Hello, my friends. With the introduction of ASND in CS4, I've been getting lots of questions as to 'best practices' for working with this round-trip audio format.
If you're not familiar with ASND, it's stands for 'Adobe Sound Document'. Essentially, an ASND file is a stereo audio file that you can use in Premiere Pro CS4, After Effects CS4 or Flash CS4, and using the standard Adobe Edit Original, you can launch Soundbooth CS4 from the ASND file, and make changes to not only the stereo audio, but an entire 'multitrack environment' (assuming you've got multitrack audio in there from the start) as well as the ability to recall snapshots of your work, recall dynamically-linked AE or Premiere comps/sequences, and even reference video/animation exports from Flash.
Flash CS4 & Soundbooth CS4, side-by-side. Let's make some audio here...
The following is a tutorial on working with ASND in Flash. Though simple in it's implementation, there are indeed a few 'tricks' that you need to know to make it work most effectively. Here we go...
For starters, let's begin by creating a little animation in Flash, and to make it easy, we'll just draw a circle (dare to dream!) and then animate it using the unbelievably groovy (and very AE-like) Motion Presets. Simply draw, open the Motion Presets panel, select the one you want (I chose "Bounce-In-3D") and click apply. It will prompt you that you need to turn that object in a Movie Clip in order to apply the motion tween. Click OK, and voila...animated ball! note: I can remember actually attempting this manually, WAY back in the day, a-la Flash 3 or something...and I nearly lost it! And now...bouncey ball in 2 seconds. Love IT!
Now, to begin adding sound via ASND, we first need to export the timeline and create a MOV file (or something similar) so that we can 'reference' the animation in Soundbooth. File->Export->Export Movie will get us there, and I'll use QT for this example. Note that once you click OK, you'll enter the Quicktime Export Settings Dialog, which further leads you to the Movie Settings Dialog. Here, you can choose the compression, filter, size, etc. I typically choose Apple Animation (and/or H.264) and go with the defaults, often using High quality since it's only for reference; if you want 'Best', by all means. Again, we'll be synchronizing by frames, so 'good' quality with the default keyframing should be just fine. Choose you poison and export. Done with the reference clip.
A glance at the Quicktime Export options in Flash CS4
Once we've done that, we'll tab over to Soundbooth CS4, create a new Multitrack File, and proceed from there. I've provided a bunch of screen grabs here so that you can see the flow/process for importing media and working with it most efficiently inside of SBCS4.
File->New->Multitrack for the new ASND file
With the new multitrack/ASND file created, we first need to import the video file. Simply by Right-Clicking (or Ctrl-Clk....yes, I still use an old-school Microsoft Mouse on my MacBookPro) you can insert the video, and a video track will automatically be created. With the video track in place (and nothing else) this is a great opportunity to take a 'SNAPSHOT' of your work.
Right-clicking to insert a video file will automatically create the video track
The Snapshot button is located in the bottom-right corner of the History Panel
The purpose of the snapshot is to allow you to move back and forth between different variations of your multitrack project, with FULL recall of all parameters and additional files used. This is more than simply having an 'Undo History', as EVERYTHING you do can be saved as a snapshot, and all of those changes/parameters, keyframed volumes, etc., stay with the ASND file, no matter where you move it to. Much the FLA in Flash, the ASND file literally contains all of the media it references~with the exception of VIDEO files.
Should you LOSE the link to your video media, simply RT-CLK/Ctrl-CLK on the 'Offline Media' in the Video track and choose "Link Media". Your reference will be restored, and you should be good to go.
Simple re-linking of your reference video via Rt/Ctrl Clicking
From here, it's simply a matter of importing audio files for the ball animation, and for this, I'll look no further than RESOURCE CENTRAL. Resource Central is a Flash-based panel in SB and PPro that contains thousands of royalty-free sound effects and Scores that you can preview and download instantly. AND...it's fully searchable. Let's do a search for 'Ball Bounce' and see what I come up with...
Searching and Downloading in Resource Central. Royalty-free, baby!
As you can see, several options popped up. So now I can simply click to preview, download, and immediately begin working with these files right inside my ASND project. I move the playhead/CTI to the frame where I want the sound to begin, drop in the clip, trim the edges if necessary, and boom. Good to go. I may also need to add additional audio tracks (ie, layers) to make room for additional sound effects. This can be done directly from the 'Tracks' dropdown...
Adding additional audio 'layers' from the Tracks Menu, and shaping up for the final snapshot
Once I've aligned and synchronized all of my audio, I create my 'final' snapshot. (again, it's just good practice here; you can also use 'numbering' to show how many iterations/changes you've done). Now...one thing you shouldn't forget --- you also need to SAVE the ASND project as well! (this, you should have been doing all along, as far as best practices are concerned! ;)) After saving the ASND, let's close the file (leaving SB open) and go back to Flash CS4.
Save, Save, Save...the ASND File in SBCS4
Back in Flash, I'll go to File>Import to Library, and choose my ASND file.
Notice the LABELED layers; 'Properties' is where I can assign the ASND to the 'SoundFX' layer
Make a new layer (and you'll notice that I've now labeled my layers), select the SoundFX layer, and go to the properties panel to 'assign' the ASND as the 'sound' reference for that layer. You'll also notice that you even have some looping/repeat and 'effects' options. Pretty cool. Hit Enter and hear what your creation sounds like.
Now, should we want to make a change to this, I can simply select the ASND in the Library, Rt-Clk and choose Edit with Soundbooth. And by the way: you'll notice that there's also some weird "Edit with Soundbooth.app" option. I don't know why this is there. It seems to do the same thing...most of the time. Again, let's hope this is clarified later on, but for our purposes, just use the standard "Edit In Soundbooth" option.
Edit In Soundbooth Right-Click Menu Option
The ASND launches in SBCS4, and now we're ready to make some modifications and see them reflected on the Flash Stage. But...here's where some of tips/tricks bits come into play...
If I wanted, I could simply recall an earlier (or later) snapshot, save the file, and click back to Flash. However you may NOT see (or hear) the file update. We'll just call this a little buglet for now (which we hope to see remedied in the future). Basically, changing the Snapshot alone is not enough to 'dirty' the file (and make it update on the Flash side)...so because I chose a snapshot that also needed some 'trims' on a few files, simply by making a minute change (like a fade adjust or a trim) is enough to 'push' the changes thru to Flash when you 'Save' inside SB. So the steps are: Edit In Soundbooth, recall a snapshot (if you so desire) and if you do, make at least one small change, Save the ASND, Close the file if you wish, and click back to Flash. Click on the Audio layer (named SoundFX here) and you should see the waveform update, hit Enter or Cmd-Enter, and VOILA!! ASND in Flash with easy round-trip editability. ;)
Now, should you need to re-link the ASND in your Flash project: just choose the appropriate ASND file in the library and click on the Properties button at the bottom of the panel (my Flashers will know this; this is more for the newbies!). From here you can easily re-link an ASND to a FLA, and all is well.
Re-Linking the ASND in Flash CS4
So, this all seems pretty cool...but there are a few other things that I wanted to point out. Naturally, the first question most people asked (after showing this workflow) was, "Well, what if I change the length of my Flash animation or just make other modifications?" The answer here is to re-export the Movie, and if you so desire, overwrite the original (with the same file name). This way, when you 'Edit with Soundbooth' from Flash, the ASND in question will reference the SAME video file. If you re-name it (which keeps the video files intact, in a more non-destructive fashion) you *will* need to re-link the new video in your ASND when in Soundbooth.
The last question (and really, it's more of a comment) is about sound playback. Some of you may notice, from time to time, that the 'sound' of the audio in Soundbooth differs slightly from that in Flash. It may seem like the audio is 'higher pitched' in one application; and, you may also notice that when hitting ENTER (timeline playback) vs. Cmd-Enter (creating the SWF) that the audio is also slightly different. Again, we'll simply refer to this as a momentary buglet as well. Basically, Soundbooth is hard-wired at 48k. Flash isn't. That doesn't mean you can't do other sample rates...you most certainly can. But depending on the sample rates of your files and your soundcard (and more importantly, the driver for the audio device) you may find that the sound isn't being re-sampled properly when switching back and forth, and as a result, that may result in a slight difference in 'pitch' of the playback. The render will be perfect; this is merely a playback issue.
And with that, my friends, I hope you've found this tutorial helpful, and furthermore, I hope that it inspires you to begin working with ASND files in Flash, and creating the truly great sounding, multitrack audio that your incredible Flash CS4 animations deserve!!
Until next time...
Blog on.