Week 10:

Building a preloader and compressing audio files

Compressing audio files

Sound files were originally recorded in Pro Tools and exported as 44kHz, 16bit mono .wav files.
The audio was edited in Pro Tools and re-sampled in Sound Edit 16.

Aiff files were then compressed to mp3 files using iTunes. It was found that there was no file size difference between compressing 44kHz and 22kHz files. There was however a noticeable reduction in quality in compression 22kHz. All files were compressed using 32 kbps mono from 44Khz 16 bit aiff files. This resulted in a roughly 10:1 compression ratio.

Although Flash has its own mp3 compression options it was found that importing large aiff audio files caused considerable delay when testing or exporting movies. A better approach is to compress audio files prior to importing them into Flash.

All of the audio files expect one were over 250k. On dialup connection this could cause a considerable delay in downloading the Flash movie. To keep the user amused the usual technique is to build a preloader. A short animation that tells the user the main section is still loading, meanwhile "look at this". When the whole movie has finished downloading the animation stops and the user is taken to the main section of the movie.

I will use an audio to keep the user busy while the main section of the movie is being downloaded. A short audio loop could while the whole movie is being downloaded.

Below is an example of a preloading script with a crude animation displaying while the whole movie is being downloaded.