anyone know if i can compress an mp3 file that is placed into a movie and actually reduce the overall amount of kb/mb when published?
I think that Flash has it’s own compression built into it… At least that’s what a Macromedia guy told me. 
Essentially what he said was that Flash will attempt to compress all sound files automatically on export. That’s why (he says) sometimes the quality will degrade if the sound was already compressed when imported into the movie. It’s compressing a compression… If you see what I mean. :sure:
The problem is that you have already compressed it, as Kitiara said (into an mp3 format most likely), and beyond that, you risk
losing it’s quality.
yes flash does it’s own compression, but if you play with the export settings, it won’t matter to the ear whether or not it was compressed again.
In Export Settings, set the sound settings to 128kb/mp3, it may compress it more than the original file…even if not by much.
yeah play around with it, for example my audio just contained voice and i got a 45 minute mp3 file compressed to about 2 megs…using a combination of the audio program and flash
I am trying to set up a streaming MP3 server.
If I use MP3’s each file is likely to be about 5MB.
Is there any hope that I can further compress my music to play in flash?
I stream mp3’s on my site. I try to keep the file size down below1.5 meg, they stream fairly well.
To do this I have encoded the mp3 as a mono 40kpbs.
This works well for me as I am streaming songs on an artists site and don’t want to have the quality to good.
I like that site.
do you use loadSound(“url”, true)?
Is there a way to stream the music at a specific rate or is it always streamed at the rate the file is endcoed at?
what program do you use to encode your MP3s?
thanks
Hi rysolag
Thanks
The code for the play button is
on (release) {
mySound = new Sound();
mySound.loadSound(“yourmp3.mpx”, true);
}
I changed my mp3 files to mpx as another safegaurd against piracy
I use steinberg’s Wavelab to do my audio.
Flash still compresses the audio as to how you have it set. If you change the setting then look at the change in file size when you publish the swf you will see.
The audio settings I use in Flash are
audio stream
32kbps stereo
Cheers
Brownie
lets say i have a 5MB mp3 sitting at my server.
if someone streams that song over and i have my audio settings set to a low quality will the total bandwidth that the streaming takes up be less than 5MB?
I am really not sure but I think the whole 5 meg will be streamed.
I wasn’t quite clear in my last post. The file size of the swf will only be smaller if the audio is embedded in the file. If it is called externally the size of the swf file will not be affected.
If I were you I would do some live testing and watch how much data is being downloaded.
I settled on the 40kbps files for 2 reasons.
The copyright issue and the fact that with the smaller file size you get less periods of no sound where it is buffering.
The songs on my site will stream a 3-4 minute song with only 1 or 2 sometimes 3 buffering pauses on a 56k dial up.
Sorry for all the questions.
What were you saying about the copyright issue?
Can you disregard copyright laws if the quality is below a certain level?
As I am trying to set up a streaming MP3 server with 1000’s of songs I am very interested in any copyright info I can get. What else can you tell me?
thanks for the info
Well no it is still a copyright infringement.
The artist was happy with that quality mono file to be available. Believe it or not he only makes money from 2 of his albums.
Even though flash “streams” the files, the mp3 is still written to the HD. Another good reason , for me, to call the files .mpx and not mp3.
If people go searching for mp3 files on their hard drive they wont find them.
I did all this to protect myself from the record companies (4 I think) that have handled the artist in the past.
Hope that helps some
umm any music by a mainstream artist being broadcast like that is an infringement…no way around it.
but you can do it if you pay them…
I heard it was $0.0014 per streamed song.
could be! might not be. Be very very carefull if you plan to put 1000’s of songs online. In my opinion you are just asking to be sued.
