.

• Right Channel Plays the sound only in the right speaker.

• Fade Left to Right Slowly fades the left speaker out at the same time the right speaker fades in.

• Fade Right to Left Slowly fades the right speaker out at the same time the left speaker fades in.

• Fade In The sound gradually fades in on both speakers in the beginning of the sound.

• Fade Out The sound gradually fades out on both speakers at the end of the sound.

• Custom Signifies that you have created your own custom sound effect to use with the selected sound.

Creating a Custom Effect

Creating custom effects can help give a sense of a three-dimensional environment. You can, for instance, create effects that change the sound from the left speaker to right speaker and back again to give a sense that something is moving back and forth in front of the user.

To create a custom effect, select the Edit button in the Properties Inspector when you have a sound selected on the timeline. This launches the Edit Envelope window, as shown in Figure 6.5.

Figure 6.5. The Edit Envelope window for creating custom sound effects.

Looking at the interface, you will see several thingsthe first being another Effect drop-down. Here you can choose some of the premade effects to give you a good place to start from when building your own effect.

The next thing you will notice are the two windows on top of each other with a visual representation of your sound in them. The top window is the left channel, and the bottom window is the right channel. Each window has a white square in it that represents that channel's volume at that point in the sound. You can click directly in the windows with the sound to add more volume handles, and the volume handles can be dragged around for better control over the sound. Notice that as you add volume handles in one window, they are added in the other window as well.

At the bottom of the Edit Envelope window are several buttons to help you test and work with the effect.

• Stop This button will stop the preview play of the sound with the effect.

• Play This button plays the selected sound with the effect you have created in Preview mode.

• Zoom In This option will "zoom in" on the sound, actually making the visual representation of the sound wider for more precise editing.

• Zoom Out This option will "zoom out" on the sound, actually making the visual representation of the sound thinner to be able to view more of the sound at once.

• Set to Seconds This option will convert the scale to seconds.

• Set to Frames This option will convert the scale to frames.

Play around with the settings to get used to them, but they make it quite easy to quickly create your own custom sound effect.

Now let's go back to the Properties Inspector to see the syncing and looping actions.