Learn to import sound in Flash CS4.

In flash, its easy to import sound and use it in your flash movies, importing sound in flash CS4 is like importing any other element.

Go to the main menu, choose File > Import > import to stage or import to library, in this instance lets select import to library, then it will prompt you to select your sound file from your folders, select a music file with a .aif extension, in this instance I have a sound file called sound.aif in one of my folders, once you import it to library, you will see the sound.aif file in the library like this one below.

Now double click on the music.aif file, it will open up a sound properties window, you will have to change the sound compression, there are four different methods like the one you see below.

You choose different methods for a specific need, ADPCM and Raw use very little compression and are good for very short sounds, MP3 are good for long sounds and Speech is very good for voice over audio, we’ll choose MP3 for compression and we will choose a bit rate, the default bit rate is 16kbps per seconds, we’ll choose 64kbps and click the test button to test the quality of the sound like the one you see below,

When you test the quality of sound, you can subsequently change the bit rate and quality till you are satisfied with the quality of sound, at the bottom of the above screen, you will notice the quality of sound and the file size is given, here the sound is 417.4 kB, which in case you want to know is 4.5% of the original sound, also note that when editing the sound in your sound properties window, you are  not editing the original sound file, so you can at anytime edit you sound file, in other words this compression is only applied   when the file is exported, with this setting click OK, then to get a sound of play in your flash movie, drag the sound  from the library on to the stage, if you look at the timeline you can see soundwaves where you droped the sound like this one below.

Now you can test your flash movie by pressing Ctrl+Enter. You will be able to listen to the music. So using flash CS4 you can import music file, compress it however you like and play it in flash player.